San Antonio community tabloid bashes county judge using front-page racial slur

A San Antonio community tabloid infamous for its inflammatory cover illustrations bashed Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff by using a racial slur on its edition released Wednesday. The San Antonio Observer's latest headline, superimposed over a photo of Wolff, reads "No (racial expletive) Allowed." The San Antonio Express-News blurred the image. less A San Antonio community tabloid infamous for its inflammatory cover illustrations bashed Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff by using a racial slur on its edition released Wednesday. The San Antonio Observer's ... more Photo: Screenshot Photo: Screenshot Image 1 of / 41 Caption Close San Antonio community tabloid bashes county judge using front-page racial slur 1 / 41 Back to Gallery

SAN ANTONIO — An East Side community tabloid infamous for its inflammatory cover illustrations bashed Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff by using a racial slur on its edition released Wednesday.

The San Antonio Observer's latest front-page headline, superimposed over a photo of Wolff, reads "No (racial expletive) Allowed." The Express-News blurred the expletive in the image above.

The cover teases to a press release written by former civil rights attorney James Myart slamming local officials for appointing a Hispanic man to a County Court-at-Law seat on Feb. 2 that was vacated by an African-American judge appointed to a higher court by Gov. Rick Perry.

Myart — who lost his law license in 2008 after pleading guilty to stealing more than $13,000 from client Heriberto "Herb" Huerta, founder of the Texas Mexican Mafia — called the commissioners' decision in an interview with the Express-News "a racist position to ignore the black community and I blame the county judge for this oversight, even benign neglect of black lawyers and the black community."

Wolff brushed off the eye-catching headline as "free speech" and the criticism as unfounded in a phone interview with the Express-News Wednesday.

Wolff said commissioners previously filled the same position with an African-American judge — Linda Penn, who was defeated in the 2010 Democratic primary — and have appointed African-Americans to several other county positions.

"I've got a record, and so does the court, of supporting African-Americans," Wolff said. "They can say what they want to say, it's free speech."

Hattie Kelly — president of the Texas Publishers Association, of which the Observer is a member — condemned the cover in a phone interview Thursday.

Kelly said the association's executive committee will meet Saturday to consider the cover. She said the paper's owner, Waseem Ali, is expected to attend.

"I can tell you that 99.5 percent of the Texas Publishers Association will not condone the cover because the cover does not speak for us as a unit or an organization," Kelly said.

Myart, who acknowledged he had no part in selecting the paper's headline, defended the newspaper's use of the word, saying it properly conveyed what he believed was the Commissioners Court's message to the black community in San Antonio.

"It was a racist act for three Democrats to not appoint a black lawyer as a judge," Myart said.

Myart had apologized to Wolff for the release but retracted it Wednesday, calling it "a mistake at a moment of weakness for my friends who don't give a good goddamn about me."

Wolff and county commissioners Paul Elizondo and Sergio "Chico" Rodriguez were targeted by the publication for voting to appoint John A. Longoria to serve the remaining two years in the County Court-at-Law No. 5's current term at a Feb. 2 meeting.

Judge Jason Pulliam, a Republican who was appointed to the 4th Court of Appeals by Gov. Rick Perry last year, was the only African-American judge serving on one of the 15 Bexar County Court-at-Law seats.

Attempts to reach staff at the Observer on Wednesday yielded mixed results. A man who claimed to be part of the Observer Newspaper Group refused to identify himself in a phone interview, but defended the paper's decision to run the image after a reporter called a number listed in the publication. The man said the publication prints about 10,000 copies of each weekly edition.

The man gave a separate number for someone he claimed was the newspaper's editor, but a call to that number was not returned.

The Observer, a free tabloid-format paper primarily circulated on the city's East Side, has a history of publishing incendiary covers: in 2010, the paper published the cover headline "Is the Bexar County Elections Administrator a Racist?"

The paper ran an illustration in 2009 featuring the faces of two San Antonio Police Department officers and then-Chief William McManus superimposed onto men wearing 1930s gangster suits while holding guns with the headline "SAPD RAPIST."

It published a doctored photograph depicting a San Antonio police officer holding a handgun while wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood.

In 2005, it ran a photo doctored to make then-Mayor Phil Hardberger appear as if he was sitting on a toilet.

A disclaimer printed in the inside cover page of the publication reads: "The names and characters used in the San Antonio Observer, fiction and non-fiction, are fictitious and are parody and are not to be taken seriously."

Judges in Texas are elected, but can be appointed to fill a vacancy in order to serve the remainder of an elected term.

San Antonio Express-News archives contributed to this story.

jfechter@mySA.com

Twitter: @JFreports