Another elected official has been caught sending racist emails. According to the Merced Sun-Star, Atwater (Calif.) City Councilman Gary Frago has sent at least a half-dozen e-mails to city staff and other prominent community members containing racist jokes aimed at President Barack Obama, his wife and black people in general. Some of the emails, sent from October 2008 to February 2009, compared President Obama to O. J. Simpson and others suggested that “nigger rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions.” Get this, the most hurtful email was reportedly sent on January 15 and read: “Breaking News Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue. Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.” Wow. That’s just mean-spirited and down right racist. Mr. Frago admitted sending the e-mails, but showed no regret. He told the Sun-Star,”If they’re from me, then I sent them,” he said. “I have no disrespect for the president or anybody, they weren’t meant in any bad way or harm.” Really? They seem racist to me and the last thing an “ELECTED” official needs to engage is in race baiting.

The list of people who either sent or received the e-mails reads like a who’s who of Atwater community and political leadership, including a county supervisor, a former police chief, a city manager, a former city council member, a former president of a veterans group, a former grand knight of the Knights of Columbus, among others. All the jokes that Frago sent originated from others, the e-mails show. Those who could be identified were Bob Rieger, a retired Atwater city works employee; Michael McIntyre, a Merced resident; and Lee Aldridge, a retired Air Force colonel in Alabama. Most of the recipients said they do not recall receiving the e-mails and several of the senders either do not remember sending them or claim they were not meant to be harmful.

While recent racial barriers have been broken — such as the election of a black president — and most outright racial and prejudice is not acceptable in public, local civil rights activists and others believe the e-mails illustrate the racism that lingers behind some doors assumed to be closed in Atwater and America.

Frago, 63, who was the city’s first paid firefighter and has been on the City Council since 2000, said the e-mails were not meant to harm anyone. He has nothing against black people or the president, he said.”I don’t see where there’s a story, I’m not the only one that does it,” he said. “I didn’t originate them, they came to me and I just passed them on.” Source: Merced Sun-Star

You may not be able to control everything that comes into your email inbox to some degree, but you can delete racist emails and not forward them to all your friends. This is just hateful and it is a sad commentary on where we are as a people on race issues. The scourge of racism is still ingrained in our society and it is a tragedy. How can the United States set itself on a pedestal as the leader of the free world, but yet we have such hate mongering and race baiting still occurring everyday? Pat Buchanan has called Judge Sonia Sotomayor a racist, an Affirmative Action baby, unpublished, among other hurtful things he has said about this woman. In the grand scheme of things, this is a sad commentary. Councilman Frago should resign from his position, given the fact that he is unrepentant for his actions. There is no room in an elected office for such behavior.