An email containing a joke, “A little boy said to his mother; ‘Mommy, how come I’m black and you’re white?’ … His mother replied, ‘Don’t even go there Barack! From what I can remember about that party, you’re lucky you don’t bark!’” was circulated to close friends by Chief U.S. District Judge Richard Cebull from his official courthouse email on February 20. Since then, the Judge has amply felt that the ‘little boy’ may not ‘bark’ but he sure does carry a super-size bite.
The email was relayed by recipients and ultimately reached the office of the Great Falls Tribune. When the media house contacted Cebull, he expressed surprise that the mail has been circulated with his name on it.
Cebull was nominated by former President George W. Bush and has served as chief judge for Montana since 2008. He admitted on Wednesday to sending the mail to friends, and that he meant the mail to be private.
“It was not intended by me in any way to become public…I apologize to anybody who is offended by it, and I can obviously understand why people would be offended.”
It’s difficult to find that a person who cannot exercise restraint on his own self is the final authority on passing restraining orders on so many citizens.
Montana immigration attorney S H Hausrath said, “’the reason why I think it’s so troubling, is it espouses the deeply racist view that interracial sex is equivalent to bestiality. For a federal judge to be equating the two, and say since Barack Obama is of mixed racial background, that his mother was somehow committing acts of bestiality is incredibly racist and troubling.”
Cebull tried to defend his stand by saying, “I sent it out because it’s anti-Obama.”
From your official email? While on duty? And casting slurs on the democratically elected President of America?
There’s little chance that Obama would continue in office, but as long he is there he deserves the respect the nation bestowed upon him, and when he goes, the people would remove him through democratic process, or keep him in chair. But to cast the kind of slurs that’s in the joke is unbecoming of any civil citizen, let alone one adorning the chair of a Chief Judge.
Cebull further explained, “I didn’t send it as racist, although that’s what it is.”
No it’s not the question of being racist, but the question of family values. People like us from the middle-class even fail to register the joke in there without deep scrutiny, for our mothers do not grace such elite parties that the Chief Judge seems intimately acquainted with – where it’s common for women to be engaged in free-for-alls.
Very rightly, Travis McAdam, executive director for the Montana Human Rights Network pointed out:
“It’s one thing if the judge is not a fan of President Barack Obama, but you would think someone in his position would articulate that in a way that criticizes his policy decisions or his position on issues.”
As McAdams says in response to Cebull’s claim that he only sent it out because it was anti-Obama, “We have a hard time believing that a legitimate criticism of the president involves distributing a joke that basically compares African Americans with animals.”