It’s a tale as old as time at this point – Some multimillionaire white dude is caught tweeting/emailing/texting something absurdly, ridiculously racist, gets fired, and the entire conservative media establishment comes together to defend whatever “said multimillionaire white dude” tweeted/emailed/texted and then call it “cancel culture.” Well, this is partially accurate.

This week’s topic of conversation is Raiders coach and former ESPN analyst Jon Gruden, who in a series of racist and vulgar emails said – among other things – that NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith “has lips the size of michellin [sic] tires” and that “faggot” NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell shouldn’t have pressured Rams coach Jeff Fisher into “drafting queers” – a reference to gay player Michael Sam, a seventh-round draft pick back in 2014. Lovely.

So yeah, none of this stuff is great. In fact, the lips comment about Smith is so outrageously racist it boggles the mind to think of how such a high-profile person would even *think* to send it in an email. So, of course, after a New York Times investigation revealed the emails, the mob pounced, and Gruden resigned from the Raiders.

Do I think he should’ve resigned? Well…no. Here’s what I think: it’s about time that as Americans we start to think hard about finding some path towards understanding and forgiveness of public figures caught up in situations like this. I felt the same way when Axios reporter turned almost Teen Vogue editor-in-chief, Alexi McCammond, was fired from the position after old racist and homophobic tweets were discovered.

What I don’t feel – however – is that anyone should be somehow saying that what Gruden said was “ok” and “not that bad” and that he’s being somehow railroaded by cancel culture because he’s a white dude. That doesn’t solve the problem and is a big, big reason why so many African-Americans in this country have a distrust of the conservative movement.

I’m a fan of owning up to mistakes and providing some sort of path to reconciliation for everyone caught up in the cancel culture mob’s crosshairs – but what I won’t do is make excuses for bad behavior, and turn jerks into martyrs because they got caught saying or doing something inappropriate. And I think it’s high time conservative media commentators got out of that habit, too.