You can fool all of the people all of the time if the advertising is right and
the budget is big enough.

—Joseph Levine

Senator George Allen of Virginia should have been an unbeatable candidate for reelection. He was an incumbent Republican from a GOP-leaning state, he had served as governor for a term before running for his Senate seat, his father was a legendary football coach, and his hair was perfect. But campaigning in the summer before election day he blew his whole reelection effort with one annoyed and terse statement to a college student who was volunteering for his opponent’s campaign. Spotting 20-year-old S. R. Sidarth, who was conducting opposition research by videotaping an Allen event in southwestern Virginia for Democratic candidate Jim Webb, the senator pointed at the young volunteer and said:

This fellow here, over here with the yellow shirt, Macaca, or whatever his name
is. He’s with my opponent. He’s following us around everywhere. And it’s just
great. … Let’s give a welcome to Macaca, here. Welcome to America and the real
world of Virginia.

With that, George Allen’s reelection bid came to a screeching halt. His “Macaca” remark was viewed as offensive given Sidarth’s Indian heritage and the widespread interpretation that “Macaca” was a racial slur. Allen spent the rest of his campaign trying to explain and defend himself while Webb came from behind to become a formidable challenger. Allen lost the election by a little more than 7,000 votes, just .3 percent of the ballots cast.

Allen lost not because what he said was particularly stupid, since politicians have been saying stupid things for generations. The crowd to which Allen was speaking even laughed at the “Macaca” comment at the time, and the senator probably never gave the statement another thought—until the video of his “Macaca moment” hit the Internet and the airwaves and spread like wildfire well . . .