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Claremont Cookie Monster Debacle Continues, Blog Shies Away from Taking Credit
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Oh Those Dangerous Girl Scout Cookies | Photo by aka_kath via Flickr
Girl Scouts got a rude awakening in March when Claremont Mayor Ellen Taylor told them to scram after they'd setup shop on the street corner outside her office. While Taylor claims she was merely worried about their safety, the Girl Scout troop leader, Maia West, was furious that Taylor had taken what is usually such a positive, empowering, entreprenurial skill-building experience and turned it into a negative one.
West was so angry after the encounter, that, according to the LA Times, she sent an email to the Claremont Insider blog. Regular blog readers and editors "outed" the cookie monster through a series of biting posts and angry comments. The blog noise got so loud, it caught the attention of the Claremont Courier, where things got even uglier. The bitterness reached a crescendo in May when a city ordinance was passed that requires all nonprofit organizations to get a permit to sell anything door to door. The ordinance specifically cited the Girl Scouts and many believed that Taylor's mayoral influence had a hand in punishing Girl Scouts after the incident on the office corner.
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The bitter fight was rekindled this month as the Claremont Courier published a letter from the City Manager's office stating that the new ordinance did not single out the Girl Scouts, but was meant to halt the recent rise in crimes from door to door sales, including two recent rapes by magazine salesmen.
Girl Scout troop leader Maia West isn't buying it and she's gearing up for a fight. The Claremont Insider isn't entirely buying it either - at least not the LA Times' version of it published today. The blog has posted a detailed response to the inaccuracies in the Times article and is careful to point out that while they had their hand in fanning the cookie monster flames, they didn't break the news or blow the cookie monster's cover.
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