You have to feel a little sorry for George “Monkey Boy” Allen, the Virginia senator running for reelection who is touted as a strong contender for the Republican presidential nomination in 2008. His White House ambitions just got YouTubed. A wildly popular video clip shows Allen at a recent campaign rally, where he twice called a volunteer of Indian descent from his opponent’s campaign a “macaca” — a word that is either an ethnic slur for Africans, or the name of a genus of Old World monkeys — and then proceeded to tell the college student, “Welcome to America and the real world of Virginia!” (The student, S.R. Sidarth, was born and raised in Virginia.)

Calling someone a monkey isn’t exactly presidential-sounding, so Allen and his campaign staff have been quick to deny any racist, derogatory, or anti-primate intent in his comments toward Sidarth. Allen speculated whether “macaca” was a play on Sidarth’s hairstyle, a Mohawk (Sidarth says it’s actually a mullet). At another point he insisted that he didn’t know what the word meant when he said it, which actually makes Allen sound rather presidential, given the current commander-in-chief’s struggles with the English language.

Allen also gave an apology, of sorts. He told a reporter, “I do apologize if he’s offended by that” — which in monkey-speak apparently means, “He shouldn’t be offended that I called him a monkey, but I’ll apologize anyway because I want to be president.”

Regardless of what Allen meant by “macaca,” there’s something unashamedly cruel about his behavior at the rally. Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean. Allen is the grownup version of a schoolyard bully, singling out the kid with the funny pants (monkey pants?) for ridicule while he and his cronies chortle smugly. You half-expect him to start cracking jokes about flatulence next. Do we want this man as our president?

Victor Tan Chen Victor Tan Chen is In The Fray's editor in chief and the author of Cut Loose: Jobless and Hopeless in an Unfair Economy. Site: victortanchen.com | Facebook | Twitter: @victortanchen