A fascinating interview with Eve Kessler over at the Columbia Journalism Review titled
Waiting for Macaca where she explains that she has planned her article in
Forward about George Allen and his Jewish heritage for well over a year, waiting for just the right time to spring it on him – which apparently was right after Allen’s public use of the slang term “macaca”. Note that after she finished her ‘research’ into this story well over a year ago (long before the “macaca” episode), she never attempted to verify the story with him first, which suggests that perhaps she had an inkling that he wasn’t aware of his Jewish ancestry, and waited to drop it on him until it could inflict the most political damage. Virginia’s Channel 9 reporter Peggy Fox then took this story and infamously ran with it during the Allen-Webb debate last week. Howard Kurtz of the Washington Post
writes that Fox’s question came out “seemingly out of nowhere”, that Fox denied a request from him for an interview, and that:
It remains unclear why Channel 9's Peggy Fox posed the question to Allen during his debate with Democratic challenger James Webb. Was this a matter of pressing importance to the voters of Virginia?
Here’s some of the CJR interview with Kessler. And Forward is still running with this story, with a
whole section now devoted to George Allen.
Paul McLeary: Since your piece last month in the Forward exposed Senator Allen's Jewish heritage, the story has blown up into a minor national obsession. How did you initially come to the story?
Eve Kessler: A tip ... I actually learned about it probably more than a year ago, so I knew about it and had done this research long before the "macaca" episode.
PM: Allen has long been on a short list for running for president on a Republican ticket, so the tip probably came about because his name had been out there?
EK: Right. I covered the 2004 campaign for the Forward, and I wrote extensively about the Jewish background of some candidates, so this was something that grew out of that.
PM: So you sat on this story for some time after you first learned about it. Were you waiting until Allen became more prominent on the national political stage?
EK: Yes. It was the kind of thing, "When was it going to become relevant?"
Note: George Allen is one of 100 United States Senators, and has been a significant national figure for quite a while - and certainly was over a year ago when Kessler started on this story. Therefore please read her use of the word "relevant" as liberal journalism code for "embarrassing", or "damaging". 
