By Steve Sailer
02/06/2019
From The New York Times:
Cubs Owners Reel After Emails of Family Patriarch Come Out
By Kevin Draper, Feb. 5, 2019
Major League Baseball and the Chicago Cubs moved to distance themselves from one of their own Tuesday, after the news outlet Splinter published a cache of racist emails sent and received by Joe Ricketts, the billionaire whose family owns the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field.
Many of the published emails, sent between 2009 to 2013, focused on a fear of Muslims and contained conspiracy theories about former President Barack Obama. The false assertion that Obama, who identifies as Protestant, was Muslim and born outside the United States were prevalent in right-wing politics during his presidency.
In one email, Ricketts wrote to somebody identified only as S.V. that “Christians and Jews can have a mutual respect for each other to create a civil society,” but “Islam cannot do that.” He went on to write that, “we cannot ever let Islam become a large part of our society,”
Ricketts is a white male so he is not allowed to have an opinion on the future of America. As everybody knows, Muslims who don’t live here yet Are Who We Are. We must let Islam become a large part of our society just because some people worry that that wouldn’t be a good idea.
and that “Muslims are naturally my (our) enemy.”
Tom Ricketts continued: “My father is not involved with the operation of the Chicago Cubs in any way.”
In other sports leagues, offensive behavior has led to owners selling their franchises. Donald Sterling was forced to sell the Los Angeles Clippers of the N.B.A. after a tape of him making racist comments became public. Sterling was banned from the league for life. …
For Joe Ricketts, this is not the first time his political activities have harmed the Cubs. He is a major funder of conservative causes and gave $1 million to a political action committee supporting Donald Trump during his presidential campaign….
In 2012, The New York Times reported that Joe Ricketts was considering spending $10 million on a campaign that would attack Obama’s connection to Reverend Jeremiah Wright, a former spiritual adviser who Obama denounced during the 2008 presidential campaign. At the same time, the Cubs were asking Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel for $300 million in public money, as part of a $500 million renovation of Wrigley Field and the surrounding area.
Emanuel, who served in the White House as Obama’s chief of staff, was reportedly “livid” over the proposed campaign, and stopped talking to Cubs officials about the renovation shortly thereafter. The Ricketts family ultimately financed the renovations privately. Those renovations are ongoing.
In a statement Tuesday, Emanuel condemned the emails. “Joe Ricketts once said that I do not share his values. Truer words were never spoken,” he said. “The ignorance and intolerance he has espoused are not welcome in Chicago. I am proud not to share his bigoted opinions. Hate has no home in Chicago.”
After the NYT reporter hung up, Mayor Emanuel reiterated:
“Hate has no home home in Chicago. I am proud to say, however, that anti-Muslim hate has a home in my old house in suburban Wilmette, IL, where my father Dr. Benjamin M. Emanuel still lives. Dad was a member of Menachem Begin’s Irgun militia in 1947-48, or as we like to say back home in Wilmette, the Good Old Days. When I was appointed Obama’s White House chief of staff in 2008, my father explained about my role to the Israeli newspaper Ma’ariv, ‘Obviously he’ll influence the president to be pro-Israel. Why wouldn’t he? What is he, an Arab? He’s not going to be mopping floors at the White House.’ My father taught me everything I know about the utility of, uh, “population transfers.” Do you realize who used to live right next to the Gold Coast at Cabrini-Green, driving down property values? You’d be amazed. We bulldozed Cabrini-Green and affirmatively furthering fair housinged the welfare moms’ asses out to Dubuque, Iowa like Dad and Mr. Begin did to the Muslims back in the 1940s. Then we got Obama to sue Dubuque for not welcoming them! My dad really appreciated that topping of chutzpah. My brother Ari, co-chairman of the William Morris Agency, did too. It reminded him of how he stabbed Mike Ovitz in the back. No, I don’t know about the opinion of my brother Ezekiel, the famous ethicist. Nobody in our family ever listens to him. I mean, when you are mayor of Chicago or chairman of a top Hollywood talent agency, who has time for ethics? So Ezekiel just gives more lectures on how the rest of the world has to behave better. It’s a living, I guess …”
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