Got your racially insensitive emails here

The true story behind Ghetto Promgate '06
I can't bring myself to watch any of the cable channels that feature sports programming, but I would imagine that this story has been making the rounds. As mentioned in the previous post, there was a story about it in the Sports section of the New York Times. I first noticed it last night via a link to my site from the infamous Free Republic.

In case you haven't heard, Eric Govan, a public relations manager for the Golden State Warriors was fired yesterday for sending out a racially insensitive email titled "Ghetto Prom."

The Sports Section of Record sayeth:

Eric Govan, the No. 3 person on the Warriors' media relations staff, sent the e-mail featuring 17 photos, many depicting scantily clad black people in formal attire and commentary on the outfits. The e-mail went to dozens of newspaper reporters, columnists and sports editors, as well as television and radio stations.

Supposedly, he only meant to send the email - a forwarded message - to his wife, but somehow he pressed the wrong button or some shit. He quickly fired off an apology email.

Again, the LJR media:

''You just received a previous forwarded e-mail titled 'Ghetto Prom' that was sent accidentally,'' Govan wrote. ''I assure you that this is totally out of character for myself and want to apologize to anyone who might be offended. My sincere apologies. This won't happen again and shouldn't have happened this time.''

But alas the damage had been done; the story was out, homeboy was fired, and my site began to receive a torrent of visitors looking for said ghetto prom pictures. Because I guess no real media organizations saw fit to run them along with the story.

Here's the thing: I haven't seen the actual email myself, but I'm assuming - though there are a few different sets of ghetto prom pictures floating around the 'Nets - that these are the same pictures I ran on this site going on a year ago.

How do I know this? The email I got the pictures from, which was sent to me by my mother, had 17 pictures in it, just like the email in question. My post featured 16 of the 17 pictures - I didn't post the very last one, titled "ghettoes," here because it was a picture of a woman with really long toenails, and it made me gag to look at it.

So fine, you're saying, you once got the same email this jagoff got. As some unfortunate black youth in the comments of the previous post wisely pointed out, that email obviously circulated quite a bit in the past year. Indeed, I'll admit that I didn't personally travel to Appalachia with a shitty digital camera and take these pictures.

There, I said it. The cat's out the bag. Also, not to further ruin the effect for those of you at home reading this, but I'm not actually inside your computer. I know, I know... that's the magic of the Internet, or - as it was called in '96 - "the information superhighway."

But then the Times story mentioned something about commentary on the outfits.

I didn't seem to recall there being any commentary attached to the pictures when I received them. After all, anyone who's taken a stroll through the blogosphere lately would know that any mouthbreather with a functioning PC can post pictures of things, sans any useful context.

So I went and dug up the original email. Lo and behold, there was no commentary along with these pictures. I'm assuming, then, that it was my comments (as featured at some point or another on roughly every third site on the Internets) that were included in this email.

As they say in the biz, developing...