Zaritsky and Lin have recently suggested that the color magnitude diagram of the Large Magellanic Cloud ( LMC ) contains evidence of foreground red clump stars .
They interpret this as evidence of tidal debris or a dwarf galaxy at a distance of \sim 35 kpc which may be responsible for the large gravitational microlensing optical depth observed by the MACHO Collaboration .
I derive a relationship between the microlensing optical depth of such a foreground population and the observed density of foreground red clump stars .
Recent observational determinations for Pop I and Pop II stellar mass functions are used to show that the surface density of foreground red clump stars claimed by Zaritsky and Lin implies a microlensing optical depth in the range \tau _ { fg } = 0.8 - 3.6 \times 10 ^ { -8 } which is only 3-13 % of \tau _ { LMC } as determined by the MACHO Collaboration .
If the foreground population has a similar star formation history to the LMC , then the implied \tau _ { fg } is only 3-4 % of \tau _ { LMC } .