Wednesday

Real American Douchebag

Nobody loves jumping on a bandwagon and beating a metaphorical horse to death as much as I do, but really, is there any new ground to cover about Macaca-Gate?


You're damn right there is.


What's first in the queue? How about the brutish and violent side of the Senator, most captivatingly recorded in a 2000 memoir written by Allen's sister, Jennifer Richard:


Richard's book contained some cartoonish, though alarming, accounts of violence at the Allen home. Richard remembers George, her older brother and the future senator, dragging her up the stairs by her hair. She remembers George breaking his brother Gregory's collarbone. She remembers George throwing her brother Bruce through a sliding glass door. At one point in the book, which was marketed as nonfiction, she says George spoke about dentistry as a perfect profession, because he wanted to be paid to "make people suffer."


(Why do I hear Steve Martin singing in my head?)


What else? Well, like any good Republican, the Senator is a hypocrite. At last week's rally, Allen said, "Let's give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia." Apparently he didn't know that Macaca himself (real name S.R. Sidarth) was born and raised in Virginia…and apparently he forgot that he was born and raised in California.


Of course, there's a lot more. Did you know that the Senator wore a Confederate flag pin in his high school senior year photo and posed in front of one in HIS HOUSE for a 1993 campaign ad? How about the fact that he once opposed Martin Luther King Day, or hung a noose on a tree outside his law office? Of course, Allen claimed that he is a changed man…after all, he "recently passed an anti-lynching resolution".


Wow, he's really going out on a limb on that one, huh? Get it, "a limb"? Oh well, at least the Senator is laughing.


And finally, there's this bit of classic GOP posturing that backfired for the faux cowboy:


The Allen campaign said that [Democratic challenger Jim] Webb's position on flag burning exposed him as "liberal"… Those are fighting words in the Commonwealth, and Webb isn't taking them sitting down. Returning fire, Webb's camp said that "George Felix Allen Jr. and his bush-league lapdog, [campaign manager] Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb's position on free speech and flag burning." They noted that Webb, the secretary of the Navy under Ronald Reagan, served in Vietnam and "fought for our flag and what it stands for," while "George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run."


Allen turned 18 in 1970, but he did not serve in Vietnam , staying in college and spending summers at what the Webb campaign calls a "dude ranch in Nevada."


Geez, calling this guy a douchebag doesn't seem to say enough, does it? Oh well, if the cowboy boot fits…

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