It's not unusual that comments are made days, weeks and months after a Navel Gazing post goes up. Two of our posts from earlier in the year involving televangelist Benny Hinn still draw multiple comments every day. But a recent spike in comments the past few days to a post concerning the September heroin possession arrest in Illinois of 36-year-old Santa Ana resident Lucas Mendiola have been fascinating.
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That is, the ones I can read have been fascinating. Many comments are in Spanish, English-Spanish hybrids or really poor English.
Some background: Mendiola was pulled over around 1:10 p.m. Sept. 16 for following a vehicle too
closely in the Silver Lexus SUV he was driving alone on eastbound Interstate
80 near Mile Marker 20, about one mile east of Geneseo, Ill. The heroin
turned up after a search of the vehicle, according to Illinois State Troopers. It was the second vehicle pulled over on that stretch of Henry County highway in less than a
month that contained a large quantity of street drugs.
Most comments the day of that Friday post and the day after were from readers counting down to when the first racist rant would be posted given Mendiola's apparent Latino heritage. But precursors to what would come started popping up on Sunday and Monday, Sept. 19-20, when people wrote in Spanish and English about Mendiola being a very bad man.
Allegedly.
It went on to be virtual crickets until this past Monday through right now, when 53 comments at last count were left by folks who can basically be broken into three categories:
- Those who accuse Mendiola of having abused his family
- Those who disparage Mendiola's supposedly abused family members
- Those who have seized on the comments section as a place to debate national immigration policy without even mentioning Mendiola or his residency status.
Spirited comments have come from someone who claims to be Mendiola's once-abused daughter or step-daughter, who challenges those “talking shit” about her.
Here is the fun read: “Lucas Mendiola of Santa Ana Busted on Illinois Highway with 16.8 Pounds of Heroin: Troopers”
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.
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