Just what we need, another grinning faux cowpoke. With candidates like these, a Democrat is a shoe-in in '08.

YES, THIS IS NEWS! It's news and it deserves to be in Salon. The REASON it is news is that a United States Senator bullied and racially insulted a powerless person who was doing nothing wrong, immoral or illegal. This is AMERICA, and Mr. Sidarth was within his rights to attend a public event, on public land, and somebody powerful decided that he didn't belong and so insulted and bullied him.

Sen. Allen probably violated Mr. Sidarth's constitutional rights.

I have read national media touting Allen as a probable Presidential candidate in 2008. Dear God, do our parties have no better candidates?

I know so many wealthy Indian-Americans who regularly vote for Republicans like Allen.

They are so attached to the American Dream and to their own model minority status. They really believe that education and hard work will lead to acceptance in Bush's America.

Hopefully this is a wake up call that will let them know what the White Republicans they keep voting for really think of them.

It's not our fault if you slowpoke Rethugs don't recognize a Parliament-Funkadelic reference when you hear it. As for the Mexican remark - gimme a break. We've all heard a heckuva lot worse from Republicans and Bush-lovers, yourself included.

Give it a rest, you lame doof.

ROFL

It's nice that the rest of the country gets to see what we in Virginia have known for years -- that George Felix Allen is an idiot.

Does anyone remember when George Jr. was quarterback at UVA? After being sacked one too many times, in frustration he kicked an opposing player (who was on the ground) in the head. No doubt SportsCenter could dig up the clip....

Paul Callahan...I agree with your point, but this rally was in Southwestern VA, not northern. There's a very different demographic between those parts of the state. Which, to me, makes the "welcome to the real America" comment all the more insidious. Allen's playing to his particular crowd, leaving behind the progressive speeches about unity for the beltway moderate Repubs and letting his true "colors" show with the good old boys down state.

This is not meant to paint a broad brush across the rest of Virginia and its voters, but it seems to show that Allen's not just a (poorly) closeted racist/bully, but also a chameleon and a fraud.

And, please. Mohawk=macaca. Get him someone who can come up with a little better damage control than that.

George W. Bush is the dim bulb, spoiled son of a wealthy, famous man, and were it not for that fact, he would be flipping burgers somewhere instead of sitting in the Oval Office. His politics are designed to appeal to the worst of human nature: greed, intolerance, xenophobia, and so on. Yet, he has avoided overt bigotry. However, his supporters in talk radio land, such as Rush Limbaugh and Michael Savage, and things like Ann Coulter, are overtly bigoted. In a word, the GOP circa 2006 is a fascist party.

George Allen represents the next step in this GOP evolution. He has all of Bush's worst qualities, yet he is more willing to engage in public bigotry.

If George Allen -- or someone like him -- becomes President in 2008, then in 2016, expect the GOP to drop all pretenses and proudly don their jackboots and brown shirts.

Why would a young American need to be welcomed to America?

Allen's fascinating lineage aside, and whatever the hell "macaca" means in a given context, wouldn't one normally assume that a young man working for the campaign of a Democratic Senate candidate IS an American?

Allen could have easily made an example of S.R. Sidharth simply as an outsider travelling with his campaign, causing him plenty of discomfort, while still showing the common courtesy of referring to him by his name.

Has it maybe gotten to where seeing a brown skinned man on the campaign trail means the opponent is using a day laborer as cameraman and he should be publicly belittled, as "Macaca, here," or indicate to people that he's not apparently American, that he's something other than what Allen's audience view themselves to be?

Why does it seem so easy for Allen to abandon civility toward a young man to whom he and his staff have been introduced?

Why was it so natural for Allen to apparently forget(?), the name, and dismiss the citizenship, of someone he's going to introduce his audience to?

Is this how people in the "real world of Virginia" wish to be represented?

Virginia, maybe it's time you all welcomed Allen to the real world.

You mention Northern Virginia as the Silicon Valley of the East and being shocked that he could gather an audience in that area who didn't know what to make of an Indian-American. Well, he wasn't in Northern Virginia; he was way south and a few miles from Kentucky. That's a scary place.

Northern Virginia, which is full of immigrants from everywhere, remains the blue surrounded by red Virginia. Northern Virginia and its technology industry remains the biggest economic contributor to the state. In return we (in Northern Virginia) get tarred by having the rest of Virginia elect people like George Allen to supposedly represent us. My district in Northern Virginia votes over 70% Democratic in every election. Allan's supporters don't live anywhere near me.

This article got me thinking about the word "moolie" that an Italian-American aquaintance used... Googling around I found its derivation, and also a wonderful list of racial slurs on a Nazi website. They list "Macaque" as a slur for a black person in Belgium and France. So there you have it, straight from the horse's ass.

He's stupid enough to be our president.

It's like this: Americans fear and distrust anyone with more education and knowledge than they have. When it comes to leaders, the dumber, the better.

You've seen it in congressional and state level races around the country. In these political contests, it's a race to the bottom to see who can out-dumb the other guy.

Even an elite prep school boy from Connecticut has to know how to develop some kind of weird Southern accent that's really from no Southern state and know how to wear a straw cowboy hat and live on a fake ranch in Texas even though he doesn't own a single head of cattle.

The American people eat it up like ice cream. They know he's a phony. Just as they know George Allen is a grinning nincompoop. But still, they will find a way to forgive him for any gaff. They are eager to find a reason to believe in guys like this, over say, a guy who reads too many books and toys with strange ideas like seeing both sides of an issue.

That's dangerous! They want a guy who appears to be just like them: Secretly prejudiced but clever enough to hide it most of the time, a guy who doesn't mince words or do diplomacy, he'd rather just knock the hell out of somebody and have his way.

Americans deserve George Allen. After all, we got Bush and still after all these many years of failure, corruption and mediocrity, Bush's successor must be of the same mold: A big rough tough bully with lots of swagger who will punch our enemies in the mouth, not coddle them.

It might not be George Allen that the Republicans put up for '08, but you can bet it's going to be someone who can dumb down to the level of stupidity of the average American dumbass.

If the Democrats can't find a strongman, this country is in for another eight years of fear, corruption and lies.

If the Democrats run Hilliary, and it looks like they will, she's going to make George McGovern's loss to Nixon look like a photo finish.