Tonganoxie — Tonganoxie Mayor Mike Vestal apologized to the people of Tonganoxie at Monday night's city council meeting for an e-mail he forwarded that contained the picture of a naked woman and a joke about Martin Luther King Day.
"I want to make a public apology to all of my citizens of Tonganoxie if I have offended anybody. I've made a mistake and I want to own up to that mistake. It will never happen again. I just hope you all can forgive me. I would just like to carry on as the mayor of Tonganoxie and I'm very sorry," Vestal said.
The e-mail in question said, "Next Monday is National Female Breast Appreciation Day." It then showed a picture of a woman and her naked breasts. Underneath the picture were the words "Beats the (expletive) out of Martin Luther King Day! Doesn't It?"
Vestal admitted to sending the e-mail Aug. 31 from his account to a "couple of guys." He also inadvertently sent it to a 6News reporter.
Tonganoxie city employees are required to sign an agreement that prohibits employees to "knowingly communicate, download, or forward anything that might be construed as harassing, hostile or offensive based on ethnicity, race, sex, disability, age, religion or national origin."
Comments
warthog 5 years, 8 months ago
Great... so can we move on to something more important now? Like... How do the wooly worms look this year?
ontheotherhand 5 years, 8 months ago
Yes, I agree. We learned that he is like most men who see nothing wrong with sending degrading pictures of women from his work computer while on company time, and we learned that a lot of people (again, mostly men) are upset that the Journal-World had the audacity to print this story and hold a City official accountable for his unprofessional, asinine actions. Let's please move on.
quigley 5 years, 8 months ago
I love it! This is good enough for t.v. He send it to a reporter on accident! Genius!
imastinker 5 years, 8 months ago
Well, it probably wasn't company time. Most small town mayors aren't paid at all. It wasn't a work computer either.
Notice they didn't put the name of the author on here?
acg 5 years, 8 months ago
No, not mostly men thought it was ridiculous that this was news. A lot of women also thought it was ridiculous. Don't push your uptight issues off onto the rest of us ontheotherhand. Some women know how to laugh. Some women know that a joke is a joke and getting all bent out of shape over boobs is a huge waste of time.
Agnostick 5 years, 8 months ago
Thanks, acg... well put!!
And if you don't think that similarly "degrading" pictures of men aren't floating around out there from one woman to another, you need to get out more! It's a two-way street.
I received an apology email from the mayor, and I'm going to write him back later today. I'll put here what I'm more or less going to put into my email...
I think he made a simple mistake. I think a lot of people see this, and know that Mr. Vestal is an upstanding guy, all around.
While I don't know for certain how that email got into the hands of the reporter, what I suspect happened is something that many people are "guilty" of, and foolishly do on a regular basis: Vestal had a funny email, and he just clicked on the button that said, "Forward this to everyone in my address book." The reporter's email address just happened to have been saved to Vestal's contact list/address book (maybe Vestal forgot it was even there?)... and a scandal is born.
When forwarding these kinds of things around, folks... NEVER use your addresss book!! Always hand-type each individual address... that way, you minimize the risk of sending it to an unintended recipient.
Yeah, it may take a little longer to hand-type or select five or six addresses... but it's a lot safer, in the long run.
Agnostick agnostick@excite.com http://www.uscentrist.org http://www.americanplan.org
ontheotherhand 5 years, 8 months ago
no worries, defender. You merely proved my point. And I don,t hate men, just people who aren't accountable in their work. Just a different wa at looking at things, I suppose.
Commenting has been disabled for this item.