As it turns out, no.

For evidence, one can turn to the manufactured controversy around Lee, Lee and University of Virginia football. ESPN revealed on Tuesday its decision to switch broadcaster Robert Lee (an Asian man with a common last name) off of calling the play-by-play in U-Va’s upcoming season opener against rival William & Mary. Why? Because Robert Lee, sportscaster living in 2017, shares a name with Robert E. Lee, the 147-years dead Confederate general whose statue was at the center of Charlottesville’s unrest.

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This is where the hoped-for corporate wisdom fails: The fallout from ESPN’s sensitivity-pandering will create more damage than it avoids.

In an official statement, ESPN said, “We collectively made the decision with Robert to switch games as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name. In that moment it felt right to all parties. It’s a shame that this is even a topic of conversation and we regret that who calls play by play for a football game has become an issue.”

Ah, yes. Sensitively handled. Perhaps … oversensitive? Perhaps … ridiculous? To be quite honest, no one asked for this strenuous display of wokeness and certainly no one needed it. Who does it help, after all? What sort of moral victory has ESPN achieved?

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Robert Lee, a relatively new ESPN employee, is reassigned from calling an opening game and loses out on an interesting job opportunity. His previously inoffensive name will now not only be conflated with that of a dead Confederate general but also with a particularly cloying example of corporate virtue-signalling.

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The sensitive, presumably liberal viewers that ESPN thought it might be granting a moment of relief are confused and annoyed, as anyone of intelligence would be. Does the sports outlet really think they can’t tell the difference between a game announcer and a statue? Or that they won’t notice that ESPN is baldly attempting to profit off of a still-unresolved public tragedy? The suggestion that the two Lees will be confused for each other reeks of condescension and a misunderstanding of what exactly the Charlottesville controversy is about.

The only winners here, if they can even be called that, are the most repugnant — those on the far reaches of the right. From Kellyanne Conway to Tucker Carlson, ESPN’s laughable decision is being gloated over as a perfect example of liberal “snowflakes” taking their ideas way too far. The right has been handed the perfect embodiment of the so-called slippery slope statue argument that disingenuously proffered by Trump — and they’re going to run with it.

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