Carl Paladino: Symbol of Buffalo Defiantly Fauxpologizes
In an annual Artvoice survey, local developer and bestiality fan Carl Paladino was asked what he wished for 2017. He replied that he wanted to see President Obama killed, Presidential advisor Valerie Jarrett beheaded by a “jihady”, and that First Lady Michelle Obama undergo a sex change operation to – somehow – revert to being a man, and go back to Africa to live in a cave with “Maxie the gorilla”.
Paladino’s anti-Obama animus wasn’t new. Neither was the overt, blatant race hate. What was new here was how brazenly he expressed it. After all, he had said awful things about racial, ethnic, and religious minorities in the past without consequence. For at least six years, I have railed against Carl Paladino every time he said something racist. To his shame, it’s a long list of posts. To his shame, he could have done positive things for Buffalo were it not for his vicious hatred. That, to me, is the tragedy of this failed creature.
March 2010: Paladino’s racist and pornographic emails
October 2012: Paladino denies he’s a birther, but is birther.
August 2014: Paladino’s homophobic reaction to a 419 scam letter
February 2015: Paladino rejects civil rights assessment of Buffalo schools.
March 2015: Paladino threatens school board “sisterhood” with libel suit (which never came)
July 2015: Paladino demeans “damn Asians” at UB.
July 2015: Paladino offers fake apology to “damn Asians”
July 2015: Paladino’s supporters: hey, he could have said, “damn Ukrainians”.
July 2015: Paladino defends Joe Mascia’s n-word outburst
July 2015: Sandy Beach calls Paladino out on Joe Mascia
August 2015: Paladino digs a deeper hole on Shredd & Ragan.
August 2016: Paladino claims Obama is Muslim.
Kudos to the politicians who came out publicly to reject and denounce Paladino – Governor Cuomo, Mark Poloncarz, Darius Pridgen, and Pat Burke come to mind. Brian Higgins said of Paladino in 2013 that he is, “the worst kind of coward this community will ever know,” adding, “he hides behind his dirty money and sits in his Ellicott Square cave spewing his venom and hateful emails every day. He’s pathetic, disgraceful and a broken man…Carl has all the moral arrogance without the moral integrity, It’s very, very sad what’s become of him.”
Thanks also to the activists and organizations who have called for Paladino to face some fallout for his racism. We should be grateful for School Board President Barbara Seals-Nevergold for speaking out, and for Jamie Moses and Artvoice for publishing Paladino’s 2017 wish list. While Artvoice has come under attack for this, that is misplaced. Were it not for this listicle, Paladino’s racial animus would not be a topic of conversation. It’s not that Paladino likes the sound of his verbal turds hitting the punchbowl – he is the turd, and we are the punchbowl. How many more of these stories will it take before Buffalo rejects this guy? What does he need to say that he hasn’t already said to deserve to be evicted from polite society, or what passes for it in Buffalo?
You may have seen my Christmas poem analysis of this, but let’s examine the Artvoice “2017 wish list”:
Obama catches mad cow disease after being caught having relations with a Herford.
“Herford” is spelled wrong. It alludes to bestiality, which you would think Carl “horse porn” Paladino might eschew. I think he’s also calling Michelle Obama a cow here, but it’s not clear.
He dies before his trial and is buried in a cow pasture
You know, people just shouldn’t wish other people dead. This is especially true in cases where it might provoke a Secret Service investigation.
next to Valerie Jarret, who died weeks prior, after being convicted of sedition and treason, when a Jihady cell mate mistook her for being a nice person and decapitated her.
Apart from the fact that Valerie Jarrett – a Presidential advisor – is an African-American female, I have no clue what would prompt Paladino to accuse her of “sedition and treason,” or to wish a “Jihady” – also spelled wrong – to decapitate her. This is beyond disgusting, at least until we get to the question of whom Paladino would most like to be rid of in 2017.
Michelle Obama. I’d like her to return to being a male
Is this him repeating conspiracy theories, or a commentary on Mrs. Obama’s looks? Too much Alex Jones, or just Carl being an insufferable, misogynistic asshole? Either way, (a) Paladino is one to talk about looks; and (b) it reveals just how sick and depraved he is.
and let loose in the outback of Zimbabwe
“Let loose” – like a caged animal. “Zimbabwe” – go back to Africa, rephrased to be more specific.
where she lives comfortably in a cave with Maxie, the gorilla.
Gorillas don’t live in caves. He’s simultaneously calling Mrs. Obama uncivilized and a male gorilla. He can’t just express how and why he dislikes her, or disagrees with her – he has to take away her femininity. He has to strip her of her dignity, and her humanity. She is not a person whom he doesn’t like – he argues here that she isn’t a person at all.
