Los Alamitos, CA – The mayor of a small Southern California city says he will resign after being criticized for sharing an e-mail picture depicting the White House lawn planted with watermelons under the title “No Easter egg hunt this year.”
Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose issued a statement Thursday saying he is sorry and will step down as mayor at Monday’s City Council meeting.
Grose came under fire for sending the picture to what he called “a small group of friends.” One of the recipients, a local businesswoman and city volunteer, publicly scolded the mayor for his actions.
Grose says he accepts that the e-mail was in poor taste and has affected his ability to lead the city. Grose said he didn’t mean to offend anyone and claimed he was unaware of the racial stereotype linking black people with eating watermelons.
Located in Orange County, Los Alamitos is a 2 1/4-square-mile city of around 12,000 people.
(Source: Associated Press)
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2 Responses
This could be a bad trend. If we ban boorish fools from public service, we might have trouble recruiting people to become politicians, and then who will we make bad jokes about (okay, we could make jokes about bankers, if there are any left)
I don’t see how this man could not know the implications of ‘watermelons and its connection to african americans’. Let this continue with other ethnic groups and see what trouble it may arouse. Its good to see that he resigned; sorry for the poor judgement.