Today in idiocy

 Baltimore Orioles color man Kevin Brown is one of the best in the business according to those who follow such things, but not even he can avoid the Demon Butt-Hurt Brigade. That's why he'll miss a couple turns in the booth this week.

The O's suspended him the other day, see. His offense, apparently, was accurately narrating a pre-broadcast graphic.

The graphic pointed out, and Brown reiterated, that the O's don't have a great track record in road games at Tampa Bay. In fact, they've historically kinda sucked against the Rays at their place.

Not that Brown said that.

No, all he said was the O's don't have a great track record in road games at Tampa Bay. He also said they had a great opportunity, consequently, to both break that mold and put some distance between themselves and their chief pursuer in the AL East.

"They suspended him for that?" you're saying now. "Come on, you gotta be making that up,"

I am not. And it got me thinking about what social media has wrought, and how ridiculous (not to say fascist) has become the monitoring of said media.

Look. I'm not, and never have been, a big fan of the term "political correctness." This is because the people who most like to trot it out at the drop of every hat use it as an epithet to describe what most of us consider simple common decency. So I won't use it here in the same context.

What I will say is there seems to be an awful lot of over-the-top response these days to so-called offensive social media posts. Or even re-posts.

This last weekend, for example, NASCAR suspended driver Noah Gragson because he liked -- not reposted, merely liked -- an apparently insensitive meme about George Floyd, a black man, who was choked to death by a psycho white cop in 2020. The suspension is indefinite, because Gragson was deemed to have violated NASCAR's social media policy.

This of course gave the MAGA crowd the opportunity to rant some more about the speech police, their new favorite thing since their lord and savior Previous President is screeching about how he's being persecuted for exercising his First Amendment rights. 

(He's not, but the facts never stopped TFG or his acolytes before. Why start now?)

The Blob won't go that far off the deep end. But it does have some serious questions about proportionality and boundaries and the ease with which the Demon Butt-Hurt Brigade gets so butt-hurt to begin with.

Kevin Brown, for instance: Why, instead of such a hysterical response, didn't his bosses just sit him and his producers down and say, um, please don't air a segment highlighting our losses again. 'Kay?

And Gragson?

Same deal. NASCAR was completely within its rights, according to its rules, to do what it did. But an indefinite suspension? Is there no warning phase built into its procedures? Where was the level head in the room to say "Noah, don't do that s*** again or we'll suspend you. And post an apology. I know that seems kinda silly, but you know how people are these days."

Gragson,, by the way, did post such an apology. Took full credit for messing with NASCAR's image, which is tres sensitive for NASCAR particularly when it comes to race. Lots to live down in that area, after all.

At any rate, there seems to be no moderation in these matters anymore, on both sides of the ideological divide.  Absurd overreaction seems to be our national fallback position these days, and it's a damn shame. 

Glad I'm not an Orioles or NASCAR employee, saying that. I'd probably get suspended.