Carl Paladino's Beyond-the-Pale E-mails

It's only Monday and it's already clear it's going to be a tough week for Republicans looking to be elected governor. On top of Steve Levy's scrambling to explain how he came to share his house in Suffolk County with a twice-convicted scam-artist attorney, comes news from Buffalo that Carl Paladino likes to hit the send button on not-so-cute e-mails.

Among a score of Paladino e-mails released this morning by WNYmedia.net are these astonishingly tasteless messages -- even for a publication like ours that specializes in male body part metaphors:

• A video titled "Obama inauguration rehearsal" depicting African tribesmen dancing.
• Obama and First Lady photo-shopped to appear dressed in someone's idea of pimp and hooker garb.
• A bestiality video.
• Miss France allegedly servicing a happy recipient.

Celeste Katz, the new Daily Politics blogger, tracked down Paladino campaign manager Michael Caputo for a response. Caputo dismisses the e-mails as "off-color" and "politically incorrect," as opposed to, say, outrageously racist and juvenile. The spokesman says this may be rivals of the Tea Party favorite trying to get the discussion off of S&M parlors (see Levy item). Here's his full comment to the News:

"Carl Paladino has forwarded close friends hundreds of email messages he received. Many of these emails he received were off color, some were politically incorrect, few represented his own opinion, and almost none of them were worth remembering. We're not surprised the political establishment feels threatened by Carl's drive the take Albany back for taxpayers. Our campaign won't be wading through the details of what is just another liberal Democrat blog smear. It figures that members of the Party who brought us record taxes, record spending and record debt would want to change the topic from reform to having sex with horses and S&M parlors."

This just in from Team Levy, which feels compelled to respond for some reason: "For the record, we have absolutely nothing to do with Mr. Paladino's email problem. Quite frankly, I don't see how it would even be possible. Are they suggesting that we somehow took control of Mr. Paladino's computer?"