When Carl Paladino, a billionaire real estate executive in Buffalo, New York, and a close ally of Trump, made outrageously racist and offensive remarks about President Obama and his wife, the national media paid attention. The Paladino story went viral. The State Board of Regents is now reviewing whether and how he may be removed from his elected office. One lawyer suggested that “conduct unbecoming a school board officer” might be grounds enough.
Paladino was unapologetic for his remarks. He said he will not resign. He said that he didn’t know his comments would be published. He did not explain how his comments were sent to a local website that invited his answers to specific questions.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
That is not the point!
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The Buffalo School Board met in a special session earlier today to discuss this situation. I’m hoping there will be an announcement soon…
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Even his son has renounced his father’s vile comments: Quote – We post today to share our formal response to former CEO Carl Paladino’s recent Artvoice comments. Carl’s comments are not a reflection of the beliefs and principles of Ellicott Development Company. Carl has not been involved in the day-to-day operations of Ellicott Development Company for many years now and his comments and statements are his alone. William Paladino, CEO of Ellicott Development Company states “Ellicott Development takes pride in being a culturally diverse company with over 535 hard-working dedicated employees. We value and respect our employees, friends, partners and all of our commercial and residential tenancies and we do not condone the statements made about the President of the United States and his wife. They were disrespectful and absolutely unnecessary.” End quote.
http://www.mediaite.com/online/carl-paladinos-own-son-denounces-fathers-disrespectful-comments-about-the-obamas/
Sounds like a CYA statement by the son and his company.
What is it with billionaires and foot in mouth disease?
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Poor, poor Paladino–someone published his private communications.
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Right. He has a long history of making racist comments.
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But, but, but…
As a major supporter of Donald Trump, are we about to get the defenders of the president-elect and the RNC to complain on this blog that we are taking his remarks too “literally” and not “symbolically” enough?
😎
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Don’t forget we live in a post-factual world.
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Sadly perfect answer, here. “I didn’t know it would be published” becomes an actual defense for saying whatever trash comes out.
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KrazyTA–it won’t matter WHAT we say–their response will always be wet soap.
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I think Paladino should go live in the lions’ dens in Kenya and Zimbabwe where he can snuggle with a whole load of very hungry felines. Or maybe he would like to be trampled upon by a herd of roaring elephants? Or be pounced by some aggressive rhinos . . .
If Paladino had a brain, he would have criticized the Obamas for all the destructive policies and schemes they actively generated and participated in, starting but not ending with the destruction of public education.
There is so much to rip into about Obama and Michelle. Why not start with their phony progressive imagery, their narcissism, their opportunism, their dalliances with celebrity culture, Obama’s voting and veto patterns over the last 20 years, their participation in Chicago think tanks to close public schools, and their addiction to Ellen, Jimmy Fallon, and Penny Pritzker of Hyatt Hotels?
For God’s sake! Our first lady was pictured on the cover of “Cooking Light” magazine. She has NO shame . . . . And Obama having coffee with Seinfeld and driving vintage cars with him . . . . Gag me.
Obama is the American Idol Rock Star. . . . All glitz and competent showmanship and NO substance:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2016/11/23/which-part-1930s-did-you-not-get-americans-finally-learn-cooperate-national-suicide
Obama has been about messages and hopes and dreams, all states of the potential instead of the actual.
Hell, if Paladino is a right winger, he should be welcoming of Obama and his wife rather than tossing them in the garbage . . . . What is WRONG with Paladino?
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Robert Rendo, NBCT: Huh? I was analogizing Hillary’s e-mails? But it’s really a stretch that you were responding to my note. Ellen? Cooking Lite? Really?
I have thought for a very long time that WHATEVER the Obama’s did, REGARDLESS, it was going to get a shellacking from the mindless Dumbos among us. (Not that you are a mindless Dumbo–I know you were just kidding.)
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Catherine,
What I am saying is that Paladino is a horror story, as is Obama and company. He is a reformer, as is Obama. They may as well be twins.
So why all the vitriol from Paladino toward Barack? Barack’s agenda and Paladino’s agenda for public education are joined at the hip. Plain and simple. For two people whose love of public education destruction is so vibrant, they should be practically be frolicking with each other, Michelle, Barack, and Carl.
And yes, she really did show up on the cover of “Cooking Light” among other major women’s magazines. It’s disgusting. I have only voted Democrat all my life, and the Obamas make a mockery of the word.
