UPDATED Secret Service "jokes" about killing Jesse Jackson
Wed May 14, 2008 at 01:42:32 PM PDT
OK, this one leaves me pretty much speechless. The Secret Service, whose duty it is to protect:
~ The president,
~the vice president, (or other individuals next in order of succession to the Office of the President),
~the president-elect and vice president-elect
~The immediate families of the above individuals
~Former presidents and their spouses for their lifetimes,
and
~Major presidential and vice presidential candidates, and their spouses within 120 days of a general presidential election
(including of course, Barack Obama)
is being sued by African American SS agents. The reason? Prepare to get your mind blown.
Follow me below the fold....
Per the WaPo,
The disclosure of the messages follows an incident last month in which a noose was found in a room used by a black instructor at a Secret Service training facility in Beltsville, Md. Agency officials said that episode was under internal investigation.
Emails containing crude, racist and pornographic images "were just released by the Secret Service as part of a long-running civil rights suit filed by African American agents," CBS 2 in Chicago reports.
One of the emails joked about civil rights leader Jesse Jackson being killed by a missile.
"The Secret Service e-mail, WBBM-TV obtained from a court filing in Washington, was titled 'The Righteous Reverend,' and jokes about the deaths of Jackson and his wife when a missile strikes their plane," the station reports. "The e-mail ends with, it 'certainly wouldn't be a great loss and probably wouldn't be an accident either.
~SNIP~
More damaging, though, is who sent and received them: top brass, including the former Special Agent in Charge of the Presidential Protective Detail, as well as the Special Agent in Charge of the Chicago field office."
The rest of the article quoted above can be read here.
Slate has the emails. (h/t to BoiseBlue from comments).
The following is an excerpt from the Slate article:
In 2003, Daniel Paulson, a Secret Service assistant director in the Office of Government Liaison and Public Affairs, sent a "Harlem Spelling Bee" (see below) to several recipients, including a deputy assistant director who has since retired. The e-mail contained mock "vocabulary words" from an imaginary fifth-grade "Ebonics homework assignment."
Example: "Hotel—I gave my girlfriend crabs, and the hotel everybody."
Another 2003 e-mail joked about killing the Rev. Jesse Jackson (Page 2);
a third made joking reference to lynchings and large male genitalia (Page 3);
and a fourth, this one from 2005, related a joke about robot golf caddies that, when painted black, "didn't show up for work ... filed for welfare, and ... robbed the pro shop" (Page 4).
This last was sent to the head of the Cleveland field office.
To add icing to this shitcake, the above linked article referenced some disheartening (to say the least) excretions from Freepers who have been commenting in expected fashion.
Just one of the Free Rethug comments is enough to send one reeling to the nearest vomitorium:
Is it not OK to make a racist joke about a racist like Plantation Jesse?
This is so deeply disturbing that I truly don't know what else can be said, other than:
Not.This.Time. This is not acceptable. This can not stay in the hidden shadows where such talk is, obviously, tolerated and commonplace.
Can we be done with racism, racial stereotypes, racial slurs, and wink wink innuendos, not to mention joking about assassinations, sometime in my lifetime? Please? I had begun to hope we were better than this, as a nation, as a people, and as human beings.
