Cutting Remarks

A Halloween Los Angeles Times newspaper story "Two Highland Park neighbors killed in a knife fight" shows how the paper's gravitas can be undermined by online comments from the public, many of whom used this forum as an opportunity to champion gun rights or marijuana legalization, make generalizations about the ethnicities of the victims/perpetrators, and lampoon the gruesome fight-and-revenge scenario with the subversive context of the trick or treat holiday in mind to suggest that it was only a pumpkin carving party gone wrong.

Many of the comments have since been deleted, but one reader wrote that "I think it is very insensitive of the L.A. Times to allow anonymous cowards to post insensitive comments mocking dead people. The L.A. Times has really sunk to new lows."