News-Record.com

We can only speculate what state Alcoholic Beverage Commission Chairman Doug Fox may have been drinking when he transmitted a racist e-mail about President Barack Obama 14 days after the election.

The e-mail, uncovered by a Charlotte Observer reporter, depicted a watermelon patch on the White House grounds. “There goes the neighborhood,” the caption above it said.

Now Fox is the former ABC chairman.

Gov. Bev Perdue rightly saw to that this week after news of the e-mail surfaced.

What it is about the Internet that makes people do such dumb things with the “Send” button remains a cosmic mystery.

It also recalls whole stacks of e-mails former District Court Judge William L. Daisy dispersed to other judges, lawyers and public officials.

Those e-mails were not only racist — offending, in fact, several groups, not just one — but sexist as well, and sexually explicit.

At least Daisy, who a year later got into more hot water over complaints of sexual harassment from courthouse employees — and was censured — made an apology.

Fox simply said he was resigning to make way for new blood.

The governor was more direct.

“I have accepted Doug Fox’s letter of resignation,” Perdue said. “E-mails and images of this nature are offensive and unacceptable.”

I’ll drink to that.