Calling an Indian-American a monkey is neither sensitive nor smart

George Allen has just about fallen off my list for 2008.

As much as I'd like to believe that the Senator simply stuck his foot in his mouth when he addressed an Indian man as "macaca," the man speaks French. French as in macaque. If he didn't intend to call the man a name which is an ethnic slur in his own mother's culture, one has to wonder what in the world was going on in the man's mind.

Allen, it should be noted, has apologized, and says that he did not intend a racial slur. It's doubtless true, as some observe, that he was singling the man out because he was a Webb campaign worker rather than because of his ethnicity. But how much of an excuse is that? It's still a racial slur in his own mother's Tunisian French!

I think this will turn out to be a fatal wound to his White House hopes. It's true that Democrats tend to get a lot of slack on racial issues (as in Hillary Clinton's comment about Gandhi running a gas station in St. Louis, alluded to by John McIntyre). But Allen's fondness for the Confederate flag already has him under special scrutiny where racial issues are concerned. I have to think the Gary Hart principle applies here: people who are presidential timber don't do specific kinds of stupid things when they know the media are watching to see if they do that very kind of stupid thing.

It behooved George Allen in particular- fairly or not- to be above reproach on any subject remotely touching on race. It even more behooves him to do so now. He cannot afford another racial gaffe between now and the 2008 election.

HT: Real Clear Politics

ADDENDUM: Here is an alternative explanation for Allen's gaffe. It seems that in certain Hispanic cultures, macaca (literally, 'monkey girl') is a mildly abusive epithet for foolish (female) person- sort of like calling somebody a "clown" might be in American English.

Except that the person Allen called "macaca" is a man.