What is it with the recent trend of disgraced politicians insisting their 15 minutes ain't up? The national case is ex-Illinois governor Rod Blagojevich; the local example is former Los Alamitos Mayor Dean Grose, the fool who forwarded along the cartoon to your left with the caption “No Easter egg hunt this year,” then ridiculously claimed he had no clue watermelons are a pickaninny signifier par excellence. Grose resigned both his ceremonial mayoral post and his council seat after a barrage of righteous national outrage over the incident and put Los Al on the map for something other that its boys football team and its quarter-horse race track that's actually in Cypress.
Instead of sinking into the retired life ala former Newport Beach councilmember Dick “Too Many Mexicans on the Corona del Mar State Beach” Nichols, Grose is fighting back. He has a “Friends of Dean Grose” Facebook page that's been up since early February (long before the scandal broke) but now has the following message (all spelling mistakes are his):
On Tuesday, March 2nd, I resigned from public office. On Feb. 23 I sent
an email to a small group of friends that I found humorous. One
recipient, a local woman, didn't and decided to take the email to the
news media. She ignited a fire storm that surged Los Alamitos into
national headlines and brought out the most vile, hatred group of
people from coast to coast. I've been called a racist, bigot, and just
about every other name in the book. I have never been nor am I any of
these things. I have apologized to this woman, several times in the
last 7 days. In order to calm the waters and for the health of my
family and this community, I opted to step aside. I'm accused of having
no spine or gonads because I didn't stand up and fight back. I did what
was asked and apologized. This community, its residents and businesses,
mean too much to me to continue this level of attention. I have learned
that you don't forward emails because you never know who will be
offended on the other end. We, as Americans, are loosing our right to
free speech. We are all one nation, under God, and are created equal. I
believed we had moved beyond the period in our history where people
were discriminated against and bias was previlent. We have serious
issues in the United States when a simple email can spark such a fire
storm.
What a maroon! This isn't a free-speech issue, Dean: it's a moron issue, and you're definitely one. Your reasoning is bizarre: so, because we now have a black man in the White House, it's okay to play around with racist tropes? Yeah, since we beat down Hitler, time to bust out those gas-oven funnies!
You're a white man in America, Dean. I'm sure you saw the below clips at some point in your childhood. You are no longer my Facebook friend!
