How Lalo Alcaraz Got Me Fired From Patch.com - the True Story
Go here to read the whole tale, and to see the ‘offensive’ cartoon.
From December of 2010 through Spring 2011, I was the editor of brentwood.patch.com, the West Los Angeles outpost of AOL/Huffington Post’s “hyperlocal” news operation.
For Cinco de Mayo, I commissioned three stories: The real history of Cinco de Mayo as related by a professor at Mount St. Mary’s (Brentwood’s only college), the best places to celebrate with nachos and beer in Brentwood and a cartoon from my friend Lalo Alcaraz about how the Battle of Puebla is understood in Brentwood.
I was thrilled to score a cartoon from a cartoonist of Lalo’s stature at Patch’s standard rate of $50.
This was the same week that AOL and HuffPo honchos announced a Latino outreach initiative, probably to coincide with Cinco de Mayo. I thought they’d be pleased.
The cartoon went live just after midnight on May 5; I Tweeted about it, per AOL policy, and posted a link on Brentwood Patch’s Facebook page. The headline Lalo and I wrote? “It’s Cinco de Mayo - do you know where your gardener is?” I thought the cartoon — marked as opinion — perfectly expressed Brentwood’s reality and it still makes me laugh.
Early the next day I got a call from my regional editor directing me to remove the cartoon and delete my Tweets and Facebook posts.
[…]
Lalo Alcaraz also tweets as Mexican Mitt. I find those tweets almost always funny, but sometimes too offensive to share, even if I still laugh. He’s also Daniel D. Portado. That’s not just satire, he’s the inventor of self-deportation.