I hate to be a frequent comment troll, but I wonder what you think of a person who "grew up on the move, attending more than a dozen different schools across the U.S. and in England" and "graduated from high school in Bellevue, Nebraska", and yet says the following:

The Confederate Memorial has had a special place in my life for many years. ... And there were many, many times that I found myself drawn to this deeply inspiring memorial, to contemplate the sacrifices of others, several of whom were my ancestors, whose enormous suffering and collective gallantry are to this day still misunderstood by most Americans.

...

I am not here to apologize f or why they fought, although modern historians might contemplate that there truly were different perceptions in the North and South about those reasons, and that most Southern soldiers viewed the driving issue to be sovereignty rather than slavery. In 1860 fewer than five percent of the people in the South owned slaves, and fewer than twenty percent were involved with slavery in any capacity. Love of the Union was palpably stronger in the South than in the North before the war -- just as overt patriotism is today -- but it was tempered by a strong belief that state sovereignty existed prior to the Constitution, and that it had never been surrendered. Nor had Abraham Lincoln ended slavery in Kentucky and Missouri when those border states did not secede. Perhaps all of us might reread the writings of Alexander Stephens, a brilliant attorney who opposed secession but then became Vice President of the Confederacy, making a convincing legal argument that the constitutional compact was terminable. And who wryly commented at the outset of the war that "the North today presents the spectacle of a free people having gone to war to make freemen of slaves, while all they have as yet attained is to make slaves of themselves."

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I'm sure the partisans will come up with some ridiculous excuse why Allen's a racist but the person who said that isn't. Please.

Maybe we could start with: because Allen mocked a South Asian with a racist slur and Webb did... not?

So you are trying to defend what Aleen said with a baseless ad hominem attack on Webb?  I guess that tells me there is no defense for what Allen said...

Sorry - I was trying to make a joke based on Matthew's post yesterday.

Ah yes--Al always is ready with the tu quoque. Anyway, 1)we already saw this at the Corner yesterday, 2)and who the hell cares? (In addition, it's not even comparable; Webb said stupid things about the Confederacy as party of a political speech, in a context in which politicans are expected to do such things. Allen proudly wore a Confderate pin as a high school student in California.)

I tend to agree with one reaction I've seen that the most offensive part about all this is Allen saying "Welcome to America" to an American--particularly one who's young and politically involved.

I find the "macaca" business intriguing though. There's enough circumstantial evidence to connect it with a racial slur, and I find that fairly convincing. I just wonder if Allen was completely aware of what he was saying.

I was reminded of a post on Brad DeLong's blog about Jeb Bush's reference to "unleashing Chang." In DeLong's analysis, this came from Bush Sr.'s allusion to Chiang Kai Shek http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/10/unleash_chiang_.html but the Bush kids remembered it without really grasping what he meant.

I can picture Allen simply remembering his mom using the funny name "macaca" for some people and intuitively attaching it to Sidarth without ever making any rational connection of why. This hardly excuses the behavior. I just find it interesting to speculate on what could have been going through his mind. Somehow I doubt he said "Heh, I can throw in an obscure French racial slur here and no one will ever be the wiser."

"...a comparison between Webb's racial attitudes and Allen's racial attitudes. Which seems to me perfectly legitimate, since those are the two people vying for the election."

But we're not talking about the election. We're talking about a stupid racist remark that George Allen made.

It's not legitimate for the same reason that it wouldn't be legitimate if we were talking about some crazy-ass homophobic thing that Rick Santorum said, and you come along and say, "But Bob Casey doesn't support gay marriage!"

And - and - I can't believe I'm engaging you point for point on this, but it's not only Allen's more than interest in the confederate flag that makes him racist, it's the fact that he has a long history of doing all sorts of other racist stuff, of which this is just the latest example. That's what makes him a racist - being a racist.