I don’t think Paladino knew – or cared – how racist his wish list was, and was taken aback by how forcefully the shit hit the fan this time. When your own son has to react to boycott threats to disavow you, you’ve got an issue you need to address. Good, I suppose, for William Paladino for rejecting his father’s words, but the storyline that Carl has had little day-to-day influence over Ellicott Development business “for many years” rings hollow.
It was Carl Paladino who complained to the media about the possibility that the Department of Social Services might move out of an Ellicott Development building. In September, Carl Paladino confirmed to Channel 4 that Ellicott Development was interested in buying Mickey Rat’s. Carl Paladino represented Ellicott Development in connection with a Bills season ticket giveaway. In July, when Paladino’s Twitter account called on Attorney General Loretta Lynch to be lynched, Paladino blamed an “error” on his employee, Jackie O’Bannon, who works for Ellicott Development. Carl Paladino was involved with Ellicott’s purchase of a Ganson Street property. The many massive “Trump/Pence” signs found outside local Ellicott Development-owned properties throughout the region were no accident.
“Tough Luck”: Paladino Doubles Down
So, Paladino has now issued two follow-up press releases regarding his 2017 wish list, and spoke to a couple of pretty pliant reporters from Channel 7 on camera. Let’s fisk them. Here’s the first:
It has nothing to do with race. That’s the typical stance of the press when they can’t otherwise defend the acts of the person being attacked.
You called the First Lady a gorilla who should go back to Africa, right after you called her a “Herford” [sic]. It has everything to do with race.
It’s about two progressive elitist ingrates who have hated their country so badly and destroyed its fabric in so many respects in 8 years.
Here comes a listicle of fake news, resentments, and thinly veiled race-hate.
It’s about them diminishing the respect for their country on the world scene, surrendering its status as the protector of human rights, disgracing the memory of its veterans who gave so much.
Europe & Asia agree: they have more respect for the US under Obama than his predecessor. Obama’s current favorable/unfavorable is 55/40.
It’s about demeaning and weakening what was the most powerful military in the world, firing hundreds of good soldier Generals and Admirals who refused Barack’s illegal and irresponsible dictates.
I think he means “diktats”, but this is just online conspiracy theories with no basis in reality. Imagine an email from your racist uncle, replete with WND links, and you’ll be on the right track.
Michelle hated America before her husband won. She then enjoyed all the attention, the multi -million dollar vacations, the huge staff and other benefits. Then when Hillary lost, she and Barack realized that without Hillary, there was no one to protect the little, if any, legacy he had. That’s when Michelle came out and said there is no hope for America. Good, let her leave and go someplace she will be happy.
Michelle Obama’s point – a few times poorly worded – had to do with how proud she was that so many people were hopeful and participating in political life. Surely someone like Carl Paladino, who seemingly has to explain away his own intemperate statements every few months, can sympathize. As for the “no hope” quip she told Oprah, who cares? How does that affect Carl Paladino to the point where he gets to call her a gorilla?
As for Barack, he’s a yellow-bellied coward who left thousands to die in Syria and especially Aleppo and he gets on TV and says he feels bad he couldn’t do anything about it.
“Yellow-bellied coward” who didn’t want to risk starting World War 3 over the overthrow of a Russian client state, and is now providing arms and personnel to the fight against ISIS.
He supported the mass migration without vetting of people from Muslim countries and the open borders, not for the people, but to expand the democratic base to a permanent majority.
This is a lie. No one gets a visa to come here – refugee or otherwise – without undergoing vetting through the State Department. You can’t wash ashore here from Turkey like you can in Greece. The suggestion that the US takes in refugees for political purposes is just another lie.
He couldn’t care less about the people. He just commuted the sentences of another 650 drug pushers responsible for selling poison to our kids.
Many of these commutations were life sentences for marijuana offenses. Paladino’s anti-drug feelings are informed by the same events that inform his support for moving closing time to 2:00 AM in Erie County.
It’s about the middle class, silent majority, rising up to destroy the Republican and Democrat establishment in America.
What’s that got to do with calling Michelle Obama a gorilla, or wishing the President dead, or wishing Valerie Jarrett beheaded?
It’s about the end of an era when the people took all their information from the main street media, letting them tell us what the issues are and how to resolve those issues. People no longer trust the press.
Except when they need to press release the latest Ellicott Development project.
It’s about that fraudulent, shadow government with a lazy ass president who allowed non-Americans like Valerie Jarret to run the government on a day to day basis and order the Stand down in Benghazi and the later cover-up that does matter.
Lies. There was no “stand-down” in Benghazi. Valerie Jarret [sic] is “non-American”? She was born in Iran in 1956 to American parents; her father was a prominent physician, and her mother was an expert in early childhood education. Jarrett is not Iranian, but African-American. Jarrett lived in Iran for the first five years of her life, before settling in Chicago. Valerie Jarrett is as American as Carl Paladino – perhaps more so, because her parents were natural-born Americans. Can Carl Paladino write a truthful sentence?
