Thread by @RexHuppke

1/ Joe Ricketts' money was used to buy the Chicago Cubs. And we now know he responded to an email that included the phrase “sand diggin’ raghead bastards” by writing: “This is cute.” He thinks Islam is evil. He thinks multiculturalism is bad.

chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/h…

2/ He wrote "I like this" in response to an email that preached white pride and used every racial slur in the book.

Already I'm hearing from people who say, "Hey, he has nothing to do with the Cubs operation. His children run everything." To which I say: So what?

3/ The elder Ricketts bankrolled the purchase. And what's revealed in these emails is not something that can be written off as a poor choice of words. He was swimming in the same fetid swamps as the worst of the paranoid, racist, anti-Muslim conspiracy theorists out there.

4/ And it's the people who dwell in those swamps who are to blame for much of the hatred fomented by Donald Trump. In fact, they can be blamed a lot for Trump's ascendancy. The vapid conspiracy theorizing of scared white men is doing substantive damage to this country, every day.

5/ I expect nothing from Ricketts himself. People that deep in it are unlikely to see the light. But the Ricketts children, the ones who actually run the Cubs organization, have a hell of a lot more to do than just say, "This doesn't represent our views." They need to step up.

6/ They need to speak out, loudly and in no uncertain terms, about the danger of this kind of thinking. They need to make it their mission to fight against the kind of garbage that radicalizes inexplicably aggrieved people like Joe Ricketts and turns them into fact-averse dolts.

7/ There's an opportunity to do something positive, on a large scale and with the platform that comes with the Chicago Cubs organization. Frankly, I don't expect the Ricketts family will do a damn thing. But they sure as hell should. This is unacceptable on every level.

8/ And there's no excuse or carefully worded statement that's going to make it right. END