Allen DOES Apologize

So reports The Washington Post. Here it is:

Reached Monday evening, Allen said that the word had no derogatory meaning for him and that he was sorry. "I would never want to demean him as an individual. I do apologize if he's offended by that. That was no way the point."

Asked what macaca means, Allen said: "I don't know what it means." He said the word sounds similar to "mohawk," a term that his campaign staff had nicknamed Sidarth because of his haircut. Sidarth said his hairstyle is a mullet -- tight on top, long in the back.

Allen said by the comment welcoming him to America, he meant: "Just to the real world. Get outside the Beltway and get to the real world."

Then there is this:

Steve Mukherjee, a spokesman for the Washington chapter of the Association of Indians in America, said Allen's comments were "hurtful," and he chided the senator for not being more sensitive.

. . . .

Asked what macaca means, Mukherjee said: "What it means, I don't know. But it's going to cause him some grief."

So SPOKESMAN for the Association of Indians in America doesn't know what the word means, but the leftwing blogosphere does, apparently.

But Prof. Robert Holsworth makes a good point, too:

"This doesn't turn the race around at all," Holsworth said. "But for a guy running for president, this is likely to be regularly aired this year and maybe beyond."

He might be right. Besides, I think more and more McCain is the favorite and really is the only Repubiican who can win.

So Allen apologized, Wadhams is an idiot, the Democrats seem to have failed again in finding a fake controversy to stir up. In a week, this will be a footnote outside of the wacky leftwing who hate Allen already.

Comments

[Nick Stump]

The slur didn't have anything to do with Sidarth being Indian-American. Allen didn't know he was Indian--he knew he was dark-skinned. I showed the clip to my French-Belgian friend Francis. He says the word is common in French-speaking parts of the world, and refer to Africans or dark-skinned Arabs. He said, according to who you were slurring, it could mean the n word or dirty Arab.

Wadham's stumbles to explain away the incident does more to lend credence to Allen's knowledge of what he was saying. You gotta figure Allen learned this one at home. The French, as much as they seem to hate Americans, have their own problems with racism.

I don't know if it's a deal-breaker for Allen, but it sure doesn't help his campaign. It will surely haunt his Presidential run, and may very well spell doom for his senate race as well.

Frankly, I don't know why a true conservative like yourself wouldn't find Jim Webb an attractive candidate in the first place.

[Mason Conservative]

Because of his views on Iraq, Nick, thats why I don't support him. Allen has been there and done that for conservatives for almost 15 years. Webb is an opputunist who changes parties like I change clothes. He can't be trusted and if he is elected senator, Democrats will find this out, too.

[Nick Stump]

I've felt like the Repubician party left a lot of true conservatives in the last few years. I felt the same way about the Democrats when I came back from Vietnam. I can understand why Webb has changed parties. We don't owe the kind of loyalty to a political party that we do to the country. I don't have a laundry list for someone to be a Democrat. Have you read The Nightingale's Song?