It's between a Mohawk and a mullet, IMO. Sometimes called a FauxHawk, supposedly according to The Plank at New Republic.
Posted on 08/16/2006 10:17:53 AM PDT by PDR
What does Macaca really mean? Three Virginia Republicans confirmed to the Hotline that several Allen campaign aides and advisers are telling allies that the word was a made-up, off-the-cuff neologism that these aides occasionally used to refer to tracker S.R. Sidarth well before last Saturday's videotaped encounter.
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." Allen, according to Republicans, heard members of his traveling entourage and Virginia Republicans use the phrase and picked it up. It was the first word that came to his mind when he spied Sidarth at the weekend's event, according to Republicans who have been briefed on Allen's version of the event.
Opponents of Allen have said that Sidarth's hair was clearly styled as a mullet rather than as a Mohawk. Republicans are sending around a post by Chad Dotson, a Virginia prosecutor who blogs as "Commonwealth Conservative," which contains a photograph of Sidarth at an Allen event. Sidarth's hair appears to be shaved on the side and thick strands stretch over the top of his head from his neck to his temple. (Dotson is a Republican and unabashed Allen supporter.)
John Reid, Allen's Senate communications director, said in a statement: "I don't think George Allen would ever try to publicly embarrass or demean a young person even if that person was working on an opposing campaign. The Senator has apologized sincerely and repeatedly over the last two days to the young man and to the public in general. He has been speaking with members of Virginia's Indian Community to reiterate that apology and assure them he did not mean to be derogatory. At some point I don't know what else can be said. I am hopeful that everyone who has heard about this has also heard the Senator's apology."
Kristian Denny Todd, communications director for James Webb, said the new explanation rings hollow. "I don't know what's worse; calling this innocent 20-year-old a "shit head" or a racist slur that was debatable that it wasn't," she said. "This is a kid that had done George Allen no harm. The term was used to demean him. That's the bottom line." Todd said Webb "just wants to get beyond all this" and focus on issues.
Maybe if he told a joke about Gandhi being a gas attendent, the Washington Post would not care.
That is if his name were Hillary, who did just that.
I hope Allen becomes president some day, because I can't wait until he is out of office so I can visit his presidential library and see what kind of display they'll have on the "Macaca Incident."
Well, this makes a lot more sense to me than Allen knowing about a French Tunisian slur against native North Africans that nobody in America ever heard of.
If I were to lose control, and shout expletives at someone, then I would be embrarassed, and I would apologize, because I would know that I did something that no decent man should have done.
But if I were to mumble "Hiya, Jumafuma" at someone because I've forgotten his name -- if I were to find out that Jumafuma means "Objectionable Old Aunt" in the Kung dialect of Mumbezi language -- I would not apologize, because I had not knowingly done anything wrong.
Once you start apologizing for this crap, there is no end to it -- it's never enough for these people.
I think they should just pretend it never happened and move on...
I'm guessing this was an off the record comment??
When will we hear the dems off the record comments??
Pretty stupid remark for somebody on the campaign trail, at any rate.
How dare you post such nasty words in FR. Why I oughta' contact the administrators.
It is all about smear campaigns of the politically incorrect.
And politically incorrect isn't because he said something wrong. It is because he doesn't vote the "right way".
bingo
Maybe if Webb was not a Pro-terrorist douche, he would not have to make such a big deal about this.
Then again, if I were a certain loser like Webb, I would do everything I could to try to win.
> Maybe if he told a joke about Gandhi being a gas attendent, the Washington Post would not care.
> That is if his name were Hillary, who did just that.<
Or if his name were Sen. K. K. Byrd (D-WV), it would be OK for him to say,
"There are white macacas. I've seen a lot of white macacas in my time. I'm going to use that word."
No problem at all!
The Washington Post is a biased rag.
The rat with the camera was a LIB douche.
Webb is a lightweight.
TORO CACA!
This isn't a new explanation, it's what they said originally, and what I speculated happened back when this first broke out in the virginia blogs.
Allen's staff had a name they called him, Allen probably didn't know it's derivation or its use, but he had heard it.
Then when he addressed the kid (watch the video and this is clear) he called him out as the "yellow-shirt guy". but that seemed to make Allen uncomfortable refering to the guy by the shirt he wore, so he threw in the guy's name, or at least what he remembered hearing as the guy's name. Certainly "macaca" doesn't sound any worse for an indian-american name to a non-indian than dozens of other names that ARE indian-american names, so he could be excused for not knowing it wasn't the guy's name.
When he learned it wasn't the kid's name, he apologized.
The webb supporters claim the "story" allen gave was that he meant to say mohawk and just messed up, but Allen never said that, and neither did Allen's campaign.
The guy's hair looked like a crappy mohawk. When Chad put up the picture, it all became clear, although the webb supporters are still insisting that what is clearly a mohawk in the picture is NOT a mohawk, but instead a "mullet", which in southwest virginia is something completely different, showing that Webb's campaign still doesn't understand the real america, or the real virginia.
It's between a Mohawk and a mullet, IMO. Sometimes called a FauxHawk, supposedly according to The Plank at New Republic.
You mean the Lion thing?
Thats all I WAS referring too, sorry!
If memory serves, kakon is Attic Greek for vile, evil, or filthy, but the word is much older than 2,500 years and has spread to many modern languages. It could also be a cognate of something with an entirely innocuous meaning. Perhaps some more schooled in linguistics or philology can chime in.
Wow. I said something close to that as a joke yesterday...
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