Racist Rant Not Worth the Stationery It Was Written On

Eddie Rose, the councilman from Laguna Niguel, was outraged.

Normally, that would be worth a yawn or two, and on we go. We all get outraged from time to time; we deal with it.

But beware the outraged man with access to City Hall stationery.

It seems that Mr. Rose didn’t like the O.J. Simpson verdict and felt obligated as a citizen/councilman to say so in a letter, written on official stationery, to newspapers.

Rose was entitled to vent his spleen on the verdict; after all, everyone else in America did.

It’s what he wrote, though, that revealed far more than you like to see in a public official. Beyond that, it is how Rose has reacted to the subsequent criticism of his letter that reveals even more about him.

All in all, not a pretty package.

Like a lot of us, Rose howled at the verdict. It is possible, however, to criticize the verdict without tossing around ugly racial innuendoes. Rose failed that test miserably.

When he was called on that, however, he compounded his felony by insisting that nothing in his letter was racist. After reading his letter, I can’t tell whether he’s insulting our intelligence or his own by saying it is devoid of racist content.

To be sure, Rose makes several racially neutral remarks. To his way of thinking, that seems to get him off the hook. Praising Chris Darden apparently assuages Rose’s conscience that he doesn’t have a racist thought in his head.

Yet, he casts his complaints in racial terms immediately by writing in his second sentence that the jury ignored evidence “in order to let a ‘brother’ go free. . . . “

He then asserts as if fact that the case shouldn’t have been tried in Downtown Los Angeles, but in West L.A. or Santa Monica, “where jurors could have been selected who were willing to listen and able to understand the evidence.”

I’d venture to say Rose knows nothing about the intelligence of the jurors in the Simpson case or how they might compare specifically to 12 people chosen from West L.A. And because he doesn’t, he’s forced to stereotype them, or his argument falls apart.

Rose then refers to the “ . . . jive-talking rhetoric of Johnnie Cochran” and describes the jury as “already predisposed toward O.J. Simpson.”

Note to Mr. Rose: You can’t possibly make that assertion about total strangers without engaging in racial stereotype.

It is his next paragraph, though, that reveals that a Rose by any other name is upset by more than just the verdict for acquittal:

“But perhaps the real culprits in this travesty,” Rose writes, “are the elitist media and their sheep-like followers [he means you, sports fans] who glorify and 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.”

If Rose truly believes it isn’t blatantly racist to depict football running backs (why not offensive guards, Mr. Rose?) or basketball players--90% of whom are black--as likely candidates for drug dealers or pimps, he is either a fool or a liar.

Rose concludes his letter by talking about dual systems of justice--one for the rich and one for the poor. And he asks for God’s vengeance upon O.J. Simpson.

Maybe he threw that in to show us he could express his displeasure without resorting to racist innuendo. Somehow, though, it got lost on Rose that he succumbed to the same sin of which he righteously accused Cochran: playing the race card.

Truth is, I’m not interested in playing the “you’re a racist” game. Sometimes we’re enlightened by calling someone on alleged racist or sexist remarks, but more often than not, it turns into a tiresome game played by hypocrites. Writing that letter doesn’t make Eddie Rose a racist. It only shows he can make racist statements when he’s angry and has time on his hands.

That puts him in a large camp in America, full of both blacks and whites. A lot of us harbor thoughts about people, based on race. They inevitably prove to be unsupportable. In this instance, it might have helped Rose to remember that even the most strident anti-Simpson legal analysts were saying for weeks before the verdict that the jury probably had grounds for finding reasonable doubt.

The council says it is considering censuring Rose for using city stationery to express his views. If I were on the council, I wouldn’t trivialize things by reducing it to a matter of stationery.

His letter deserves condemnation, period. It doesn’t matter how many citizens rally to his side. It doesn’t matter whether he didn’t specify “black” or “African American” anywhere in the letter.

The words speak for themselves. It doesn’t matter whether they were written on parchment or a cocktail napkin.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, CA 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.