A California Republican who e-mailed a racist “family photo” of President Barack Obama superimposed as a chimpanzee is now facing widespread criticism.
State Assembly member Marilyn Davenport, who later apologized, says she received and forwarded the Obama email because she “thought it was funny.”
Not the word a lot of people are using to describe it.
Here’s the image the GOP official emailed out to dozens of friends and fellow Republicans, featuring Obama as a baby chimpanzee with its parents …
The moron who forwarded this has apologized in two statements.
“To my fellow Americans and to everyone else who has seen this e-mail I forwarded and was offended by my action, I humbly apologize and ask for your forgiveness of my unwise behavior,” the 74-year-old Davenport wrote.
“At the time I forwarded the e-mail, I didn’t stop to think about the historic implications and other examples of how this could be offensive.”
“I would never do anything to intentionally harm or berate others regardless of ethnicity. Everyone who knows me knows that to be true.”
Ostensibly, this was part of a joke tying into the ongoing Obama birth certificate controversy. But this is taking it pretty far over the line.
Despite the apologies, Davenport, who in 2009 defended a former mayor in California for sending a similarly racist e-mail about Obama, claims to have received threats since her “Internet joke” gained national attention.
She’s also been slammed with calls for her to step down.
“When we send communications to our fellow elected officials it is a public action that reflects on the sender, the recipient, and this committee,” GOP chairman Scott Baugh, who called the racist e-mail “despicable,” said Monday.
Rev. Al Sharpton said that Davenport needed to “go immediately.”
What do you think? Harmless? Offensive? REALLY offensive?