No. 1: Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) and his campaign staff don't seem to know that, well, stuff gets videotaped.
Of course this is our No. 1 political mishap caught on camera. How couldn't it be? Allen was comfortably ahead of challenger James Webb in the polls until he uttered a single word that quite possibly cost the 2008 presidential contender his seat--and maybe even cost the Republicans their majority in the Senate. That word was "macaca."
At an August campaign event in Breaks, Va., Allen singled out a Webb volunteer in the audience, referring to him as "macaca" and "welcoming" him "to America and the real world of Virginia."
The volunteer, S.R. Sidarth, happened to be a U.S. citizen of Indian descent who was born in Virginia. And "macaca" happens to be an obscure racial slur in North Africa, where Allen's mother was born. It may be derived from the French word for a type of monkey: macaque. You do the math.
If it hadn't been for camcorders and YouTube, the "macaca" incident might not have spread beyond that sleepy town in western Virginia. But in the Digital Age, that just isn't the case.
You'd think Allen's campaign would've watched its steps after that. But in late October, some of Allen's staffers used a questionable degree of force in removing a dissenting blogger from an appearance in Charlottesville, Va. And yet again, the video cameras were there.
Should George Allen ever try to run for office again, CNET News.com recommends that he hire staffers who know what camcorders look like.
Photo by Mark Wilson/Getty Images
