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During election week, the OC Weekly ran an image on its cover portraying Mitt Romney as the Angel Moroni, the figure in Mormonism who reportedly gave Joseph Smith the content for the Book of Mormon.
The image was meant as satire, but according to the Weekly's news blog, Mormon readers didn't take too kindly to it. Editor Gustavo Arellano writes:
Starting on Wednesday and continuing ever since, Mormons from across the country but mostly centered around the Newport Beach LDS temple have called and written in to complain that our cover is offensive to their religion...
The readers in question have also threatened to stop picking up the Weekly and to boycott its advertisers.
But Arellano isn't apologizing. He says that the Weekly has been "equal opportunity offenders" and that there's no reason for Mormons to get unduly upset:
We're not going to apologize, because while Moroni might be a sacred part of the LDS, Jesus is even sacred-er--and we've depicted him as everything from a pothead to a businessman to hanging out with aliens to worse...
