Anaheim Blogger Slammed for “Satire” Post Mocking Tragedy of Slain Latino Youth

UPDATE: For Gustavo Arellano’s excellent local take on all this, go here.

Here is another reason why everyone having a blog might not be a such a great idea.

As reported yesterday by the Voice of OC (Orange County, CA), “a conservative blogger funded by the Anaheim Chamber of Commerce posted a photo ridiculing the mourning rituals for young Latino men shot and killed by police, triggering outrage from mothers whose sons were killed by officers.”

This is one of the photos uploaded by Matt Cunningham, author of the “Anaheim Blog” site:

The image of the defaced teddy bear next and a Virgen de Guadalupe candle “clearly mimics widely publicized images of memorial sites that Latino families place on sidewalks to honor the young men,” according the Voice of OC story. The story also reported the following:

The grieving mother said Cunningham’s message is clear: Poor Latinos aren’t human beings; the deaths of their children and their religious traditions are merely jokes.

“You’re making fun of me losing a child, having to bury him,” Smith said. “I’m outraged. I’m absolutely outraged.”

Apparently Cunningham decided to delete the post when the Voice of OC asked him for comment. He then shared this with the reporter:

Cunningham’s blog post was still captured by the Voice of OC before he deleted it. You can read the entire post here.

A few excerpts from the post:

UPDATED: Senseless Teddy Bear-icide Near Anaheim City Hall

This teddy bear met a grisly fate sometime today at Anaheim Boulevard and Center Street, just a few
steps from Anaheim City Hall…

UPDATE: This senseless tragedy seems to have struck a chord with the community…

A make-shift shrine stands vigil over the fallen teddy bear.

The left-wing agitation group AnswerLA.org reacted by blaming racial profiling and brutality campaign by the Anaheim Police Department targeting people of color.

Dr. Jose F. Moreno called for a series of community meetings to discuss the impact of this violence on an inclusive roster of stakeholders and for the formation of a city task force to explore ways to increase teddy bear participation in Anaheim municipal government, suggesting this tragedy could have been prevented if the city council were elected from single-member districts.

[note to the gullible – AnswerLa.org and Moreno didn’t really say that]

Then Cunningham wrote this:

[NOTE TO READERS]: A few humorless leftists have read the post and taken exception, so let me say a few things. I found the teddy bear as is on the sidewalk (the candles being the only added touch) – never touched it, never moved it. This post is satire. The subject is the leftist tendency to feed off of tragedies of violence – to contend they have wider social and political meaning behind themselves and exploit them to push their politics and usually a specific policy agenda. Frankly, I expected this reaction from some of these very commenters, given they lack a sense of humor about their politics.

HuffPost Politics also included some reactions from local Anaheim residents.