On Friday, George ‘Macaca’ Allen attempted to pass off a biography of himself as fiction…

Allen was also asked about passages in his sister Jennifer Allen’s book, Fifth Quarter: The Scrimmage of a Football Coach’s Daughter, in which Allen is described as a violent bully toward his siblings. “It was a fairly rough and rowdy family … but that book is a novel and fiction,” he said. “People have asked my sister and she said it was a novelization.” [Link]

[Filed in Amazon under Sports Biographies] [Link]

… his own words as fiction…

Tim Russert: ‘Critics say that macaca is a racist slur, and that you used it because he’s dark-skinned… Why did you use those words towards a dark-skinned American? … Well, where’d the word come from? It must’ve been in your consciousness.’

Allen: ‘Oh, just made up.’

Russert: ‘Made up?’

Allen: ‘Made up. Made-up word.’

Russert: ‘You’d never heard it before?’

Allen: ‘Never heard it before.’ [Link]

‘Macaca’ or ‘macaque’ is a nasty racial epithet alright. It is often used by American white supremacists to describe black people. [Link]

This person from Virginia turned to me and said “How did the macaca do?” I was shocked and so was the Indian girl in the class…. the more he seemed to perform poorly, the more aggressive and racist he got towards all of us in the class. He frequently referred to me as “the macaca” and “the monkey”…

I was travelling in Virginia and West Virginia with other grad students from Duke… Two white males in a pick-up truck saw us, and started shoouting at us. Initially we couldn’t figure what they were saying. Then it was clear that they were insulting us and I heard “macaca” among the slurs thrown at us (with a good measure of “go back to your country”). [Link]

… and his opponent’s novels as fact:

Allen’s campaign selected sexually explicit passages from Webb’s six war novels and thrust [them] into the race… “He’s a writer. That’s part of his record.” [Link]

Allen is claiming that real is fiction and fiction is real. No surprise then that he supports the Iraq war. Hey Allen, go read Catch 22. It’s the latest National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.

Allen’s ‘extreme form of literary criticism‘ even disgusted GOP wingnuts such as Michelle Malkin:

[Sigh] It’s so dirty, John. I should’ve brought my wading boots today. I think this charge is particularly silly and I happen to be somebody who supports Republicans. Condemning it, I think, is something that more conservatives should do. He [Allen] took some of the more blue graphic sexual passages in one of James Webb’s novels, Lost Soldier. And I guess the argument from a press release that was published on the Drudge Report last night argues that it somehow shows a pattern of demeaning attitudes towards women…

I just don’t think the campaign should directly be trafficking in this kind of muck. It looks desperate, it looks pathetic and it looks so immature. I mean, can we grow up? This is fiction, it’s made up… I just have to say, you know, as a conservative, I don’t think the means should justify the ends, and if this is the way that any candidate is going to win an election, it’s not something we should be cheering. [Watch clip]

Some of the conservative bloggers at the National Review called Allen’s tactic ‘lame’:

[Allen’s attack] looks desperate, it looks pathetic and it looks so immature

–Michelle Malkin, Republican

Sometimes I’m embarrassed to be on the Right. The outbreak of cynical Babbitry on the part of the George Allen campaign in using sentences from novels written by James Webb against Webb makes this day one of those days. [Link]

I just saw Drudge on Allen vs. Webb novels. And here I thought –hoped — Rich was kidding. How long can it take for Webb to turn it around, into an attack on “the Mark Foley Republican Congress”? Lame, but tell me an Allen line of attack on fiction isn’t. [Link]

Conservative blog WorldNetDaily slammed Allen as well:

… it’s a non-story…. let’s remember, it is fiction…

Is this the best [Allen’s] got? He’s been a governor. He’s been a senator. Why is he incapable of running on a record of personal achievement? Why is he running a smear campaign against a challenger? It’s enough to turn your stomach…

I suspect this little “October Surprise” by Allen’s camp will come back to haunt them. It’s so impotent! Challenge Webb on the issues! … [Or] should we dwell on literary criticism of Jim Webb’s old novels? [Link]

Meanwhile, Republican political insiders are calling Allen’s campaign the worst in America (PDF) by either party (via Raising Kaine). At 53%, Allen far and away outpaced the nutty Katherine Harris (10%) as well as the senator who calls Arabs ‘ragheads’ and equates cabbies with terrorists, the inimitable Conrad Burns (8%).

On the positive side, Webb seemed insufficiently motivated earlier because he has a fallback career. Allen’s attacks on that career have changed that — Webb opened a can of dishoom-dishoom Friday in very uncharacteristic language: I’ve written more books than George Allen has read

“I have written about what I have seen and that is the duty of a writer… Maybe George Allen doesn’t understand that because I’m told George Allen doesn’t read books… I’m told I’ve written more books than George has read…” [Link]

“The fish rots from the head down. Our government should no longer be in the hands of a group of unprincipled, small-minded, power-hungry character assassins…” [Link]