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Robert Rendo: Maybe I was wrong about the Dumbo thing. But all kidding aside–I cannot agree with you and feel no “disgust” about the Obamas. I know they have erred at times, and especially with education. but I happen to think they have shown a high sense of integrity, patience, and self-mastery, and that in the face of the dirtiest kind of racist slurs and assaults on their legitimacy, far and away from what other presidential families have had to suffer through. . . remarkable for their contrast to the president elect and his mad dogs.
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Robert Rendo, NBCT: Trying to get this older thought into a succinct form, so here goes: A major part of what’s “wrong” with Obama, besides the fact that he happens to be Black and raised up the nation’s racist hate that is still out there, is the related fact that a good number of the electorate saw the Republican stalling and blocking of the wheels of Congress as somehow Obama’s fault. They wrongly broad brushed Obama with their correct disgust with the do-nothing government.
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Catherine,
Obama’s ethnicity means nothing to me. Nothing. It the content of one’s character that counts and not skin color. And it is not my intention to diminish anyone’s veritable plight of racism, no matter where they fall in the SES spectrum. Racism is racism, and it’s not to be tolerated ever.
His politics were centrist/right, and he has as much a corporate streak running through him as past presidents. He was not even tepid on labor rights and never mentioned anything when more than 120,000 people showed up at Wisconsin state capital to protest Scott Walker’s slashing of union rights to collectively bargain.
He could have put a single payer system on the table and he chose not to.
He is just as bad as Reagan, G.W. Bush, and so many others.
He is NOT a progressive. He is who he is, and I don’t approve. He has never erred as you stated. He has, by contrast, succeeded brilliantly by continuing the political policies of his predecessors, but he has done so with more gloss, more polish, more triangulation.
Sorry, but I am not an Obama apologist . The DNC are just as disgusting as Donald Trump, but they are more refined about it. Neither party stands for the little guy any more. What is needed is an implosion of both parties and far more leftist institutions that will redistribute wealth to pay for the public commons, like every other civilized modern democracy.
Yes, he did appoint some better members of the SCOTUS. That was no small task.
We used to be an excellent capitalist society with checks and balances, and both the GOP and Donkeys have attenuated that very system. Well, so have the American sheeple.
Obama has NEVER erred on education; he has gotten pretty much what he also always wanted: private market-driven solutions that will “solve the ills of society”.
He’s not so forgivable.
Catherine, read Alan Green’s article in Common Dreams. His is a comprehensive “bilan” of Obama.
I am NOT saying that Obama could have solved all the ills of Capitol Hill. But he could have been a brilliant rhetorician with the right pit-bull rhetoric and opposed every right wing agenda with frequent press conferences and his verbal prowess. He would have been the mighty salmon swimming upstream, and he would have galvanized others who were ripe and ready to join him in a leftist movement.
He did NOTHING of the sort.
You can put me in any Dumbo category you want. I staunchly support your right to do so, but I’m afraid it does not change who Obama has always been.
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Robert Rendo, NBCT: Cannot take Obama out of the context of the Republican push-back on every issue. It’s turning out to be a common Republican-playbook method–do everything you can to throw mud on and disarm someone or some institution, then say, look how dirty and weak it is.
The other thing implicit in your note is AGAIN, the false equivalence–as if the Trump/Republicanism and the Democrats are playing on the same moral and political field. We hashed out their use of false equivalence and many other logical fallacies here in MANY notes a couple of months back, so I won’t repeat those notes.
But briefly, Trump, and now the Republican Congress, is not merely engaging in disagreements with Democrats, or even in legitimate discourse about what’s best for the USA and its people, and in either case, under the assumption that basic Constitutional and related laws, protocols, and social and moral expectations are not brought into serious question, ignored, or attacked.
Before Trump, lying WAS a big deal. Trump broke, and continues to break, all those assumed barriers, not only skirting and breaking the law over and over again, but striking again and again at the very foundations of our Constitutional democracy. This is not an equivalent of any of the other Republican nominees, or of Hillary or Bernie. Trump, on the other hand, ran under the Biggest Double-Standard History Has Ever Seen–and now he’s being accepted and even endorsed by Republicans and their Party.
Don’t talk to me in language that assumes equivalence between what’s going on in the parties, or what went on in the election, or what Trump and the neo-Republicans/oligarchs are about. Doesn’t wash.
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Catherine,
Obama is no FDR or LB Johnson. Having gone back and forth to France for more than 20 years and speaking French, having married someone whose father lived there for 17 years and who lived and worked there as well, The European notion of “Democrat” would find Obama to be as far right wing as G.W. Bush in terms of labor policy and distribution of wealth. He never hesitated to retard and arrest the COLA on SS, yet he just signed off on $619 billion dollar budget for the Department of Defense.
