Elayne Riggs' Journal (for Leah)

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

When the Macaca Hits the Fan

Wow, this thing has blog-legs! Among the more interesting posts I've seen about the incident:

Over at Arianna Huffington's place, they've published excerpts from Senator George Allen's sister Jennifer talking about what a violent little sleaze he was as a younger man. Creepy! And oddly familiar; I think he would have gotten along well with young Georgie Bush and his live-frog-exploding crew.

Mustang Bobby finds a blog post that observes, "According to two Republicans who heard the word used, 'macaca' was a mash-up of 'Mohawk,' referring to Sidarth's distinctive hair, and 'caca,' Spanish slang for excrement, or 'shit.' Said one Republican close to the campaign: 'In other words, he was a shit-head, an annoyance.'" Yeah, so obviously we'd want to welcome him to America. Being, as he is, an American citizen born-and-bred already.

And speaking of shit, Digby calls bullshit on this whole incident by revealing that macaca is, indeed, a well-known code word recognized by racists, particularly in France and by those familiar with North Africans - and, surprise surprise, John Amato finds a New Republic post informing us that Allen's "mother is French Tunisian (yeah, that’s in North Africa), and Allen speaks French." or, at least, he speaks la langue de racist code.

0 comments: