Last night, ESPN confirmed in a statement to politics-baiting dipshit Clay Travis that they removed Robert Lee from the broadcast booth for an upcoming Virginia game. The report:

In a story that seems made for The Onion, but is actually true, according to multiple Outkick fans inside ESPN MSESPN decided to pull an Asian college football announcer named Robert Lee off the William and Mary at University of Virginia college football game because they were concerned that having an ASIAN FOOTBALL ANNOUNCER NAMED ROBERT LEE would be offensive to some viewers.

Cue the shit-stirring, as both idiot liberals and conservatives expressed actual outrage at the WWL leader for being ridiculous and too left-leaning. Indeed, ESPN’s decision seemed and seems overactive. Everyone in the media is too PC these days, always afraid to hatch the next out-of-context remark that gets them a news cycle of scorn and potentially costs them their job. It has watered down commentary and given rise to pro-Trump right-wing sites, which are ironically the slanted, misleading and factually inaccurate outlets they profess to guard against. Surely, the nation could’ve gotten past an Asian guy named Robert Lee calling a game in Virginia.

Also last night, an unnamed ESPN executive emailed NY Mag’s Yashar Ali and explained the rationale behind the decision:

This wasn’t about offending anyone. It was about the reasonable possibility that because of his name he would be subjected to memes and jokes and who knows what else. Think about it. Robert Lee comes to town to do a game in Charlottesville. The reason to our switching a young, anonymous play by play guy for a streamed ACC game is off the charts– reasonable proof that the meme-joke possibility was real.

So, when the protests in Charlottesville were happening, we raised with him the notion of switching games. Something we do all the time. We didn’t make him. We asked him. Eventually we mutually agreed to switch.

No biggie until someone leaked it to embarrass us and him. They got their way.

That’s what happened.

No politically correct efforts. No race issues. Just trying to be support of a young guy who felt it was best to avoid the potential zoo.

Totally reasonable and accurate. Look no further than the manufactured outrage about the decision itself. The screen grabs of “Robert Lee” calling a Virginia game would’ve swept across Twitter like a full moon tide, leaving behind in its wake a few scars on Lee, who did nothing other than have an unfortunate spelling of his Bob Ley name. The now far-left leaning sports blogosphere – Deadspin, Awful Announcing, SB Nation and Bleacher Report – would’ve ridiculed them endlessly for being so tone deaf and insensitive to the safe spaces of a small Virginia town. Just like they did with ESPN’s completely reasonable fantasy football auction, where those same sites cherry-picked a screenshot, which depicted a black player being auctioned off, and ignored the fact that ESPN had to fill a self-imposed 28 straight hours of fantasy programming and dared to produce a segment where they – gasp! – held a fantasy football auction. Imagine if they had sent Robert Lee to town.

The left-leaning zealots in sports media – mostly hipster shits who don’t yet have anything better to worry about – would’ve piled on them endlessly and, in the process, ruined the SEO for a young broadcaster trying to make it in the business. Here’s a secret: those people need something to write about. Most of them aren’t clever enough to just look at a screenshot and appreciate the dark humor in it. So they feel compelled to draw some sweeping conclusions about what led to it taking place, some sort of sick SNICK-like deconstruction of events that forces most everyone doing anything in front of an audience to tip-toe around every corner, giving rise to the exact sort of absurd assholes like Clay Travis, who exploit it for personal gain.