To me, based on sheer facts, the two camps are equivalent in 2016, but one is crude and vulgar and full of machismo while the other is refined and civilized overly.
An apple is rotten, whether it be on the concealed inside or visibly on the outside. Either way, I can’t find myself eating either apple. Nothing is assumed here. Look at Obama’s record on deportation, drone strikes, his appointment of Tim Geitner. . . . the list is endless.
Like I said, I have never voted GOP and I do despise them. But I am able to critique the party that is supposed to represent and push back for the working class, and that party has abandoned that mission. Obama is but one embodiment of that orientation.
Go live, work, and vote in France and you will see how inequitable our society is, thanks to both parties and to those who could have tried valiantly to make big differences but remained tethered to neoliberalism . . .
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Robert Rendo, NBCT: You write: “To me, based on sheer facts, the two camps are equivalent in 2016, but one is crude and vulgar and full of machismo while the other is refined and civilized overtly.”
Not exactly an insignificant difference for a democracy where civilized order depends in good part on the integrity of leadership embodied in those running the country. But the import of vulgarity aside, I think you are missing the constant attacks on the foundations of a Constitutional democracy, e.g., the rule of law, habeas corpus, the Bill of Rights (Trump is taking names of civil servants who research about climate change), and more that are coming from the right and its now-blending with the so called alt-right. Not perfect, and the oligarchs, who are often bi-partisan in their influence seeking, are poisonous in that regard, e.g., with the privatization of education; but that’s in Republican hands now; and I don’t see those kinds of Constitutional depth charges coming from the Democratic side, then or now.
Everyone is agog and outraged for over a year at Trump’s constant assaults, yes, a moral degenerate; but we shouldn’t overlook the deeper wounds he is inflicting on our foundations. Change is good; but this is not merely a left or right issue, nor is just a matter of “New Directions In Politics.”
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I meant “civilized overtly” . . .
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Catherine,
I enjoy reading your discourse.
You focus is a great deal (and rightfully so) on the lack of civility, courtesy, etiquette, critical protocols, and deference to the U.S. Constitution and that these absences under a Trump style administration will gravely threaten democracy. Trump will set that tone and spread it to his cabinet members, all while member s of the Congress and the Senate will jump on the same bandwagon. Trump is normalizing abnormal behavior as successfully as the Kardashians have normalized vapid stupidity and anti-intellectual values. Trump is a tornado in a china shop, and he is spreading his poison as effectively as the DNC has used identity politics to crowd out labor rights and rethinking distribution of income. A willful ignorance of the foundations and pillars of how our government functions is a radical massive heart attack to American politics and culture.
I could not agree with you more, and let me add that this will cause damage at an ever more accelerated rate. I don’t know if I will see Medicare, SS, or my pension by the time I retire or am much older . . . . 10 to 14 years from now. I might see growing gang violence in the USA as I age.
At the same time, Obama, a lawyer specializing in Constitutional law, was no stranger to circumventing the Constitution:
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/11/13/life-in-post-constitutional-america-the-obama-factor/
He has attacked one of the most important pillars, in my opinion. Granted, he was gentile about it . . . . all smiles and kind countenances, all handshakes and hugs. And all perverting the Constitution, not to mention how his federal cabinet violated the Constitution by overreaching into public education with CCSS and RttT, using Bill Gates as the privatizing force to shape American public education. None of this was Constitutional.
I have compared Hillary to Trump, and now I will Trump to Obama to borrow from a past reader:
“Trump is a fast acting poison; Obama and the DNC are medium acting poisons that may or may not let you let you live in order to seek a hard-to-find antidote.”
Poison is Poison.
How many bills have been negotiated behind closed doors in which the premise for those bills is a lie, a utilization of the same kind of non-truths Trump spews forth? Trump is NOT overt or polite about his lies and disrespect for the Constitution. I hate Trump. He is unmitigated evil . . . . fast, cheap, and out of control, to quote filmmaker Errol Morris.
Obama et al have been covert and very polite about it. If you think there is no difference between Democrats and the GOP, please tell that to the DFERs. They’ll love you for it!
Here are some of Obama’s lies:
1) Schools and nearly all teachers and principals are the cause of poverty and society’s ills (Really? I thought it was distribution of wealth and lack of social safety nets that are the largest contributors aside from individual responsibility. I wonder how Finland prevents or retards poverty? H-m-m-m.)
2) A single payer healthcare system would be too much of an interruptor compared to our privatized employer based system (Really? Tell that to Italy, France, Australia, Japan, South Africa, Iceland, Germany, Spain, England, Portugal, Scotland, Switzerland, and Canada. How much do THOSE people get in return for their federal tax dollar compared to ours? Obama could have pushed hard and used his stature and celebrity to cause tidal waves of movements, even if he never accomplished such a society in his lifetime. FDR did, and he actually got somewhere. Imagine! And FDR was a traitor to his own class, unlike Obama.)
