An anniversary of sorts passed last weekend without any special notice being taken: last Tuesday marked ten months since the "Macaca" story broke in the Virginia blogosphere. Not that we needed any special observance to remind us about "Macaca": the memory of that day is alive and well and has done more than anything else to shape the current state of Virginia's political blogosphere.
The film in question is still available on Youtube. I suspect it always will be since the "Macaca" incident really was a watershed event in American politics: the massive and near-total self-destruction of a prominent politician, someone polling in third place for the presidential nomination of his party in 2008. The evaporation of George F. Allen bitterly disappointed his passionate supporters, of which there were many.
The self-destruction was so complete, the blunder so completely obvious, that the Republican Party itself has included the incident in an instruction manual it has issued to help Republican candidates prepare for the electoral process. The lesson of "Macaca" is obvious to nearly everyone who watched the fateful minute of footage: it is best not to direct racist slurs at someone who is taping you with a videocamera.
I say "nearly everyone" because there is a tiny but vocal minority of people who didn't fully comprehend the lesson of "Macaca," and nearly all of them are Republican bloggers in Virginia.
With the exception of a handful of the more perceptive who understood what the blunder meant--Jim Hoeft of "Bearing Drift" being the best known--the vast majority of Virginia's Republican bloggers went deeply into denial over "Macaca." They believed, and still do believe, that there was something profoundly illegitimate about the "Macaca" scandal.
They offer a host of rationales: some cling to the belief that "Macaca" isn't a racist term. Others believe that playing "the race card" is unfair. Some are probably closet racists themselves and Allen's shipwreck on the rocks of racism stirred deep, possibly subconscious, feelings of anger and threatened self-identity.
Because these people believed that "Macaca" story and the beliefs about racial tolerance, racial equality, and racial manners that underlay it were fundementally false, it followed logically from that belief that the story was not only not real, it was basically manufactured by The Washington Post and Not Larry Sabato.
Many of Virginia's Republican bloggers meditated long and hard on what they thought were the lessons of the "Macaca" incident. Instead of the obvious lesson--don't direct racial slurs at someone who is taping you with a videocamera--these bloggers concluded that if enough bloggers repeat the same story often enough, that story will be accepted as the truth.
Since August 13, 2006, Virginia's Republican blogosphere has been engaged in a seemingly endless search for a Democratic "Macaca" moment, without any real success. There are a couple of reasons for this.
First of all, there are few subjects in American political life as touchy as race. The vast majority of Americans condemn racism, even while some unconsciously practice subtle and subconcious forms of it. While many Americans may backslide into racism, few would publicly or openly associate themselves with someone perceived to be a racist. So the first element of a "Macaca" moment is that someone must say something that deeply offends a deeply held belief or value system. The act must be perceived to be fundamentally indefensible.
The second element of a "Macaca" moment is an attempt to deny or avoid the consequences of the first element. Few things anger an offended person more than being told that they have no right to be offended, that the action they found offensive was not offensive at all. The reason why a "Macaca" moment becomes disastrous instead merely damaging is that the bad actor attempts to defend the indefensible. The original mistake may be inadvertant: the real self-destruction occurs with the willful denial of obvious wrong-doing.
A perfect illustration of this principle can be found by comparing John Kerry's weak joke about studying hard so as to avoid being sent to Iraq. Kerry's "joke" transgressed on another area of American belief every bit as sensitive as race: the patriotic imperative to support the troops, honor their service, and never, ever belittle them for it. The parallel with "Macaca" was striking: a public speech caught on tape with a politician saying something stupid and deeply offensive. This was followed by a similar period of furious discussion in the mainstream media and in blogs, both Left and Right. Kerry was embattled and under siege, but then the parallels suddenly end. Why?
Because Kerry took his medicine: he apologized, removed himself from the Democrats' campaign efforts, and abandoned any plans for another run at the presidency. Hardly anyone talks about Kerry's gaffe anymore: it's old news. Of course Kerry had a critical advantage over Allen in that he was not up for re-election in 2006. Given enough time and space Allen might have been able to ride "Macaca" out, though I doubt it--Allen piled several other gaffes on top of "Macaca," though none so memorable.
The Republican blogosphere's attempts to manufacture a Democratic "Macaca"--the recurrent posts about Jim Webb's "pistol gate" being one example--are probably counterproductive, just so many cries of "wolf" to be disregarded by the mainstream media. The Webb gun incident lacks the requisite ability to generate outrage. The hypocrisy of the right for attacking Webb's gun ownership is too obvious. In retrospect Webb's refusal to discuss the details of an ongoing investigation of an incident at which he was not present just seems like plain old good sense.
That doesn't mean that the Rightosphere will stop trying to manufacture a Democratic "Macaca" moment, it just means they won't succeed.
This story is cross-posted from The Richmond Democrat. To see the story with photos and video click here.