Sen. Allen flips out when asked if his mother was Jewish
Lowkell puts it in perspective:
As another famous Jew, Sigmund Freud, might have said in this situation, George Allen appears to have some deep-seated "issues" regarding his Jewish heritage - and regarding many other things as well.And this guy wants the Republican nomination for President in 2008.In general, Allen has a well-documented nasty/violent streak, as exemplified in the past by his abusive behavior towards his sister (see her book, Fifth Quarter, for how George dragged her upstairs by the hair and held her, terrified, over Niagara Falls).
Aside from Allen's abusive treatment of his sister (as reported by her in her book), there are numerous additional, documented examples of Allen's nasty, snarling side.
For instance, there's Allen's infamous "enjoy knocking their soft teeth down their whining throats" line about "liberals."
There's even an incident in which Allen taunted a man - a Republican, no less - for being a "sissy" because he was wearing a bicycle helmet!
Finally, in the most infamous incident of all, Allen just a few weeks ago attacked a young, South Asian American man from Fairfax, Virginia - S.R. Sidarth - in front of an all-white, all-Republican crowd.
Like the female reporter at yesterday's debate, Sidarth reported being "shocked" at Allen's behavior, and at being called "macaca," a common racial slur in the French Tunisia of Allen's mother.
So here's the takeaway message out of all this: George Allen has a nasty, sadistic, vicious, violent streak that flares up all-too-frequently.
Beware.
My guess is, at this point, Freud would be wondering if "deep-seated 'issues'" concerning a sense of personal inadequacy wasn't some sort of prerequisite for Republican politics.
Did'ya hear this idiot is now embracing his jewish heritage? I'll bet he's dreding the next Klan rally, er...um... clam bake him and his buddies planed for next week.
You think there's a chance he still might run for POTUS in '08 after Webb kicks his ass this year?
Oh, if only wishes were ponies!
Don't know if Webb will beat him, but I do know he'll be getting more questions from the press on his ancestry.
Madeleine Albright, John Kerry and Wes Clark have had similar experiences and have been considerably more, ahem, "flexible" in their reaction to the "news."
Allen? Not so much.
It's clear to me that someone in that family wanted to hide this fact. I can't say who and I can't say why, but my gosh, what did they think? Campaigns like this have a way of flushing everrrrrrrrrything out in the open.
What makes you think he didn't know. After all, he just "made up" the racial epithet "macaca" quite familiar to his mother's culture. His original reaction to Fox makes me think he's lying about just discovering his "roots." My guess, his advisors told him he was "outted" and he just had to embrace his Jewyness.
Here's what it looks like to me:
I imagine that his mother hid, abandoned or rejected her family heritage for whatever reason she deemed appropriate.
And apparently whatever she said to her children about it was tinged with not a small amount of shame.
Some people are capable of waving it away, neutralizing its effect. Others, like Allen, are not.
Allen took it pretty hard. And his reaction was to hide that shame the same way his mother did.
He assimilated so completely that he probably became an anti-Semite in the process.
How and why he embraced the ideals and symbols of the Confederacy, well, I can't say.
But Allen is a powder keg. He is probably just barely held together under his shiny surface.
He is within one single meltdown of destroying his entire career.
Ack.
Now this:
You know, his comments might be funny, had they been uttered by someone else, in a completely different context.But, no.
Hey, he's trying to embrace his heritage. It just takes a while to become Shecky Green. But just like getting to Carnegie Hall ... practice!