"Macaca" Turns Out To Have Been An Improvement

Allen.
Romney.
Frist.
The asshole trifecta.

 

Bottom line on George Allen -- whether he used the "n" word in college or not -- is that he stood there at a campaign rally, knowing a guy had a camera on him and would use any negative comment he made and he calls him a racist name in a mean-spirited way, hoping to rally the hicks there to his cause.

Real smart, man. You should be president.

 

Are you serious?
Having lived through them, I guarantee you that the N-bomb carried pretty serious weight in the 1970's. Why am I even arguing this with an obvious dunce? And if you can tell me what Robert Byrd's "rank" in the Klan was back in the 1930's, I'd be much obliged.

 

Rare moment of agreement here. The early 1970s was a very politically charged time on college campuses and I am quite certain the word carried quite a bit of weight. Obviously, Charlottesville was not Berkeley, but many large state universities -- even in conservative places -- were "radicalized" to some extent in the late 60s and early 70s.

 

Those "radicals" with their pot-smoking and their refusal to use racial slurs. Bastards!

 

Byrd was an "Exalted Cyclops" or head of a local chapter and a "Kleagle" or recruiter. But I'm sure you already knew that (and were in denial).

And no one lost a career in the late 60s or early 70s over accusations he/she may have once uttered the N word. If you're trying to say the word was as taboo in society then as it is now, you're simply lying. Today, you can't even say "so and so called someone a ...." you have to say "so and so called someone the N word."

Hell, today you can get fired for saying "niggardly," which has nothing to do with race. Try honesty once, F_B. It might just set you free.

 

As much as I like John Warner is how much I dislike George Allen. Whether this story is accurate or not, the macaca incident - and the fallout from it - killed Allen in my mind.

Because after all that, of course, he has to do damage control. So he makes campaign stops and welcomes people in three different languages or whatever. What a fraud.

That said, I don't know if Webb is much better. A recent Allen attack ad I've seen takes Webb to task over his apparently brief tenure under Reagan, which has been heavily mentioned. (The ad says that Webb said or somehow insinuated that Reagan would have endorsed him; Nancy Reagan supposedly sent him a letter that asked him to stop making such a claim, and Webb refused to do so.)

If true, then I find both equally untrustworthy and would strongly look at independent candiates.

And as for Allen as President? If that were the case, I'd be quickly looking for affordable housing in Vancouver.

 

What does George Allen being a racist have to do with Robert Byrd being a racist?

 

Beautiful.

 

The "macaca" thing bothers me more than this. What he thinks and believes now matters a lot more to me than what he thought and felt 35 years ago.
This whole digging up stuff from the distant past that may or not mean anything about a candidate bothers me. It always has, regardless of what party the candidate in question was.
Maybe in the long run it will pay off. I'm sure the next generation of our nation's leaders are being extra careful now, knowing full well that anything they say or do, if they tell off-color jokes, if they jaywalk, if they tear tags off mattresses, if they don't return library books on time, somebody will find out about it and it may keep them from being elected.
And I suppose we'll have better leaders as a reult of this.