NICE try, guy!
Sen. George Allen continues to astound! In a recent move he attempts to what? Rehabilitate? Catch up on lost ground? Give everyone a laugh? After a Democratic field worker was ousted for what apparently was an anti-semitic email remark (She referred to Allen as “macacawitz”) his campaign announced that it was an anti-semitic remark. Wouldn’t want to offend your finely tuned Jewish sensibilities, Mr. Don’t-call-my-mother-a-Jew. What, couldn’t think of a slur to call her back, this time?
From JTA Breaking News
`Macacawitz’ forces out Dem activist
A Democratic congressional campaign forced out a field worker after she referred to Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) as “Macacawitz.”
Meryl Ibis, an organizer for the campaign of Al Weed, a Virginia Democrat running for the U.S. House of Representatives, quit the Weed campaign Wednesday after she sent an email to supporters asking them to protest “George `Macacawitz’ Allen” at a Republican rally in Danville, Va.
Allen has come under fire for calling an Indian American activist for his opponent “Macaca,” which some say is a slur, and for concealing his mother’s Jewish origins.
Allen’s campaign called the e-mail anti-Semitic.
I just find it ironic that he thinks “Macacawitz” it’s offensive, but “Macaca” isn’t. Per Wikipdeia:
Macaca[1] is a dismissive epithet used by francophone colonials in Central Africa’s Belgian Congo for the native population. [2] It may be derived from the name of the genus comprising macaque monkeys. The word macaque has also been used as a racial slur. The macaque’s genus name, Macaca, is a latinization of the Bantu (Kongo) ma-kako[3], meaning “monkey”.
What a putz.
No, there’s nothing particularly anti-Semitic about calling Allen “Macacawitz.” After all, the Democratic field worker was only trying to unmask Allen as a real (read: Eastern European) Jew (despite the fact that Allen’s mother is descended from a very prestigious old Sephardic family). The same sort of thing is happening right now in a British production of The Merchant of Venice, in which Shylock, a 16th century Venetian Jew, is being depicted in the garb of an Eastern European Hasidic Jew (despite the fact that the Hasidic movement did not even exist until the mid-18th century and had no followers in or even near Italy).
I guess that in many people’s minds, “Jew” = ugly, alien, Eastern European shtetl dwelling outsider. And the campaign field worker was just trying to reign Macacawitz — I mean Allen — back into the ghetto where he really belongs. It is a bit scary, I suppose, to think that a real Jew like Macacawitz could be fooling people by masquerading as a member of the racially pure Aryan-American elite.
what I don’t understand is why the media can’t realize that yes, he did clearly say ‘macaca’ and yes, it really is a racist, derogatory term.
Ditto to what Esh said above.