The sports news network defended its choice by saying it was consensual. The sportscaster, ESPN said, was a young guy who didn’t deserve to catch flak or create a firestorm just because of “the coincidence of his name” so soon after what happened in Charlottesville two weekends ago. This had only to do with protecting a journalist’s career, not any “race issues” or “politically correct efforts.”

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ESPN is right; the story doesn’t have anything to do with political correctness. It’s too far removed from anything even remotely “correct.” There is nothing to suggest that the sportscaster’s name has anything to do with the Robert E. Lee whose likeness set Charlottesville aflame this month. It’s just a name. Even if the journalist were somehow named after the Confederate general, allowing him to appear on air and call a football game would be absolutely nothing like erecting a monument celebrating his namesake’s efforts to preserve slavery.

But ESPN’s mistake is about more than a sports network doing something stupid. Not only has the network delivered an easy affirmative action parallel to conservatives — “an Asian American is being discriminated against because wacko liberals are trying to protect black people” — but the network has also played right into their hands in another big way.

Remember (probably not) when an aide to then-D. C. Mayor Anthony Williams got into hot water for using the word “niggardly” to describe how he’d have to manage a tight budget? That, like ESPN’s, is an example of a complete failure to understand what makes words or statutes offensive in the first place. It’s not about homophones; it’s about history.

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Conservatives are already trying to paint people who want Confederate monuments to come down as overly sensitive “snowflakes,” or social justice warriors. They’re already trying to argue that it’s wrong for people to feel hurt when symbols of past and present oppression occupy places of honor in their home towns.

Their appeal to “reason” looks a lot more, well, reasonable when ESPN sends the message that not only is it flags flown to protest slavery’s end, or statues erected to rebel against a regime of equal rights for all races, that “liberals” are demanding be removed from sight — it’s also anything that looks or sounds remotely like them, regardless of any actual connection to an atrocity. This is President Trump’s ridiculous “Is it George Washington next week?” argument in action, except it’s every single guy named George.