Yes, we know the Reverend Erick Salgado is a goofy guy who, as a mayoral candidate, is barely above clown status although he actually says interesting things at times. He’s played the raza card several times, most notably in objecting to Anthony Weiner’s fantasy about himself as a Latin lover stereotype called Carlos Danger. We’re not going to get into his chummy relationship with arch homophobe and evangelical pentecostal nutcase Rubén Díaz, Sr., who recently mused that Salgado should declare he was gay to get more attention and funding in his Quixotic quest to become the city’s first Latino mayor.

No, this post is about the continually sloppy and inane job the Huffington Post has a tendency of doing when covering things Latino. Right now, if you go to the front page, you’ll see a headline that says “NYC Mayoral Candidate: Latinos Are Modern-Day Slaves,” which of course caught my attention. Hey, yeah, sure. Got a point there, Rev. But then you click on the thing and the story’s headline is the more accurate “NYC Mayoral Candidate Compares Undocumented Immigrants to Modern-Day Slaves.”

“I believe slavery is not abolished,” Salgado said. “Slavery has been transferred to my people.”

Well, okay, but that original headline on the front page, then, is making that annoying equivalence between “undocumented immigrants” and “Latinos” that has been driving me crazy for the last 15 years. There are 11.1 million undocumented immigrants in the country right now, and 81 per cent of those are Latinos. So that means roughly 9 million undocumented immigrants are Latinos. Right now, there are somewhere between 52 and 53 million Latinos living in the US.

Hey Huffington Post! ONLY 17 PERCENT OF LATINOS ARE UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS! SO STOP WRITING HEADLINES THAT SAY ERICK SALGADO SAYS “LATINOS ARE MODERN-DAY SLAVES” WHEN HE MEANS UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS ARE MODERN-DAY SLAVES!

One more thing: Salgado is not “the only Latino candidate running for mayor.” Adolfo Carrión is also running, dudes. FYI: He used to be the borough president of the Bronx and he’s running as a third-party candidate and has been at almost all of the mayoral debates so far.

So let’s give the Reverend credit for getting some pub without resorting to coming out of the closet. And also for embracing “undocumented immigrants” (many of whom are members of his church) as his people magnanimously of course, since everyone born in Puerto Rico since 1917 is automatically a US citizen. Unless of course you forgot to get a new birth certificate because all of those were invalidated virtually by fiat for dubious national security reasons in 2010.

Then you’re on your own.