O.C. Councilman Is Called Racist for Simpson Remarks : Opinion: Laguna Niguel’s Rose risks censure for using city stationery to assail jury. He says he’s bitter, not racist.

A letter by Councilman Eddie Rose about the O.J. Simpson verdict, described by critics as a racist diatribe, has prompted city officials to consider a formal censure.

Written on city stationery carrying the names of all the council members and sent to several newspapers, the letter says the Simpson jury “chose to ignore the overwhelming evidence in the case in order to let a ‘brother’ go free.” The letter slams jurors as biased incompetents and calls the panel “racially stacked.” It praises the professionalism of the prosecution, but says their logic “was no match for the slick, jive-talking rhetoric of [Simpson defense attorney] Johnnie Cochran.”

While Rose defended the letter, it drew outrage from some leaders in the African American community and city officials, who said it was littered with racist buzzwords.

The letter “reeked of hatred,” Mayor Mark Goodman said. “We’ve been dragged into something that’s hard to dignify.”

City officials are considering calling a special Oct. 30 meeting to discuss censuring Rose. Goodman said City Atty. Terry Dixon is researching whether the city legally can censure him for a letter that, so far, has not been printed by any newspaper.

Ron Coley, leader of the 100 Black Men of Orange County, said he is “both shocked and disappointed that a public official would use his public position in a way that has the implications expressed by that statement.”

A similar controversy occurred in January when Rose cast the only vote against a city resolution honoring the late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. Rose said King had “done a lot of good” but had a “dubious background” and often surrounded himself with Communists.

Rose on Friday rejected any notion that the letter is racist.

“I don’t know of any reference to race in that letter,” he said. He added, “I’m not politically correct, that’s for sure. Rush Limbaugh and I don’t worry much about being politically correct.”

Rose said he thinks “racism is evil. I’m very bitter about [the Simpson verdict] but that doesn’t make me racist by any means.”

He added, ‘I don’t think racism, as bad as it is, is not as bad as butchering two people and then going out on the golf course and having a good time.”

He called the talk of censure by Goodman, a longtime political opponent, part of a personal vendetta by the mayor. As far as his use of city stationery, he said, “I don’t know of any city ordinance that prohibits that.”

One of the most controversial parts of the two-page letter criticizes the “elitist media” whose followers “idolize these semi-literate athletes who, were it not for their prowess in running a football or dunking a basketball, would probably be out pimping or dealing drugs on some street corner.”

“I was referring to semi-literate athletes,” he said. “They could be blacks, they could be whites, they could be Hispanics.”

Although Rose maintains he didn’t have African Americans in mind when he wrote about “semi-literate athletes,” the councilman conceded that “I could see where someone could perceive that.”

Critics say Rose’s letter is full of comments that indirectly refer to racial stereotypes.

The letter, for example touches on the controversy about whether the Simpson case should have been held in Downtown Los Angeles, where the jury pool has a greater number of minorities, instead of courthouses in West Los Angeles (where the slayings occurred) or Santa Monica, where the jury pool is mainly white.

In West Los Angeles or Santa Monica, Rose wrote, “jurors could have been selected who were willing to listen and able to understand the evidence. For no matter how powerful and how compelling the evidence, it is to no avail when presented to a jury too ignorant to comprehend it.”

Cathy Lawhon, an editor at the Laguna Niguel News, said she debated whether to publish the letter.

“One part of me wanted to run it because people in Laguna Niguel wanted to know how he thinks,” she said. “But then I thought it would do more harm than good to run it. I felt it was mean-spirited.”

Bill Wood, vice chair of the county Human Relations Commission, said, “The big question is, is this his view or the City Council’s view? On official letterhead, that gives it some kind of authority it wouldn’t have had otherwise.”

Goodman said his inclination to call a special meeting has nothing to do with his acknowledged political enemy other than the desire to distance the council from some of the sentiments in Rose’s letter.

“I think a special meeting is necessary in all likelihood to let people know we don’t tolerate racism in Laguna Niguel,” Goodman said. “The bottom line is we can’t censure a guy for speaking his mind, but what we can do is censure him for sending out this hate on city letterhead with all [the council members’] names attached.”