Perhaps I’m just so dispirited after a year of being forced to analyze and discuss Joe Manchin on a daily basis. But I find myself compelled to resort to media criticism for the second time in a week. I read this morning that Whoopi Goldberg has been suspended for two weeks from The View for her earlier comments about the Holocaust. This whole episode is a testament to the general insipidness of our public culture.

Goldberg’s comments were clearly rooted in ignorance rather than malevolence. She not only issued a genuine apology rather than a half-assed ‘I’m sorry if anyone was offended’ type apology. She also spoke to people, privately and publicly, and seemingly learned why her comments were wrongheaded and corrected herself. ABC’s suspension was needless and stupid. It will be derided as “cancel culture.” But it’s really more the kind of corporate ass-covering that only discredits the values it purports to serve. It’s a consequence that, as far as I can tell, basically no one was asking for.

On the first day of Black History Month this week, there were a string of bomb threats made targeting historically Black colleges and universities in the U.S. The FBI announced today that it would be looking into those threats and investigating them as “racially or ethnically motivated violent extremism and hate crimes.”

“This investigation is of the highest priority for the bureau and involves more than 20 FBI field offices across the country,” the FBI said in a statement, noting the probe was “of the highest priority for the bureau.”