3) Americans outside the USA can be assassinated without any due process because they are too dangerous (Really? So Constitutional due process now has a double standard under the whims of Obama?)
4) We can’t afford COLA on SS because we will run out of money and we could never tax the rich because of the repercussions (Really? Is that why Obama had never really fought for a higher minimum wage, nor has he fought continuously for much higher taxation on the wealthy and wealthy corporations? He had no fight for expansion of SS taxes to be paid on incomes over $118,000 per year. Obama NEVER conditioned repayment of the TARP funds, such as limiting CEO salaries and perks. H-m-m-m.)
5) There won’t be any real serious consequences if we close 50 public schools in Chicago and make children travel longer distances to other schools that have become privatized (Really? Let’s count the number of children and their families who have lost life and limb trudging through rotten neighborhoods in Chicago just to be forced to go to a charter school).
Yes, Obama is a gentleman compared to Trump. And the evils of the world have always come from the genesis of polite, hushed negotiations behind many a closed door.
Remember, Catherine, the tenet of the ruling class regardless of the labels they dress up in and to borrow a bit from George Carlin:
“We remain mostly polite among member of the plutocracy while and rabid and savage toward the little people to keep them where they are. We control and own everything; the middle class is there for now, and the poor are there to scare the crap out of the middle class. We are a big exclusive club and, you, the middle and poor working class, are NOT in it! Do everything our way, and everyone will get along just fine . . .”
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Robert Rendo, NBCT writes: “A willful ignorance of the foundations and pillars of how our government functions is a radical massive heart attack to American politics and culture.”
First, in your note, you seem to be running all of the more surface (so to speak) Left-Right issues all together with very different foundational concerns. Certainly, they are woven together in the concrete; but problems and threats take on a whole different hue when their influence crosses over from one arena and enters the arena of the other. But enough said on that. I don’t remember anyone in my own history, or in the history of presidential elections I have read about, that presented such attacks on the very core of our existence as a nation.
Second, there’s willful ignorance, and then there’s out and out attack. Well thought-out or not, in any case, and though there are openings to avoid it (like dumb luck), the Republican party–its electorate, the so-called Tea Party, and its Congress–is presently functioning as a conduit for the making of a fascist state. It’s too bad that so much will probably depend on the absence of patience of someone like Bannon; or on those around Trump, or the military, who are willing to commit themselves to stopping him if he goes for the buttons, And oddly in the scheme of things, Russia’s intrusions may have stopped the bleeding–a clue in the attitude of some of the older Congresspeople, like Mitch McConnell, who remember what Russia is about.
I must apologize to you for the Dumbo comments–no excuses but, presently, a panoply of explanations.
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I agree that Trump stands to turn our country into an old world Central or South American country where private and public are blurred, where the middle class is tiny compared to the poor, and where rulers are self dealers through public policy. It will be a paradigm shift.
And my other equal point is that HAD the Democrats (Obama only being one of them but a key one) not abandoned wealth equity and labor issues, we would not have Trump – and a Trump cabinet – today.
There is examination of the enemy and self examination of the relative “ally”. Both are critical for a viable society and both vettings are indispensable in the realm of critical thinking and true intellectualism.
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Robert R: Obstruction is as obstruction does.
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Catherine, I agree with that. The style behind obstruction varies, but the end result is obstruction. Obstruction is indeed as obstruction does.
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As I used to discuss with student’s wearing/displaying the Confederate battle flag: “Proud of your Southern Heritage, eh? Lots of good things have come out of the Southern states, bluegrass music, cajun food, Coca Cola, etc. . . . I will support your right to do so but I will have this discussion with you, as per my free speech rights and duty as a teacher, every time you choose to use that free speech right to help you understand why what you are doing is offensive to others and actually causes them fear and grief due to the nature of your symbol. And every I saw it I would talk to the student. I think the most I ever talked with a particular student was twice. After that they didn’t want to have to deal with me.
So, a solution: Have all the other board members, the superintendent, the rest of the administrative staff all individually go and speak with Paladino. Make it a teaching moment for him.
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Yea, a teachable moment, provided Paladino is teachable.
In any case, who is Buffalo’s accrediting agency? If it is or anything like AdvancED, then perhaps Mark Elgart, the agency’s president and CEO, should be also be invited to deal with the matter. Clearly, Paladino represents a dysfunctional aspect of the Buffalo school board, and Elgart has shown here is Georgia to be quite adept at ridding school boards of dysfunction.
http://www.buffaloschools.org/board_members.cfm?master=1
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Duane,
I am surprised that you think Paladino would respond to reason or a stern talking-to.
