ATWATER – In the past several months Atwater City Councilman Gary Frago has sent at least a half-dozen e-mails to city staff and other prominent community members containing racist jokes aimed at President Barack Obama, his wife and black people in general…

Some compared Obama to O.J. Simpson while others suggested that “nigger rigs” should now be called “presidential solutions.”

Perhaps the most overboard e-mail was sent on Jan. 15. It read: “Breaking News Playboy just offered Sarah Palin $1 million to pose nude in the January issue. Michelle Obama got the same offer from National Geographic.”

Frago admitted sending the e-mails, but showed no regret. “If they’re from me, then I sent them,” he said. “I have no disrespect for the president or anybody, they weren’t meant in any bad way or harm.”

The list of people who either sent or received the e-mails reads like a who’s who of Atwater community and political leadership, including a county supervisor, a former police chief, a city manager, a former city council member, a former president of a veterans group, a former grand knight of the Knights of Columbus, among others.

I appreciate the pure dickery it takes to claim that incredibly racist jokes about the President meant no disrespect. Unless calling Presidential policy “nigger rigs” is a sign of respect in his (incredibly racist) culture, this is the equivalent of saying “no disrespect, but,” and then urinating on somebody’s shoes.

It doesn’t surprise me that this is from a Californian town called Atwater, a little north of Merced in the middle of absolutely nowhere. This is important because what most people think of when they think “California” is a thin strip along the coast. Travel east for a bit and that gloss rubs off, revealing a vast rural wasteland with pockets of exurbia growing like little tumors. Here there be racists like good ol’ Gary Frago, valiantly standing up for the white man’s right to be a brazenly racist dickhole. God bless.