Here is the "real world"

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Here is the “real world”				August 23, 2006

This has certainly been a keen week for those interested in zoological esoterica.

Imagine my exhilaration when I read that a brown booby had been sighted at Virginia Beach. While it is not unheard of for boobies to frequent our shores, their appearances here are rare. Usually found in states of the deep South, as well as in Central America, brown boobies are pelagic birds who come ashore only to breed baby boobies. Whether our brown-breasted friend with his white booby belly has a mate and is here to present Virginia with still more boobies is difficult to say.

As if the booby sighting wasn’t enough excitement for zoophiles, George Allen decided to share with an audience in Breaks, Virginia his unexpectedly deep-seated knowledge of macaques, or rhesus monkeys.

So delirious was Allen when thought he sighted a rhesus in the audience that he immediately identified it for his listeners. “Macaca,” he blurted out, as he pointed to what turned out to be a young Indian-American filming Allen’s appearance for the Webb campaign.

In defense of Allen, it must be said that he has for some time been unnerved by the constant presence of a monkey with a camera filming what Allen calls his “constructive campaign” appearances around the state. At one point, the monkey had actually introduced himself to Allen’s campaign as S.R. Sidarth, but that obviously didn’t penetrate. If someone has only two initials for his first and middle name, what do you call him? Allen naturally called it as he saw it, and, relying on his profound penchant for things primatic, came up with Macaca.

Realizing that the macaca was indigenous to India and Tibet, Allen welcomed the alien creature to America and to the “real world of Virginia.”

While Allen has been subjected to extreme heat for his inability to distinguish one animal species from another, it is his reference to the real world of Virginia that some find even more disturbing. What for Allen is the real world? Why did Allen seem to take pleasure in distinguishing between his all-white audience down in the real Virginia and a dark-skinned American born in Fairfax County?

Like our wayward booby, George Allen is not a native of Virginia. Despite his affected suave southern accent, Allen was born and raised in California. Yet even when he was in high school there was within him a deep affection for things Confederate. He wore Confederate flag lapel pins and later thought nothing of hanging a noose outside his Charlottesville law office. As governor, he proclaimed a Confederate History and Heritage Month with nary a mention of slavery.

As a senator, Allen has naturally allied himself with the far right wing of the Republican Party and is fully complicit in the neocon world view of American militarism and economic class warfare. His connection with his constituents in non-election years is tangential at best. Unlike his senior colleague, John Warner, Allen rarely responds to letters or e-mails that disagree with positions he’s taken.

Though Allen has introduced little meaningful legislation, his votes are indicative of the nature of our senator’s real world. Deterrents to the rights of women, discrimination against gays, a shrug of the shoulders to the poor, environmental laxity and second-rate health care prevail. Religion trumps science, and flag-burning amendments triumph over life-saving stem-cell research. While we value the lives of embryos assigned to the trash bin, we have little regard for the bodies of young men and women being sent home in caskets from Iraq or living bodies of veterans now dependent on prosthetic devices in order to function.

In the real Virginia, high gas prices are peachy as long as oil company profits are skyrocketing and their PAC money flows accordingly.

In the last six years, Allen has voted for $44 billion in tax breaks for oil companies. In return, he has received over $800,000 in PAC money from oil and energy groups. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, in 2005-2006 alone Allen received over $241,000 from energy and oil PACs. His total PAC contributions amount to $2,068,199. He ranks number one in the Senate for contributions from the tobacco industry.

What are these people buying? The real world of Virginia?

While Allen has apologized to S.R. Sidarth for his crude outburst and has had, ala Mel Gibson, reconciliation talks with Indian-American groups in northern Virginia, there still persists the idea that in Allen’s real world of Virginia, racism has not yet become some debunked ideology associated with the past.

It is doubtful that Allen has any idea that the word macaca refers to rhesus monkeys. Nor do I suppose that he knows that “caca” is the Greek word for excrement. Whatever he was thinking, however, was thought to the negative, to the pejorative. The word just disgorged itself, and the reference was seen nationwide to be in intolerably bad taste.

In her book “Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter,” Allen’s sister Jennifer tells us that “George said he saw dentistry as a perfect profession – getting paid to make people suffer.” I think that we in the real world of Virginia have suffered quite enough at the hands of George Allen. One transmigratory booby around here is about all we can handle.