Mark Johnson, News & Observer (Raleigh), May 6, 2009
Gov. Beverly Perdue asked for—and received—the resignation of N.C. Alcoholic Beverage Commission Chairman Doug Fox on Tuesday, just hours after newspapers provided Perdue’s office with a copy of a racist photo illustration sent from Fox’s e-mail address after last November’s election.
The e-mail included an altered photo of the White House that turned the South Lawn into an enormous watermelon patch. The phrase, “There goes the neighborhood . . .” was printed above the photo.
The e-mail was sent from Fox’s law firm address Nov. 14—10 days after Barack Obama was elected president. The message, which had been forwarded multiple times by others before reaching Fox, contained no text other than the subject line, “how true.”
Fox made no mention of the e-mail in his resignation letter, suggesting instead that he was leaving voluntarily.
{snip}
But Perdue indicated in a statement Tuesday afternoon that the resignation was linked to the e-mail.
“I have accepted Doug Fox’s letter of resignation,” Perdue said. “E-mails and images of this nature are offensive and unacceptable.”
{snip}
E-mail went to lobbyist
The lobbyist who received the e-mail from Fox, Bill Hester, refused to speak with the newspapers when contacted by phone and e-mail. He represents Southern Wine & Spirits, a major liquor distributor.
{snip}
Copies of the altered image of the White House have been bouncing around e-mail boxes across the nation for months. The mayor of a small southern California city, Los Alamitos, resigned in February amid criticism for sending the same watermelon patch photo.
‘That’s pretty tacky’
State Rep. Alma Adams, a Greensboro Democrat and chairwoman of the Legislative Black Caucus, applauded Perdue’s actions.
“That’s pretty tacky,” Adams said of the image. “It’s insulting to our president.”
{snip}
Circulate this cartoon and lose your job.
Original article
Email
Mark Johnson
at mjohnson@charlotteobserver.com .
(Posted on May 6, 2009)
Comments
There goes any respect I had for Gov. Perdue. Can you believe she actually sold herself as more right-wing than Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory, and enough NCians bought it? Then again, from what I understand about NC, there is a quiet tension between Charlotte and the rest of the state, in that NC outside of Charlotte thinks of Charlotte as “snooty” and presenting a “holier than the rest of NC” attitude. It doesn’t surprise me that the Mayor of Charlotte couldn’t get enough votes outside of Charlotte.
I don’t remember anyone getting even close to fired for the thousands and tens of thousands of crude, insulting words and depictions of former President Bush as an ignorant, non-reading, no-talking chimp, shrub, and all-around idiot warmonger for the past eight years.
I’m not white, I didn’t vote for Obama, but fair is fair.
You can’t hold the world’s most powerful and famous job and not expect to be ridiculed on a regular basis.
Does this mean that all the email critical of George Bush will also cost people their jobs? Will it at least keep them from being appointed to high Federal positions or on the cabinet?
If they think this picture is bad and intolerable……just you wait, sonny. There is LOTS MORE coming soon.
“Copies of the altered image of the White House have been bouncing around e-mail boxes across the nation for months. The mayor of a small southern California city, Los Alamitos, resigned in February amid criticism for sending the same watermelon patch photo.”
Laughing Out Loud, in utter abject disgust!
So Comrade BO isn’t to be parodied, even on the watermelon speculations?
Has anyone asked him if he likes watermelon, or might he prefer bananas?
More complicated is this question: does he prefer watermelon chunks and bananas in a fruit salad, or is it banana-splits with a scoop of watermelon ice cream substituting for the strawberry scoop?
Inquiring minds, need to know!!!
He should have gone with something safe, like Bush as Hitler or Condi Rice as a house slave.
The thought-crime brigade grows in number and power every day and the vise tightens around freedom’s neck.
OK, blacks are stereotyped as liking watermelon. So what ? Whites are stereotyped as being warlike. Which is worse? Yet, if a white president were in office (especially a Repub) and a cartoonist depicted the White House front lawn as being studded with nuclear warheads or crosses (indicating a cemetery), it would have been applauded as a brilliant piece of political satire. Just another of the countless double-standards of today’s Twilight-Zone-bizarre society.
Lose your job and be publicly humiliated over something “tacky.” This mad Big Brother, humorless speech control is worse than the Soviet Union in the 1970s. This a true danger to society.
While the Bush administration was subject to outright attacks far, far worse I’m not going to argue that point.
The larger issue is: Who is complicit in this nonsense? The MSM for chasing down private emails and looking for “gotcha” material. African-Americans for a so-called sensitivity that only further points out their “blame others” mentality. The governor for caving to some unseen political pressure.
This behavior feeds on itself. The USA is turning into a pseudo-dictatorship run by, at best, self-righteous mediocre minds better suited to a banana republic. With all of the larger problems imagine the wasted time and energy over a benign picture that has been on the internet for months anyway.
What a shame that our once-robust and iconoclastic sense of humor about those in high places has come a cropper with our “first black president.” This is the result of the brainwashing of students in our schools for the last 45 years. All too often, young people nowadays can’t spell, can’t structure a sentence, can’t punctuate, can’t do math — but they can spot an “unforgivable” racial slur 10 miles away, and will go into transports of profane outrage over it.
Dictatorships and autocracies allow no poking of fun at their “Great Ones”; I fear we’re heading in that direction at a gallop.
It’s interesting that people have absolutely no coping capacity.
This reminds me of the old story of Groucho Marx’s reply when told he wouldn’t be allowed into a certain country club because he was a Jew. He said [He wouldn’t want to be a memeber of any club that would have him for a member]. He did more to loosen up the restrictions against Jews with that remark than all the arm twisting going on today to force people to accept this man as their president will ever do. I always thought laughter was the best medicine.
