Woke 1 was not only crazy, it’s still in the room with us.
This week, we’ve seen some bad bouts of woke reflux emerge and remind us just how absurd and pernicious it was.
On Thursday, the Portland Trail Blazers hired and then quickly fired 29-year-old broadcaster Braiden Bell after they were alerted to a few inappropriate tweets he sent when he was around 15.
Yes, he was 15.
And a day earlier, it was reported that a white woman recently hired to be Baltimore Rock Opera Society’s executive director was sacked after she wore cornrows to Burning Man. Kelly Carnes said the hairdo was meant to protect from the desert elements, but the organization had another verdict: cultural appropriation.
That’s not to mention the BBC article from last week that linked bare nails to white supremacy beauty standards. (It was removed this week after a backlash).
Bell’s tale is particularly troubling considering its implications for society. If you misbehaved or made a misstep during adolescence, you are condenmed to a lifetime of purgatory. You are unworthy, irredeemable and unemployable.
The Trail Blazers announced Bell’s hiring at noon and hours later, he was out on his behind, thanks to Devon Haskins, an intrepid local reporter.
The immaculately pure Haskins combed through Bell’s digital footprint until he found damning evidence from 2012 and 2013 — a time when social media etiquette and behavior were still relatively amorphous and undefined.
And when I say damning, he tweeted something about “sluts” and “whores” and foolishly said that Asian people “piss me off.”
I don’t know Bell, but I know and have known 15-year-old boys. They love to push boundaries and be edgy.
The NBA team released a statement apologizing to Blazers fans for hiring Bell, whom they had previously described as a “rising talent.”
“We believe strongly that everyone who is a part of Rip City should feel welcome and safe and we will make sure that our new broadcaster reflects these values. We will do better.”
Are we really going back to the retroactive purity tests that defined the great era of cancellation, when media or other vindictive parties would comb through people’s old social media posts hunting for anything that would be considered offensive?
The bloodthirsty scalp hunters would then release those tweets and demand the person’s head.
I would appeal to a sense of grace for Bell, but I am not quite sure that he committed such a horrific offense. He was naive and immature. In other words, a young teenage boy.
So many of us are very lucky that our teenage thoughts and jokes were not publicly preserved on the internet because if Bell is the new rule, 99% of Gen X would be unemployable.
Let’s not pretend otherwise.
Aren’t we a society that allows people to change and grow? Progressives pride themselves on giving actual violent criminals second and third chances. But off-color tweets are beyond the pale?
Did they even give Bell the opportunity to apologize or explain that he was a 15-year-old knucklehead like so many 15-year-old knuckleheads before him?
If we are going to apply this across the board, the Trail Blazers should then look at their own roster. Guard Ja Morant was a fully formed adult in 2023 when he started displaying worrying behavior, including waving guns around on social media. He was given a hefty suspension and resumed playing.
The Trail Blazers signed him in June anyway.
The team, which is literally in Portlandia, doesn’t have standards. They have a desperate need to be loved by all the “correct” people. And those people are the kinds who rage at lesbian bars for removing the mask mandate.
Bell’s firing was an easy way for the Trail Blazers to send out a virtue signal.
But there is an upside in this preposterous news cycle. In 2020, most folks had to pretend to be outraged at these very minor youthful mistakes. They had to participate in the mob’s social executions.
In 2026, everyone is laughing at the Trail Blazers.
They deserve the ridicule. And Bell deserves a second chance.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
