It looked like it was dying down but it turns out the “Macaca” story lives on, thanks to the two-faced message coming out of Senator George Allen’s camp. Apparently the incident has severely harmed him in the polls, so he’s finally apologized to S.R. Sidarth, the Webb campaign worker whom he twice called “macaca” and asked an all-white audience to “welcome to America.” Allen actually got on the phone:
He apologized for his comments, said Mr. Sidarth, who is an American of Indian descent, in a telephone interview from the University of Virginia, where he has resumed his classes. He took the blame for saying them, and he said he didnt realize how offended I was until he heard my comments from the media.
End of story, right? Politician says something stupid, pays price in the polls, apologizes, hopefully learns lesson. Except for one thing. At the same time that Allen is apologizing, his staff is telling Republicans worried that he’s going soft on them that the whole incident was what the papers call “a barnyard epithet” (that’s newscode for “bullshit”) and that it’s Allen who is actually the aggrieved party. [Update: Here’s the campaign manager’s memo.] Here’s today’s editorial in the Washington Post:
[Allen campaign manager] Mr. Wadhams, an itinerant political hit man known for his nasty attacks on opponents, told Republican leaders in a memo sent over the weekend that the Webb campaign and the media had ganged up “to create national news over something that did not warrant coverage in the first place.”
He continued: “Never in modern times has a statewide office holder and candidate been so vilified.” In other words, Mr. Allen is the victim — not the 20-year-old student whom he mocked with an insulting, possibly racist slur in front of scores of chortling supporters and demeaned by saying, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!”
Unlike Mr. Allen, whose contrition has become increasingly abject over time, Mr. Wadhams has been consistent. His first pronouncement to journalists, a week and a half ago, was to refer to the “macaca” story with a barnyard epithet and insist that the senator had nothing to apologize for. He has stuck with that assessment.
With Mr. Allen plummeting in the polls and his reelection prospects now in doubt, he and Mr. Wadhams are in damage-control mode. They have dropped their far-fetched insistence that the word “macaca” referred to Mr. Sidarth’s hairstyle. But they ought to get their stories straight. Is the Allen campaign really sorry? Or are the senator’s adversaries just making a mountain out of “macaca”?
We report, you decide.