I think the obamists should try to understand the old saying that “for every action, there’s an equal and opposite reaction.” Who knows, it might do them some good.
I’ll tell you one thing, this guy Fox might’ve been just joking when he sent that email, but now he’s acommitted anti-obaman. I would guess his family too.
Tom Iron…
Examples like this show the double standard of the media more than anything else. All of a sudden, making fun of the president of the United States is “offensive and unacceptable.” Imagine newspapers acting this way when Bush or even Clinton was president. There would be an outcry over censorship by these same people.
It’s like George Allen. He’s standing on stage, in public, with a man pointing a camera at him that he knows is out to nail him and yet he uses the word ‘macaca’.
Question Diversity:
I read in the papers here that a Charlotte mayor can’t get elected governor,.. but I did vote McCrory and couldn’t believe he lost. Good ol’ Sheriff Taylor up in Maybury was even doing commercials for Perdue.
‘I always thought laughter was the best medicine.’
Lefties are humorless. One of many reasons why they’re so dangerous.
I think Wayne Egnle hit the nail on the head with his post. Just about everything that has been voted on in the past 100 plus days has indicated that. AND….What has happened to our “freedom of speach?” Always, people have different opinions and never does everyone have the same feeling about a particular person so maybe those that can’t live in a country with people with different opinions, should move somewhere more to their liking. If firing jpeople for not loving the elected, then several journalist with different media should get their waling fpapers. misfit
I can’t believe that this cartoon had this effect! I received that same cartoon, and sent it on to others, as others had to me. It’s no big deal! What worms these people are!
“The thought-crime brigade grows in number and power every day and the vise tightens around freedom’s neck.”
No, it’s pretty much just white folks.
It was certainly stupid to send that picture through a work e-mail address, but it should have resulted in a reprimand…not the governor inviting Fox to resign under threat of firing.
But, that’s usually how it ends (David Howard…Don Imus…etc…etc…etc.)
-Paradigmhttp://belatedtruth.blogspot.com
“There goes any respect I had for Gov. Perdue. Can you believe she actually sold herself as more right-wing than Charlotte Mayor Pat McCrory,”
Oh, THAT explains it. A woman.
I concur. This image is HILARIOUS. It is also apropos. As a black, Obama should revel in his blackness,(as well as phyrric victory) instead of resorting to the stereotype (double entendre intended) of ‘perpetual victim.’
What with Census bureau now GPS’ing everyone’s front door (!), avoidance on the part of the Predidency for Nat’l Day of Prayer, DHS arresting homeschoolers in NC, and asylum seekers in PA, Napolitano putting out her ‘hit list’ on second amendment types, constitutionalists, religous conservatives, etc., can you for ONE INSTANT take a joke, Barry? No, it would seem megalomania is so boringly self-important, that we cannot even understand that humor is part of the job, when one comes into the public spotlight.
As a bumper sticker I saw sums it all up, ‘How’s this ‘hope’ and ‘change’ working out for you?’
Truly, ‘there goes the neighborhood.’
Liberal Bush deserved all he got and then some and judging by the current situation he caused he should be arrested and put on trial by true conservatives for wasting everything he touched. How far did Bush set back the real conservative movement and not the GOP Lincolnite liberal industrialist crony Yale Harvard elite crowd?
I saw this a few weeks ago and I thought it was funny. But this is just another example of some people who have no sense of humor.
Funny, isn’t it?
Disagree with Bush, you’re a terrorist.
Disagree with BO, you’re a racist AND a terrorist.
Know what…I’ll just think for myself. I know I’m not a terrorist. I don’t need Thought Police to tell me how to think.
Wanna forward a potentially offensive email, then try using your PERSONAL email account.
The gov was put in a bad position - even if she thought the cartoon was funny. Fox should have know better.
Political cartoons have always been a staple of the American scene… including the right to poke fun at the incumbent… from local government up to the White House. How this innocuous cartoon can be deemed “racist” is beyond me. If Obama is THAT sensitive, he’d have been best advised to stay in the Senate.
I suppose the next few years will bring on a cadre of “scanners” operating in a top-secret location, for the express purpose of reading Americans’ minds for anti-Obama thoughts. If detected, heavily armed storm-troopers can be dispatched from the nearest facility to arrest those deemed harboring THOUGHTS deemed offensive on a political, racial or even on sexual orientation basis.
For those of us interested in activism, take note: the fastest and easiest way to erode the authority of the ruling power, is through satire. The very fact that they feel bound to address such a tiny act of resistance with such harsh methods just goes to show that IT HURTS THEM - so we should keep it up.
The regime will end with neither a bang, nor a whimper, but a giggle.
How can one understand such a picture to be a “racist joke” without having been exposed to the stereotype that blacks love watermelon, and thus reveal oneself as at risk of being a knuckle-dragging racist?
I mean, sometimes a watermelon patch is just a watermelon patch, right?
pres:
Even if Fox would have used his personal e-mail account to send it, he’d still be in the same trouble. The libs would use the excuse that any agent of a government should worship at the altar of equality.
Ever seen the Oliphant cartoons of Hoover, Nixon and Senator McCarthy from the 1950’s?
W.A.T.E.R.M.E.L.O.N.S. = “Whites Are Tiptoeing Everywhere ‘Round Much Ethnic Ludicrousness Of Never-ending Sensibilities”
Well, it is a tacky joke. But nobody ever got fired for insulting George W. Bush. I said it before and I’ll say it again: One big advantage of having a white President is you can criticize and even insult him without being called a racist or threatened with losing your job.
Circulate this cartoon and lose your job.