Whether this has anything to do with the timing or not, Allen's publicized apology only came AFTER polls showed his campaign had suffered a major hit due to publicity after You Tube gave his utterances a bit more publicity that he would have wished:Sean Hannidy is not exactly the venue I would pick to get an honest apology out to those I might have directly offended, either. I would bet that the most significant fraction of "brown" folks are those recovering from bad tanning bed experiences.Sidarth said Allen told him that the apology was "from his heart."P.S. to Allen: Sean Hannity is not the epitome of a challenging talk show host for a conservative.
"His main point was he was sorry he offended me," Sidarth, a fourth-year University of Virginia student, said in an interview later. "He realized how much he offended me from the comments I made in the media."
The call followed a series of public mea culpas , including one heard across the country Tuesday on a conservative radio talk show hosted by commentator Sean Hannity.
"I take full responsibility. I'm not offering any excuses because I said it, and no one else said it," a somber-sounding Allen told Hannity's audience of more than 12 million listeners. "It's a mistake. I apologize, and from my heart, I'm very, very sorry for it."
Sean Hannity is to tough questioning for conservatives and Republicans what CNN's Larry King is to tough questioning for anybody.
I see the whole Allan thing, from initial act to eventual "apology" as beeing deeply revealing of his charactor, and of the charactor of those who know him well and support him regardless. It's exactly how bullies and their "posses" behave. Allen is concerned that he's offended swing voters. I'm pretty sure that's not his biggest loss.
I have old and deep ties to the Commonwealth and I know there are lots of good, decent, pretty darn Conservative Christan white folks in Virgnia who would deeply resent the presumption that they would approve of such behavior because they were not brown, possibly non-Christian Democrats, if for no better reason than there are some things that are simply unforgivably gauche to bring up in public!
Aside from any debate that might arise about the racial "nuances" within the complex racial landscape that is Virginia it's hard to dismiss this as evidence something far more important - a degree of superficialism that amounts to bone-deep stupidity. "Him brown, Me not. I better! HA ha!"
Folksy affability is ok, and it's wise to not be conspiciously color-blind when one's constituancy may have a high proportion of racists. I mean, you don't get to pick your constituants, it's the other way around.
But in this case, Allan revealed himself to be exactly as small and three times as stupid as his shrillist, most partisan critics had alleged.
HOW DUMB DO YOU HAVE TO BE TO VOLUNTEER TO STAR IN YOUR OPPONENT'S ATTACK AD?
"Katherine Harris Crazy" is going to be joined in the new lexicon of politics by "George Allen Stupid."
In demonstrating just how stupidly and thoughtlessly racist he is, he's proabably alienated a fair number of actual racists, who think of themselves as being quite intelligent, with compelling and intellectually persuasive views.
And he wasn't even drunk at the time!
It's hard not to think that this says volumes about the judgement of those touting this man as the "Great White Hope" for the Republican party in the '08 elections, leading one to question the judgement of the RNC as a whole.
I did already, of course - but now I'm talking about "one who is a registered Republican."
Meanwhile, I'm betting that hair dye and spray tans are gonna be even more popular over the next few months.
UPDATE:George Allen's Race Problem isn't his only problem.
George Allen is the oldest child of legendary football coach George Herbert Allen, and, when his father was on the road, young George often acted as a surrogate dad to his siblings. According to his sister Jennifer, he was particularly strict about bedtimes. One night, his brother Bruce stayed up past his bedtime. George threw him through a sliding glass door. For the same offense, on a different occasion, George tackled his brother Gregory and broke his collarbone. When Jennifer broke her bedtime curfew, George dragged her upstairs by her hair.
George tormented Jennifer enough that, when she grew up, she wrote a memoir of what it was like living in the Allen family. In one sense, the book, Fifth Quarter, from which these details are culled, is unprecedented. No modern presidential candidate has ever had such a harsh and personal account of his life delivered to the public by a close family member. The book paints Allen as a cartoonishly sadistic older brother who holds Jennifer by her feet over Niagara Falls on a family trip (instilling in her a lifelong fear of heights) and slams a pool cue into her new boyfriend’s head. “George hoped someday to become a dentist,” she writes. “George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession—getting paid to make people suffer.”
tag: ethics, macaca, macaque, bush cronies, cronyism, idiots, 2008, george allen stupid, sen. george allen, you tube, racist, racism, candidate, 06, great white hope, bully, bullies, shallow, charactor
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