Who’s more racist: the owner of an offensively named football team who refuses to change it amid protest, or the comedian who invokes a racial stereotype to make fun of that owner? The answer is obvious everywhere, except the boiling hot rage machine of Twitter, where a #CancelColbert trend emerged after this tweet last night from the show’s official Comedy Central-run account:

Out of context, sure, it looks insanely racist. But the quote came as part of a segment on Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder, who instead of changing his team’s name in response to intense protest, has started the Washington Redskins Original Americans Foundation. As Colbert points out in the clip, “Because ‘redskins’ is not offensive if you only use it once in your name.” You can watch the full segment, including the verbatim line that caused an outrage in tweet form, starting at 4:45 below:

Stephen Colbert has spent nearly a decade successfully playing the kind of un-self-aware blowhard who would do something like this—and that makes him all the better suited to poke vicious fun at actual un-self-aware blowhards like Snyder. But context is important in satire, something a veteran comedian like Colbert knows perfectly well; he took to his own, actual Twitter account to suggest that he was as unhappy as those protesting about the joke taken out of context:

And the official account has also clarified that it's the network, not Colbert or his writers, responsible for the tweet:

The #CancelColbert hashtag, trending on Twitter, now includes as many people speaking up in support of the show as those protesting. Plenty of actual cable-news anchors have been fired over a lot less, but Colbert’s job seems fairly safe.

Meanwhile, the Washington Redskins continues to be the name of an actual football team. The original tweet from @TheColbertReport has been deleted.