Here's a related news story:

http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2009/9/27/786966/-Racist-Email-Costs-Bloomington-IN-Exec-His-Job
Racist Email Costs Bloomington IN Exec His Job
by HeartlandLiberal
Sun Sep 27, 2009 at 10:23:34 AM PDT


Here are some excerpts from that diary:

"...an email sent from a company account has cost an executive with a health insurance company his job in Bloomingon, Indiana...


"The following quotes from the Sunday, September 27th, 2009 edition of the Bloomington, IN Herald-Times, the local newspaper...

'City cutting ties with Hylant Group Executive who sent anti-Obama e-mails has resigned

Bloomington will suspend its work with Hylant Group of Bloomington after a vice president sent an insensitive and racially charged e-mail on his company account, Mayor Mark Kruzan said Saturday..."

Also, a Hylant Group executive said Saturday that he had accepted the resignation of Denton "Denny" Flahualt, the Hylant vice president who sent the racially charged e-mail..."

Hylant does not have a contract with the city, but acts as a middleman between the city and insurance carriers. Hylant reviews and analyzes insurances plans from carriers and then provides the city with input as to which plan the city should choose. The insurance carriers, and not the city, pay Hylant.

Kruzan said it was a combination of the inappropriateness of the e-mail and the company's response to it that led to his decision.

"It's not even a close call that there has to be a response from the city of Bloomington as a Hylant customer," Kruzan said. "That response is not to do business with the company in 2010."

"The company's lack of direct ownership of the issue requires that the city act in a way that makes it clear that we expect more from companies with whom we're doing business," Kruzan said.

-snip-

"A day after Hylant Group of Bloomington was honored as the Greater Bloomington Chamber of Commerce's Large Business of the Year, a vice president for the company is being assailed for sending out an inappropriate and racially-tinged e-mail on his company account, using his company signature.

The e-mail includes various images of President Barack Obama: as a communist, as Adolf Hitler, as the nerdy African-American child character Steve Urkel from the television show "Family Matters," and as Mad magazine icon Alfred E. Neuman. One image depicts Obama, surrounded by communist and Muslim symbols, urinating on a map of the United States.

...

On Thursday, Denton "Denny" Flahault, vice president of Hylant Group of Bloomington, acknowledged sending the e-mail. "Unfortunately, yes," he said. "It was not intended for the individual who received it and it was completely a mistake."

Jon Strole, regional chief operating officer for the Hylant Group, also said it was a mistake by an employee. "We do have a policy for employees in terms of you are not supposed to use your office e-mail to send personal things of that nature. We will deal with that internally," he said.

"Denny has apologized to the Kiwanis organization and that has been accepted by their folks," the Toledo-based corporate officer said.

Williams, the blogging journalist, linked the e-mailed images to the "pernicous racism" underlying attacks on the president, particularly over his call for health care reform. Audrey McCluskey, director of the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center at Indiana University, viewed the materials and wrote in an e-mail that they were "very much racially-tinged."

She continued: "The easiest response would be to keep the temperature up by branding this outrageous slander as racist and giving the perpetrators the attention they crave. My question is, what is it about the American character that produces such images, and why do so many good people remain quiet in the face of it?"
Carolyn Calloway-Thomas, associate professor in the department of communicaions and culture at IU, termed the images "brutal and very disturbing" and wrote: "The images also serve as awful, scary replacements for argument and reason, which should be elevated in civic discourse. If health care matters and President Obama's public polices ARE THE main issues under contention, then why is it necessary for one to resort to pushing images of President Obama with a dark mustache (with a swastika nearby) against a red background — all signifying that President Obama IS Hitler? Words and images matter!" "