Gotcha-ed

 Look, I should know better. OK? I should.

I should know better than to cruise social media certain weeks. I know the level of idiocy, always flirting with the red line, will reach critical mass then. And I know it will frost my cookies, even though I acknowledge frosting the public's cookies is the overarching purpose of social media.

It exists to mine outrage, almost all of it phony. To annoy. To make you splutter, "Why, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

Which is what a lot of social media cruisers spluttered when they saw what a couple of  fools named Jason Whitlock and Laura Ingraham had to say about sideline reporter Holly Rowe after Texas coach Steven Sarkisian blew her off in the wake of the Longhorns' win over Ohio State.

They made her the bad guy, is what they did. 

Whitlock, a former sportswriter transformed by some inner furies into a raging make-me-a-sandwich misogynist, said Rowe was trying to "destroy the patriarchy" and "invade male spaces."  This of course was news to those of us who just thought she was a veteran (and well-respected) reporter doing her job. 

But then, Whitlock used to be a semi-respected reporter, too. Now he's just another insecure male ranting in the online wilds about how all these damn women are ruining America for, you know, men.

And Ingraham, Fox harpy extraordinaire?

You know what you're gonna get from her, too. And so, right on cue, she sided with Arch Manning after the little goof laughed about all the AI memes featuring Rowe and Sarkisian -- particularly the one where Sarkisinian knocks her flat with a backhand slap.

"Have y'all seen that?" the little goof said to reporters this week. "That's a good one. Of him slapping Holly Rowe? It's hilarious."

(The worst part about that? Some of the reporters laughed, too. Oh, yeah, tee-hee, ha-ha, someone AI-ed a video of a woman getting slapped, that's a real knee slapper. Not one of those reporters, apparently, had either the good sense or common decency to say, "Hey, Arch, that's not funny." But then there's no accounting for how some folks were raised.)

Anyway, a day or so later the little goof apologized. I'm guessing this was preceded by a stern phone call from Papa Manning -- Cooper, Peyton's and Eli's brother -- reminding Arch that there was an accounting for how he was raised, and by God you're gonna apologize, mister, and I mean RIGHT NOW.

Ingraham, of course, thought Arch had nothing to apologize for, to get back to the no-accounting-for-how-some-folks-were-raised thing. In fact she blamed Rowe for somehow "extracting" the apology from the poor lad -- which was so ridiculous that, sure enough, it made me splutter "Why, that's the stupidest thing I ever heard!"

And now here I am, writing about it, giving these fools more oxygen -- which of course is exactly what they were after. Gotcha, Blob Boy.

I should know better. I really should.