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Words on cookies are once again causing a bit of controversy in Edmonds. Last year, a handful of activists called for boycott of Edmonds Bakery for selling cookies that said, “Build the Wall.” Now the owner, Ken Bellingham, is back in the news for new cookie messages like “Secure Borders” and “Make ’em cry again.”

He joined the Jason Rantz Show on KTTH to discuss the waves of online attacks he’s received in the past few weeks.

“I had an order a few weeks ago — he orders them every every month for a meeting that he takes him to — and he gave me a list of things that he wanted on them. And one of them was ‘Make ’em cry again.’ So I made a bunch of them and I had some extra and they just have to get put out in the case,” he said.

“I thought I’ve been down this road before and it’ll cause trouble for a while but then it’ll settle down.”

It didn’t quite settle down, as he also had cookies that said “Secure Borders” and during the Fourth of July cookies that said “God Bless America,”

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“Right away some somebody posted it on Facebook and I started getting some rather seriously despicable phone calls about how people felt about it and calling me a racist, and that the bakery was horrible, and I had to disconnect the phone because it was just ringing off the hook.”

The bakery’s Facebook page blew up as well with Bellingham getting a wave of nasty comments which led him to unpublish the page. He rejects the attacks on him, claiming that he’s somehow bigoted for making these cookies.

“It’s totally untrue. You know, it’s something that people wanted me to do and so I did it as a business and I did it for them and I didn’t think that it would cause all this controversy.”

Bellingham says the most of the attacks on his reputation are not being done locally, and not from people who have ever actually been to his bakery.

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“Looking at the area codes, very few of them are from around here, they’re all from from different parts of the country, and the reviews that they are getting on Facebook–they’ve never been to the bakery,” he said. “These are people that just make up things that are totally untrue. And I have reported them to Facebook and they’re taken down because they’re just bogus.”

“They seem to have a lot of time on their hands. They have nothing better to do than to trash businesses and people.”

Edmonds Bakery owner appreciates community support, but tired of controversy

While Bellingham said he’s received nice support from fans of the bakery, as well as an uptick in business as a result of the controversy, he’s grown a bit tired of the hubbub surrounding what icing says on a cookie, and really isn’t seeking out any of it.

“I want to stay out of the news. I just want to run a business, I just want to be low-key. I don’t want to offend anybody. From now on, I’m going to do unicorns and rainbows. I just want to just be a regular bakery,” he said. “The criticism that I get kind of takes a toll on you. It wears you out. It’s just not worth it.”

Listen to the Jason Rantz Show weekday afternoons from 3-6 p.m. on KTTH 770 AM (or HD Radio 97.3 FM HD-Channel 3). Subscribe to the podcast here.