Pittsburgh area fire chief who called Mike Tomlin a racial slur resigns

Paul Smith, the chief of the Muse Township Volunteer Fire Department who proudly declared he was putting Pittsburgh Steelers coach Mike Tomlin on his list of “no good [racial slur],” resigned his post on Tuesday.

As typically happens in these cases, Smith said he regretted his words (doubtful, since he punctuated the Facebook missive with “Yes I said it”), and after his racist remark made national headlines, he of course looked to blame anyone but himself for his hateful words.

“I regret what I said deeply and I am not the racist the media portrays me as. What I said was wrong and posted in anger,” Smith said a statement sent to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

The Cecil town manager said he fielded nearly 1,000 calls and emails from around the world in a roughly 48-hour span after word spread of what Smith had written.

Smith wasn’t the only public official who wound up losing his job after posting to social media in recent days, after an increased number of NFL players kneeled during the national anthem, both to protest inequality and injustice and as a response to the profane words of President Donald Trump, who called protesting players “sons of bitches.”

Jonathan Marotti, a volunteer firefighter in Earle, Arkansas, has been relieved of his duties after a rambling Facebook rant in which he said players who kneel “should b shot in the head” by snipers positioned in stadiums by Trump, and protesters in general “should b shot on sight.”

And in Brockton, Massachusetts, Stephen Pina was asked to tender his resignation as an appointed member of the city’s board of parks and recreation after calling Patriots players who kneeled on Sunday “turds” in a response to a local television station’s post on the protest. Pina also wrote, “dance monkey dance” and actually said he didn’t mean anything racially when he said it (if you believe him, may I offer you some oceanfront property in Idaho?).

Pina was also asked to step down as a coach for the Brockton Boxers Pop Warner team; as of the 2010 census, roughly 40 percent of Brockton’s citizens were African-American. Pina’s conduct is also being reviewed by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs – he works at the V.A. in Providence, Rhode Island.

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