Updated: George Allen's New Jew Revue

George 'Macaca' Allen is hoping that curling himself into a cozy little matzoh ball will deflect the charges of racism accumulated by comments like "macaca" and his considerable neoconfederate roots. He had a noose in his office for Christ's sake. Tim Grieve found what may be the quote of the month, from Allen explaining how being Jewish is just an interesting nuance to his background: "I still had a ham sandwich for lunch. And my mother made great pork chops."

As Steve Benen notes, Allen's using his "recently discovered" Jewish heritage (his grandfather was "from a well-known Jewish family") to return shots of racism at his opponent Jim Webb. Ryan Lizza points out, however, that Allen sought to distance himself from his Jewish roots in the past, belying his claim that it's a recent discovery...

Webb, for his part, has a "disturbing proclivity for playing footsy with this element of the Southern voting public," according to Dave Neiwert who points to a Webb campaign cartoon portraying a brown-shirted, jack-booted hero defending Virginians from a hook-nosed Allen who seeks to take their land.

Virginians, start your engines. (Carpetbagger, Orcinus)