It’s about Lois Lerner and the head of the IRS and the other criminal officials who haven’t been prosecuted or even investigated because the leaders of the progressive movement are above the law.
The IRS investigated whether certain political groups were justified in claiming non-profit status. There was no crime here.
It’s about the end of the progressive movement and reset of the direction of America for the next 30 years.
That’s code for, we won and now I can be as racist as I want, f__k you.
It’s about a president who interfered in a presidential election for his successor so flagrantly that he called Trump unfit for office.
So? Lots of people feel that way. Lots of people think Paladino is unfit for office, too.
It’s about a president who for eight years did absolutely nothing for black children in our urban centers held prisoner by the cycle of poverty and illegitimate black leadership more interested in power and preserving their voting base by keeping them hungry and uneducated in the inner cities.
Did nothing? What has Paladino done, except demean anyone who disagrees with him – using racist or otherwise offensive rhetoric when the opponent happens to be something other than a white male?
And yes, it’s about a little deprecating humor which America lost for a long time. Merry Christmas and tough luck if you don’t like my answer.
Haha he showed us! It was all a joke.
The Fauxpology Sequel
Then on Christmas Day, Paladino’s own kid rejected his Artvoice verbiage. So, a new set of word-vomit was needed on Tuesday. The latest one – billed as an “apology” – is worth a look.
I never intended to hurt the minority community who I spent years trying to help out of the cycle of poverty in our inner cities. To them I apologize.
He apologizes, I assume, to Black people here and whines about how he has spent “years” trying to “help” them. That would, under normal circumstances, be enough – to apologize and stop. But no.
I thought about them every day as I fought against unqualified and incompetent superintendents, administrators, teachers and School Board members, unfair union contracts, broken homes and children who can’t get the education they need to break that cycle of poverty because our school system is a failure, for reasons that needn’t be. I have shown those who chose not to watch but to enter the arena how to fight the demons. Nevertheless, I won’t be judged by those timid souls who sit uninvolved in the gallery always prepared to criticize. Nor do I have any respect or regrets for the insane education activists who hover over and defend the dysfunction of the BPS.
Here, he justifies what he’s done on the school board, which is fine. But his actions on the school board aren’t the issue – it’s the whole wishing Obama dead and Michelle is a gorilla thing that’s on the table. He doesn’t bring that up.
I received Jamie Moses’ emailed survey at an emotional moment after I had just listened to Obama’s statement that he regretted the slaughter in Aleppo that, in fact, resulted from his failed and cowardly foreign policy. His policy is to look the other way while innocent people were murdered and starved. I view Barack Obama as a traitor to American values. We don’t stand down and leave soldiers to die on a battlefield when we can send help. We don’t lie to the American people and the parents of our fallen to get re-elected. Obama has not led America to a better place by disregarding the rule of law and standing with his elitist brethren as above the law; nor has his wife Michele Obama who told our children and the world after the election that now there is no hope for America.
Interesting pivot here from Aleppo to Benghazi to Obama is a traitor and Michelle said a thing to Oprah he didn’t like. No matter what you might think about the Syrian civil war, the alternative Paladino suggests here would have cost the country trillions of dollars and thousands of American lives, and there isn’t a politician alive who had the stomach to do that again after the Iraq quagmire. Paladino’s fever dreams about Benghazi as some sort of cosmic Obama-led stab in the back is false, and repeatedly proven to be so. The rest of it is an old man worrying about what’s on the TV equivalent of the cover of Us Magazine.
Even if you take that at face value – that he’s upset about Aleppo, Benghazi, and an Oprah interview, he could have just expressed that anger in an appropriate way. That he instead wished the President dead and called the First Lady a male gorilla doesn’t advance any reasonable argument, and is simply racist.
Those survey questions provided me with the spark to vent and write deprecating humor about a bad President for whom the main stream media continues to seek an undeserved legacy. I wanted to say something as sarcastic and hurtful as possible about the people who are totally responsible for the hurt and suffering of so many others. I was wired up, primed to be human and I made a mistake. I could not have made a worse choice in the words I used to express my feelings.
You know, “wired up, primed to be human” doesn’t mean anything. What Paladino is saying here is that he regrets having publicly written those words – not the sentiment behind them. That makes this no apology at all; sorry I got caught saying another racist thing, in essence. Here comes the weakest dog-ate-my-homework excuse a grown man ever wrote:
It’s all too easy to make mistakes when you’re emotional about the rigged teachers’ contract by an incompetent Board of Education majority who sold out the school district as payback to teacher’s union leader Phil Rumore for his election support. They couldn’t care less about the children of Buffalo. I’m bewildered about the Supreme Court Judge who tried to dismiss a lawsuit to recover $450 million fleeced from the children of Buffalo by LP Ciminelli during the $1.4 billion schools building project.
