 | Triple Ls Liberal minded friends who gather for lunch
Liberal : A person whose political philosophy is based on the belief in progress, the essential goodness of man, and the autonomy of the individual and standing for the protection of political and civil liberties. | ||||||||||||||
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Kate Zernike As 2006 dawned, Democrats began to dream that they might win the House, but only tilters-at-windmills thought they might take the Senate. They had not counted on the “macaca moment.” The original came in August, when Senator George Allen of Virginia, a Republican considered a sure bet for re-election and a presidential contender for 2008, gestured to a Virginia-born college student of Indian descent who was filming Mr. Allen’s campaign event for his opponent, Jim Webb. “Macaca, or whatever his name is,” Mr. Allen called out to the student. “Welcome to America, and the real world of Virginia.” Within a month, Mr. Allen and the Republicans were in free fall. And macaca, otherwise known as a genus of monkey or obscure racial epithet, came to signify the scandals, gaffes and missteps that handed the Democrats Congress for the first time since the Republican Revolution of 1994. Mr. Allen watched his lead disappear as he struggled to explain why he seemed defensive when asked about his Jewish background, which had recently come to light. “I still had a ham sandwich for lunch,” he said, embracing stereotypes, if not his heritage. Internet quipsters dubbed him Macacawitz, Macacastein. Then Mark Foley, a Florida Republican in a safe seat, resigned in disgrace after it was disclosed that he had sent sexually explicit electronic messages to teenage Congressional pages. (He then resorted to what could be considered the antidote to the macaca moment, the “Mel Gibson defense,” saying that the alcohol made him do it, and checking into rehab.) Senator Conrad Burns of Montana, already apologizing for accusing firefighters of not doing anything to fight a summer wildfire, had his own macaca moment when he impugned immigrants by declaring that the nation confronted a “faceless enemy” of terrorists who “drive cabs in the daytime and kill at night.” The closest the Democrats came to a macaca moment was the “botched joke” that their 2004 presidential nominee, Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, turned into a not-funny line about how only lazy students get stuck in Iraq. The remark apparently cost his party nothing. The day after the election, even before Mr. Allen conceded, bloggers declared the end to Republican rule. It was, of course, the macacalypse. Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company | ||||
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