This man is vile and has been for many years. He likes to shock people. When he ran against Cuomo, some of his emails got out, and they were full of porn and racism.
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I’m not saying that he would respond to reason, but to the constant badgering by everyone involved. I can say without a doubt that some of the students with whom I had “the conversation” did not respond to reason, but to the fact that I was not going to let them get away with wearing/displaying the Confederate battle flag. A few did respond to reason but I’d say the majority responded to my “badgering”.
For Paladino we need to make him feel like the ol, “Why am I putting up with this crap? I don’t need this. I’m taking my ball and going home to play.” type thinking. He won’t respond to reason so let’s make a reason for him to respond-constant questioning and badgering by all involved.
But that would mean getting GAGA Good German adminimals involved, and quite frankly, I don’t see them doing so due to the lack of cojones of the vast majority.
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Poor Buffalo, a city on the rebound from it’s mothballed, dead Rust Belt city status. He makes the city–and its inhabitants–look very bad. If he’s an elected leader to that post, it’s a reflection of a segment of that community’s citizens (let the Trump comments begin in the ‘reply’). What a disgrace. Remove him.
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Paladino is the vocalization of the interior voice of every alt. right type: In case anyone missed it, the right wing extreme has now been activated, mobilized, and fully folded into the mainstream political culture.
That’s why, truth be told, as absolutely revolting, insulting, and disgusting I find him and his thoughts to be. I say, don’t try to quiet him.
At some point people need to get it and hear, without editing, what the essentials of the current right in the US are. Paladino lets us know.
That’s what we are up against folks. That level of venom and hate and phobia and toxicity. We need to understand that and know it every day.
Paladino has the potential to actually be useful in that way.
Too often in our political life, we allow awful things to be glossed over. I’m over that. We need to stop being afraid to be lefty-progressives full-on, and we also need to hear the toxic swamp of venom that the right wing is now the standard bearer of.
Let Paladino run his mouth.
(I know, I know…..we risk normalizing his venom. I get all the downsides of the point I’m making. Just something to think about. Paladino is the voice of the worst parts of our political and social life. We should understand that)
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Proud moment for John King, Bill Gates and DFER, to be on the same side of the education agenda as former racist Georgia Governor/Senator Talmadge and Buffalo’s Paladino?
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Seconded
Except he is not alt right, just merely a 21st century Republican .
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This piece of human garbage calls it ‘old-style humor’ like Trump labeled his conversation about assaulting women, as ‘locker room” talk. Thes are creepy human beings who for too long have been allowed to behave badly with no consequence. I say let’s set Pallidino ‘loose in Buffalo’… so he has no connection to a school board or any government office, except the inside of the state lunatic asylum.
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On topic and a good analyses explains the deplorables and the white working class . Explains why almost everyone that I know who voted for Trump was deplorable yet some!!! had voted for Obama at least once.
“This argument does not ignore bigotry. Racism appeared more concentrated among Trump voters. One poll found that four in 10 Trump supporters said blacks were more “lazy” than whites, compared with one-quarter of Clinton or John Kasich supporters.
But traits are not motives and don’t necessarily decide votes. Consider that four in 10 liberal Democrats, the largest share of any group, said in 2011 that they would hold a Mormon candidate’s faith against him or her. It would be silly to argue that, therefore, liberals voted for Mr. Obama because Mitt Romney was Mormon.”
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and good not and a good
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Even for a racist comment, that is unusually vile.
Andrew Cuomo’s two runs for governor were the only times I ever cast a third-party protest vote (for Howie Hawkins on the Green ticket), and I did it only after ascertaining that Cuomo was a shoo-in. I was repulsed by Cuomo’s attacks on public-sector unions. If the race had been close, I would have voted reluctantly for Cuomo. Crazy Carl was beyond the pale.
Now, after this year’s election, I’ll have to be twice as careful before casting a protest vote.
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Miminqueens: It’s so blatant, like with Trump, one would think they were moving the scrimmage line on purpose.
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“someone published his private communications.”
Private communications, my foot!
We’re often warned about the non-privacy of email, and it’s easy to forget about it. But these remarks were neither a social-media post nor a personal email to a friend. They were answers to a questionnaire, for possible or probable publication in a Western New York culture magazine. They were meant to be public.
Chutzpah, thy name is Palladino.
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http://www.dailypublic.com/articles/02152017/demonstrators-shut-down-buffalo-school-board-meeting
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