George Allen and the Race Card

The whole 'macaca' scandal might boomerang in George Allen's favor, both in his bid for reelection and in his 2008 presidential run. The macaca talk turned a corner this week with a reporter asking combative questions about Allen's background. Apparently, Allen is half-Jewish, but his mother hid her background from him. The Post has an interview of the mother, which has an awkward roundup of the backstory, and the Allen family emerges looking like heroes.

Allen's mother, who is 83, said she told her son the truth [this August]: That she had been raised as a Jew in Tunisia before moving to the United States.... Her father, Felix Lumbroso, was imprisoned by the Nazis during the German occupation of Tunis. "What they put my father through. I always was fearful," Etty Allen said in a telephone interview. "I didn't want my children to have to go through that fear all the time. When I told Georgie, I said, 'Now you don't love me anymore.' He said, 'Mom, I respect you more than ever.' "...

Etty Allen said Wednesday that she had never used the word "macaca" before and had to go to a dictionary to look it up when she heard of the controversy. She said the word did not exist in her dictionary. "I swear to you, I have never used that word," she said. "I must have used a lot of bad words, but not that word."

Now, Virginia voters would feel guilty to turn against this guy: he's an all-American, with a quirky old mother and a dark but noble family history. He's come to terms with Jewishness publically and gracefully, and all the connections to North Africa make him seem worldly and make it harder to stick the 'macaca' connotations to him. Of course, this is all perception: European colonists like his forebears in Tunisia were no multiculturalists, but that won't occur to voters.