Column: Racist e-mail, political jabs not a joking matter

I'm not in the mood for jokes today. So let's start with a simple question.

Which is more disturbing, a prominent political party leader caught passing around a racist joke on the Internet or his opponents engaging in a Gotcha Dance when the story makes headlines?

That's easy. Forwarding a racist e-mail is worse.

Yet it's also troubling to watch gleeful political operatives trying to use the incident to smear a candidate who had nothing to do with the e-mail and who said he found it "reprehensible."

This nasty chess game - where opportunists salivate over mistakes by the opposition - is why so many normal people are disgusted with politics and the unsavory characters drawn to it.

First, the "joke."

According to news stories, Virginia Beach Republican Chairman David Bartholomew forwarded an e-mail containing an offensive joke to half a dozen people last March.

No, I'm not going to repeat it. It's out there. Look it up.

Fact is, not only is it racist, but it ridicules people on welfare and compares them to dogs.

At a time when unemployment is well above 10 percent in this country if you count those who've given up looking for jobs, mocking folks who get government assistance seems particularly mean-spirited.

Once the forwarded "joke" was made public, Bartholomew resigned as party chairman. That was smart.

Then he refused to comment. That wasn't.

Bartholomew owes the party faithful - and the community - an explanation. An apology would be nice, too. If we've learned anything from watching public figures and their public missteps, it's that America is the land of second acts. Doesn't matter if you're Martha Stewart, Eliot Spitzer or Michael Vick. Do something wrong, man up, make amends and move on.

Making matters even worse was the ridiculous explanation offered on Bartholomew's behalf by the Republican 2nd District chairman, Gary Byler, who claimed that Bartholomew forwarded the tasteless joke without reading it because he was just mastering the art of e-mail.

Please.

The old, he-doesn't-understand-the-Internets excuse doesn't work for anyone younger than 90.

People forward e-mailed jokes for only one reason: because they think the jokes are funny.

In the aftermath of Monday's revelations, questions were raised about the timing. Much has been made of the curious "coincidence" that the e-mailed joke came to light two weeks before the election. Clearly this is intended to hurt GOP congressional candidate Scott Rigell, who has been - horrors - photographed with Bartholomew and who was supported, naturally enough, by the Beach party leader.

Word on the street - and trust me, no one would be quoted on the record saying this - is that this bombshell might be an "inside job." Perhaps someone who is or was a Republican and now has an ax to grind with the party leaked the e-mail to the Democratic blogs to inflict maximum harm on the GOP and, by extension, Rigell.

Maybe so. But if the e-mail hadn't been sent, there would be no story.

True, the gleeful response by some is unbecoming. The rush to stereotype all Republicans as raging racists by online commenters is a nasty conclusion.

But - to paraphrase the great Mike Royko - this is politics, not pingpong.

It's one thing when ordinary dopes send racist rubbish around the Internet. When prominent people do it, it makes headlines.

Those who'd rather talk about the calendar than the story are out of luck.

You can't hand your enemies a hand grenade and then gripe that they tossed it at you at a bad time.

Kerry Dougherty, (757) 446-2306, kerry.dougherty@cox.net