Here we go again. Looks like East Haven Mayor Joseph Maturo has passed on the Latino Insensitivity Award over to former Ottawa Mayor Larry O'Brien, whose tweet during a viewing of a GOP presidential debate says one thing and one thing only: racism.
This is the tweet:
"The spics are getting way too much airtime!"
O'Brien is no longer on Twitter (at least the profile that tweeted it out), but the journalists at Fox News Latino (yes, people, Fox News Latino) reported this story today:
Larry O’Brien, the former mayor of Ottawa from 2006 until 2010, took offense to the topic matter during last Thursday’s Republican debate in Florida. "The spics are getting way too much airtime!" O'Brien posted on larry_o'brien1 Twitter account.
O’Brien then followed that Tweet with one about the Islamic community. "Why is the Jewish community not more involved in this debate? The Islam community want to destroy Israel,” he tweeted.
At first, some on the social media account thought that the post might be a hoax until a reporter for the Ottawa Citizen newspaper confirmed with O’Brien that he had indeed sent out the Tweet.
O'Brien eventually apologized for his tweet, but he is not backing down from why he did it, according to what he told Metro:
“I believe that the Latino community was asking (about) too many parochial issues when I think the 2012 presidential debate is going to be the most significant election in this century,” said O’Brien. “Did I choose a completely inappropriate word? Absolutely. Was it intentional? No."
O’Brien said the controversy would have been “terrible” if he was still involved in politics, and as a private citizen he is able to explain his mistakes and correct them.
According to the Toronto Sun, O'Brien added more to the fire when he wrote the following on his blog:
"Anyone who knows me understands that being politically incorrect (PI) has been a special strength all my life. Even today, as a recovering politician, I still manage to get into a little trouble with my unique ability to make things clearer to the regular people by being PI," he writes.
"Now that I have my Mea Culpa out of the way, I would like to point out the real benefits of using political incorrectness (PI) as a way of bringing attention to very important issues that are being ignored or, worse yet, misrepresented by the mainstream media," he said.
