Yes, it was a racist email/joke, but I didn’t even take it that way when I first read it. My immediate reaction was that it was an attack on the president’s mother and that it was a cruel thing to say.
So, here’s the joke:
The subject line of the email, which [U.S. District Court Judge Richard] Cebull sent from his official courthouse email address on Feb. 20 at 3:42 p.m., reads: “A MOM’S MEMORY.”
The forwarded text reads as follow:
“Normally I don’t send or forward a lot of these, but even by my standards, it was a bit touching. I want all of my friends to feel what I felt when I read this. Hope it touches your heart like it did mine.
“A little boy said to his mother; ‘Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?'” the email joke reads. “His mother replied, ‘Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!'”
Richard Cebull has served as chief judge for the District of Montana since 2008. His excuse is fairly straightforward:
He admitted that he read the email and intended to send it to his friends.
“The only reason I can explain it to you is I am not a fan of our president, but this goes beyond not being a fan,” Cebull said. “I didn’t send it as racist, although that’s what it is. I sent it out because it’s anti-Obama.”
I think it’s more instructive to take him at his word than to suggest he’s really some giant racist. He liked the joke because it was cruel. And he wanted to be cruel to the president because he doesn’t like him. I think a lot of us can relate on some level. We certainly shared enough cruel jokes about George W. Bush. What makes this different is that it’s a joke about something the president cannot control. It’s a joke about his absent father, whose absence touched Obama so deeply that he wrote a book called Dreams From My Father. It’s a joke about his mother and her sexual morality, and that’s about as personal as you can get. Finally, although I didn’t even notice it at first, it compares black people to dogs, and interracial couplings to bestiality.
A joke like this is a Rorschach Test. Everyone will react differently or see something slightly different in it. What should be uncontroversial is that it’s not the kind of joke that should be endorsed by a sitting federal judge, even in private correspondence. I don’t know that it’s an impeachable offense, but it would get most people fired or suspended from their jobs, especially since he sent it on a government computer.
And, yes, Dubya appointed this guy.
