The Wide World of WTF

Spanning the globe to bring you a constant variety of dopes. Couldn't be more stupid if they tried, actually:

ESPN broadcaster Robert Lee will not work the University of Virginia's season opener because of recent violence in Charlottesville sparked by the decision to remove a statue of Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee.

A spokeswoman for ESPN says Lee has been moved to Youngstown State's game at Pittsburgh on the ACC Network on Sept. 2. The network says the decision was made "as the tragic events in Charlottesville were unfolding, simply because of the coincidence of his name."

Plans to remove a statue of Lee led to a protest in Charlottesville earlier this month that attracted what is believed to be the largest group of white supremacists to come together in a decade. Violent clashes erupted between a large gathering of white supremacists and hundreds of counter protesters.

ESPN says the decision to put Lee on another game was made "collectively." It also says it's "a shame that this is even a topic of conversation."

Forty years ago, we did our stupid differently:

I'm here and I don't believe it, Howard

In related news:

Scott Adams (of Dilbert fame) explained what's going on recently:

A mass hysteria happens when the public gets a wrong idea about something that has strong emotional content and it triggers cognitive dissonance that is often supported by confirmation bias. In other words, people spontaneously hallucinate a whole new (and usually crazy-sounding) reality and believe they see plenty of evidence for it. The Salem Witch Trials are the best-known example of mass hysteria. The McMartin Pre-School case and the Tulip Bulb hysteria are others. The dotcom bubble probably qualifies. We might soon learn that the Russian Collusion story was mass hysteria in hindsight. The curious lack of solid evidence for Russian collusion is a red flag. But we’ll see how that plays out.

I have friends I care about across the country who are caught up in this hysteria. They swear up and down how much they hate Trump. And they inevitably watch his rallies on television. Why would you do that? Some of these friends are afraid we are living in 1984, or headed that way. As prophetic as he might have been, Orwell didn't have the wit to imagine a world in which Emmanuel Goldstein was president.