No, “rigged” teachers’ contracts and losses in motion practice don’t make someone say racist things. Being racist makes someone say racist things, and Paladino rejects that he’s a racist, so he has to cast blame elsewhere – literally just throwing things out there to see what might stick.
I publicly took responsibility for what I said and confirmed those were my answers, but believe it or not, I did not mean to send those answers to Artvoice. Not that it makes any difference because what I wrote was inappropriate under any circumstance. I filled out the survey to send to a couple friends and forwarded it to them not realizing that I didn’t hit “forward” I hit “reply.” All men make mistakes.
So, Paladino claims he leaked his own email. He says he didn’t mean to send to Artvoice a wish list expressing his belief that Michelle Obama is a male gorilla. If what he wrote was “inappropriate under any circumstance”, why bring up this pathetic excuse? Frankly, I don’t think it’s real. I’ll bet Jamie Moses contacted Carl before he published his responses to make sure he really meant for that to be in the paper. Anything less would be dramatically irresponsible.
What is horrible is explaining to my 17 year old daughter how her hero could be so stupid.
What is horrible is watching my family and friends react to the rabid hordes of attacking parasites we now call activist progressives.
See? It’s not Carl’s racism that’s the problem; it’s that “attacking parasites” have things to say about his racism.
It’s been a sick, combative year for America. We changed the direction of our country and beat back the demons for a few decades. I am proud to have been a part of the making of history.
As for the vanquished progressive haters out there spewing their venom at anything that is a reminder of their humiliating defeat, irrelevance is tough to chew on.
It was a “sick, combative” year mainly because of the irresponsible rhetoric of Paladino’s chosen candidate. Paladino can crow all he wants here, but there’s real projection in that passage: the irrelevance that is truly “tough to chew on” is the voters’ rejection of Paladino’s school board majority, now defeated into feckless minority loudmouth status.
For the mean-spirited, disoriented press trying to find grounding and recover legitimacy on my back, pray that you still have a job next year because you have lost all credibility with the people.
Let’s see: he’s blamed Aleppo, Benghazi, Oprah, the Buffalo Teachers’ Federation, Phil Rumore, Ciminelli, “progressive haters”, “activist progressives”, and now the “press”. His only failing? Having (allegedly) inadvertently hit “respond” instead of “forward”.
No, I’m not leaving the school board, not when it’s time to help implement the real choice elements of Trump’s plan for education reform. I’ve spent years dedicated to the mission to defeat the thought that the liberal progressive elitist establishment can continue to hold our minority children captive in the cycle of poverty simply to provide their voting base. I don’t intend to yield to the fanatics among my adversaries. I certainly am not a racist.
Saying it doesn’t make it so. We can see what you are thanks to the things you say and write when you think no one’s looking. When you call a black woman a gorilla, you’re racist – full stop. Literally no other examples – and there are many – are needed.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
It will be, once our civic discourse is rid of you.
Carl Paladino is a racist person. Don’t let anyone tell you he’s not. Don’t let anyone tell you that Paladino’s age or generational status is an excuse for racism – they’re not. I know lots of baby boomers who don’t think Black women are gorillas, and I know plenty of 70 year-olds who don’t email around racist things to their friends. Just because Paladino may be too much of a coward to tell a Black person what he thinks of him to his face doesn’t mean he “doesn’t have a racist bone in his body”. The things he writes and says when he thinks no one is paying attention reveal his true heart. To him, anyone not like him is someone to demean for that very fact. To him, disagreement – even hatred – isn’t just about political ideology or policy, but you have to “deprecate” the person’s race, to boot.
We’ve heard it all before – all the faux “apologies” when he went after Asian students at UB, or when he calls Obama a Muslim, or says Obama wasn’t born here or isn’t sufficiently, “American”. He claimed he wasn’t racist when he sent around emails depicting the President and First Lady as a pimp and whore in Blaxploitation garb. He claimed he wasn’t racist when he sent around Chimpanzees dancing as part of the “Obama Inauguration”. Piss on our collective civic legs and tell us it’s raining again, Carl.
He makes excuses for his race-hate by suggesting that it’s the only way he can get the media – whom he denigrates anyway – to pay attention to him. Yeah, but if you say, “I am Carl Paladino, a Trump surrogate and I don’t like Obama policy X” it makes you sound less like a racist asshat than, saying, ‘Obama is a Kenyan murderer who did these things that this right-wing website I read says he did, and I’d like him dead’.
Carl Paladino is a racist no matter what he and his apologists say. He doesn’t belong in elected office of any sort, but especially not as a steward of children’s educations. Buffalo must – once and for all – reject him and his hatred, and show the world that he doesn’t speak for us. He and his ilk must be marginalized into irrelevance.