Racial blunders give senator a rough ride on the campaign trail

[rodeodance]

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/article1761650.ece

Racial blunders give senator a rough ride on the campaign trail

By Rupert Cornwell in Washington
Published: 27 September 2006

Once upon a time, he was a certainty to hold his Senate seat - a cowboy-booted good ol' boy with a genial smile and a fair shot at the 2008 Republican presidential nomination. But after a bizarre string of disasters, ranging from alleged racism to his handling of revelations of his hidden Jewish ancestry, George Allen is in the political fight of his life.

Six weeks before the mid-term elections, the senator is in a statistical dead heat with his opponent, James Webb - and his once safe seat in solidly Republican Virginia is now a top Democratic target as they seek to wrest back control of the Senate in November. And his problems, analysts agree, are entirely of his own making.

They began last month when the senator addressed a young Democratic campaign worker of Indian ancestry, calling him "macaca" and welcoming him "to America". That episode set off a furious philological debate: where did "macaca" come from, and was it a racist word? Some linked it to the macaque species of monkey, claiming it was a derogatory term used in Europe for African immigrants. Nonsense, said others; it was merely an Italian (or Spanish) word for clown. Mr Allen first maintained he made it up on the spur of the moment, then said that he had a niece nicknamed Maca-Maca. The mystery remained, but the damage was done.

Next came the matter of his Jewish ancestry. ........

All along, Mr Webb and the Democrats have observed a judicious silence. The former, by common consent, is not the world's greatest campaigner. But who needs to be, when your opponent is self-destructing?

[underpants]

1. I've yet to see ONE ad from Webb here in the Richmond area

Not one. Allen is running an ad about a Webb ad (that has not aired here as far as I know) and running it almost nonstop. I think, and hope, that Webb is saving up his money for big campaign ad runs the last month -OR- his campaign doesn't see any need to run them in the Richmond area because our votes are pretty much set in stone anyway.

Either way Webb is all around Allen in the polls (Allen leads by 6% in the last Mason-Dixon poll) but neither one has more than 50%. Webb doesn't have to do anything but make sure the mics are on and set back...for now.

[Virginia Dare]

3. None here in NOVA either...

but I think he will crush Allen in this area anyway. He's raised quite a lot of money in the last month..hopefully we will see a last minute blitz.

[rocktivity]

2. Al Franken talked about Allen's Jewish mom

and concluded, "What kind of a mother would tell her son she's really Jewish and then say, 'I guess this means you won't love me anymore'? A mother who knows her son is Anti-Semetic, THAT'S what kind!" His little foray into MSNBC last night seems to have done him a world of good!

:headbang:
rocknation

[Sequoia]

4. Gasp...did she really say that?

[rocktivity]

5. According to the Washington Post

Henrietta "Etty" Allen said...she concealed her upbringing as a Jew in North Africa from her children, including Sen. George Allen (R-Va.), until...late August.

She said Allen asked her..."'Mom, there's a rumor that Pop-pop and Mom-mom were Jewish and so were you,'" she recalled, a day after Allen issued a statement acknowledging and embracing his Jewish roots...

...Etty...told her son...(t)hat she had been raised as a Jew in Tunisia before moving to the United States. She said that she and the senator's father, famed former Redskins coach George Allen, had wanted to protect their children from living with the fear that she had experienced during World War II...

"What they put my father through. I always was fearful," Etty Allen said..."I didn't want my children to have to go through that fear all the time. When I told Georgie, I said, 'Now you don't love me anymore.' He said, 'Mom, I respect you more than ever.'" (link)

Obviously, George Allen's public embrace of his Jewish roots BEFORE confirming them undermines the story's credibility. But as Al Franken suggests, no one knows a person better than his or her parents. While I would have been saddened by the idea of her shedding her religion like a coat, I wouldn't have felt hatred if I were him. But the real point is that this shouldn't have been a story at all. If he'd just said "My mother was raised as a Jew and converted to Christianity when she came to the US," rather than react as though he'd been accused of being a child molester, that would have been the end of it!

:headbang:
rocknation