Do Carl Paladino’s Racist and Sexist Emails Matter?

Think about the flood of emails that arrive in your inbox daily. Which ones do you reply to? Which ones do you automatically delete, and which ones do you forward on to others?

How you manage your inbox may seem like a private matter, but if you’re a public official, that’s not necessarily true. Take New York gubernatorial candidate Carl Paladino. The Republican previously acknowledged forwarding emails depicting blacks and women in a highly offensive manner and, for that, this week has been the subject of discussions on ABC’s The View and in The New York Times.

One email featured a doctored photo of President Barack Obama and wife Michelle dressed as a stereotypical pimp and whore. Another email featured a photo of black men trying to dodge a plane making its way over a field. It contained the cutline: “Run n___ers, run.” Arguably the most offensive photo in Paladino’s email collection depicted a woman engaged in a sex act with a horse.

Asked why he sent these emails, Paladino has simply answered “bad judgment.” But that response doesn’t really cut it. While Paladino has no control over what shows up in his inbox, choosing to distribute racist and sexist emails to others is an endorsement of their harmful messages. Even The View’s Elisabeth Hasselbeck, a staunch conservative, said as much.

“Unless you agree with something, you don’t forward it on,” she remarked on the show Sept. 27. “I would hope that people would even take a step further too and say, ‘Don’t forward me this junk.’”

Moreover, to blame bad judgment for sending the emails fails to address whether Paladino truly understands why the emails were problematic. For all we know, Paladino wholeheartedly agrees with the content of the emails but believes he used bad judgment in forwarding them on because that led to him being exposed.

Look, Paladino has every right to think what he wants and to express himself accordingly, but his emails are relevant to voters because they provide a better idea of what he’s all about. Paladino bills himself as a candidate “for the people,” but his emails suggest that perhaps blacks and women aren’t on his priority list of people. The New York electorate has a right to know this before entering the voting booth in November.

Politics is a messy business. Some argue that the sex lives of politicians should be off limits. Others argue that the children of politicians should be off limits. And now Paladino supporters argue that his emails should be off limits. If someone had illegally hacked into Paladino’s email account and released his emails to the public, I’d be inclined to agree. But Paladino made his emails a public matter when he chose to forward them on to the folks in his contact list.

I give Paladino credit for not denying that he passed on these offensive emails, but placing the blame on bad judgment just won’t do. Paladino forwarded these emails because he found them funny. If they hadn’t resonated with him, he would’ve clicked “delete” and moved on. I don’t want someone in office who regards the degradation of blacks and women as a joke. And without these emails, voters would’ve never known the truth about Paladino. Now the people of New York can make an informed choice about who best to represent them in public office.

Photo Credit: Hannonjd New Media, Wikimedia Commons