Federal judge sends racist, anti-Obama email; claims he didn’t mean for it to be racist

Another one for the–you can’t be fucking serious–files. Bush-appointed federal judge Chief Judge Richard Cebull from the federal district court in Montana sent the following email. 

“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!'”

Cebull acknowledged that he sent the email to seven other people, he also acknowledged that the email itself is racist–but claims that he didn’t mean for it to be racist, instead for it to be anti-Obama.

As Think Progress writes, not only is sending this email inexcusable, his explanation just makes it worse. He is essentially saying he didn’t mean for it to be racist, he just used a racist joke to disparage our black President. Do you see the very clear cut difference here? That’s good, because I don’t.

Perhaps we can argue it is no big deal since it was a personal email meant to be a “joke”–or better yet, a lack of judgement on his part. That would be fine if his entire career wasn’t in fact about using good judgement. It’s one thing to get a forwarded email from a racist uncle–it’s another to get one from someone who was appointed by the government to preside over cases–many of which are about racial discrimination.