As a professional forty-year translator from French, I can assure you that "macaque" (phonetically "macaca") is unmistakably a common Francophone (and North African) epithet roughly equivalent to "nigger." It would typically be used by European and Europeanized Tunisians to refer to Arabs and black Africans.

Etty Allen's claim that she was ignorant of the word is implausible.  Her further claim that she couldn't even find the term "macaca" in "her dictionary" sounds like lawyer-speak. Of course the word is listed orthographically ("macaque"), and not phonetically ("macaca"). But then, she has certainly been coached by George's spin doctors: she holds his presidential career in her hands.

... but what the hell.

IF YOUR ARE EASILY OFFENDED, STOP READING NOW.
THE PURPOSE OF THIS POST IS PUT THE WORD IN CONTEXT
BY USING AN EXAMPLE FOUND ON FRENCH WEBSITES.

Here's an example of usage ... from a song from an angry French band "Legion 88" ...

from http://www.koreus.co...

Title: le massacre des ales rebeus

Salut les bougnouls ! On va vous chanter une chanson les negres.

Notre vielle France est bien malade
On va la nettoyer si tu veux
Je te propose une ratonnade
Le massacre des sales rebeus
Je te propose une ratonnade
Le massacre des sales rebeus

Tu n’as pas de papiers et pas de travail
T’es trop bronzé et trop paresseux
J’ai envie de butter un macaque
A gros coup de démonte pneu
J’ai envie de butter un macaque
A gros coup de démonte pneu

(blah ... blah ... blah ... it goes on ...)

Sick stuff.

I know enough French to hack out a translation, but I'll let google translate do the work ...

http://www.google.co...

Don't bother with machine translations from Google or Babylon, they'll never get it. If you'll permit, here's a cheap and nasty rendering into Old Dominion-speak (repeating your  caveat to the reader):

Title: Massacre of the Dirty A-Rabs

"Yo, you dirty Arabs! We're going to sing you a song, you niggers:

"Our dear old France is sick to the bone! If you want, we'll clean it out. I propose a rat extermination campaign, a massacre of those filthy ragheads!

"You don't have a green card or a job. You're too deeply tanned and too lazy. I'd really like to beat a macaca into a bloody pulp with my tire iron...."

a popular song or what?!?  It's truly disturbed.  By the way, in your opinion, would most French speakers know what "macaca" meant?

See my comment on Greg's post above.

My pure guess about the song is that it's by a French skinhead band. France has its share of neo-Nazis, including Jean LePen's surprisingly popular political party, but they tend to be more verbal than physical in the butcher-boy German tradition.

pour l'explication!

really bring your mother into this, but George, you sure did with all the spin you campaign is spinning. George I think you should go listen to Secretary Webb's comments to Chris Matthews on Hardball last night(Sept.20), study Jims responce carefully and you may learn somehing in the coming weeks.
After Nov.8th. as you sit in Warm California you may get the hang of it.

In a fine article in Salon that also addresses the pervasive use of macaca as an insult, we are told that Jennifer Allen (Richard) now says her book (including those nasty tales about her brother) was a "dramatization."
http://www.salon.com...  The author of the Salon article correctly notes the book was marketed as factual and Jennifer herself says in her Acknowledgement that George urged her to be truthful: "all the while reminding me to remain faithful to the facts."  She also says: "Mel Durslag . . . gave me the keenest advice, insisting that I write only what I saw a and what I felt, that anything short of that would be pointless."  It's clear that when writing the book, a lot of soul purging was going on.  She mentions her entire family as helping her.  Her mother "openly shared her memories of her life with my father."

Here's one explanation Jennifer Allen provides: 

She also disavowed her account, on page 43 of the book, that her brother George held her over the railing at Niagara Falls, instilling in her a fear of heights. "I think in a childhood realm I would have thought that that happened," Richard explained. "But as an adult I can't see the logistics of that happening."

Was George physically capable of dangling his sister over the falls?  Jennifer says at p. 10:  "At seventeen years of age, George had a tall, solid build that towered over our six-foot dad."  It may be noted that he was a high school football player.  Jennifer was about 8 years younger than George at the time.  Let's put it this way.  I'm in my mid-fifties, have led a sedentary life as a lawyer, and can easily pick my ten year old daughter upside down and hold her over something.

As to the falls, I recall as a 12 year old standing on a concrete platform staring at the edge of the Falls and into the abyss below.  Here's a link to a picture that shows the walkway leading up to the falls. http://www.hickerpho...  As you can see, one can take a step over a railing and induce sheer terror in someone who weighs a third of your weight.

I know about three words in French (or is that "Freedom"? ...nevermind).  So I had to run it through the Google translator.  The result is certainly good enough to get the gist, but I really love those things for the humor in the translation.  A few tidbits:

George Allen is one of the hopes of the American Republican Party. In an electoral bus, it speaks about the assistant of its democratic competitor and “macaca baptizes it”. Racial slandering is launched because the interested party is indo-American.

Excuses must be presented and the compromised chances. 

The current election campaign for the elections known as of the mid term in the United States beats all the records of aggressiveness in the worst faith.

Ok, I know, this wouldn't be necessary if I just learned French in school like everyone else.  But it's still good for a laugh.