If a picture is worth a thousand words…

Video has been spreading quickly about a Republican campaigning for the US Senate from Virgina who called a dark-skinned man in the audience a Macaque (Old World Monkey) and asked the audience to give him a “Welcome to America and the real world, or Virginia”. This apparently was his way to warm up the audience on August 11th, just before he said “Friends, we’re in the midst of a war on terror…”

A short video of just his remarks is available here.

The story gets more strange by the minute if you read details of the controversy and Allen’s background. For example, the Wikipedia has several interesting points:

According to Allen’s sister Jennifer, their mother “prided herself for being un-American. … She was ashamed that she had given up her French citizenship to become a citizen of a country she deemed infantile.”

[…]

Sidarth says he has never received a personal apology from Senator Allen. However, according to John Reid, Allen’s communications director, “The Senator has apologized sincerely and repeatedly over the last two days to the young man and to the public in general.”

I see some tough questions of identity ahead for a man on the campaign trail. John Stewart offers his perspective here along with a report from Rob Corddry.

Speaking of Stewart, here is a fine video of President Bush throwing insults to his audience. Perhaps Allen was just trying to follow by example.