Kudos to Greg Reibman, president of the Newton-Needham Chamber of Commerce (and a former Boston Herald staff member), who flagged this on Twitter. It’s currently the lead item at Romenesko.
And it keeps on coming:
Here’s the link; screen image below.
So which came first? The watermelon or the raspberries?
Here’s the Herald’s story on Holbert’s apology, which he delivered on the newspaper’s online radio station.
Media Nation 
Your image says Raspberry, not watermelon.
@Brian: Start at the top. Look at the image Greg captured. Read everything I posted.
Ahh. There’s more here on the website than appeared in my feed reader.
So apparently Holman did some explaining on Herald radio at 11 AM. Does anyone know what was said?
I’m missing something. What’s wrong with watermelon toothpaste references?
Here’s the explanation on Herald radio:
http://www.bostonherald.com/news_opinion/local_coverage/2014/10/herald_cartoonist_apologizes_for_obama_cartoon
“I myself love watermelon. To me there were no, uh, I was completely naive or innocent towards the racial suggestion. I wasn’t thinking along those lines at all.”
There’s a pretty good summary of the “watermelon stereotype” at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watermelon_stereotype. A lot of the stuff happened early in the 20th century, when most of us hadn’t been born yet.
Pat Daukantas
Remember that most Herald readers *were* born in the early 20th century…
Thanks for the shout out Dan. The oddest part of this for me were the Tweets dismissing me for as part of the “liberal media.” I work for a Chamber of Commerce, for heaven’s sake!