In 500... (or less)

A Typo for the Easily-Offended

The phone rang, I made a mental note to eventually throttle the person calling at 5:30 a.m. on a Sunday morning.

"Didn't you get my text?! Get up and get on it now!"

"What the hell are you talking about?" I didn't hire a media consultant to call me at the crack of dawn on the weekend.

"Just read it and call me back. And hurry up, you gotta be first on this!"

I forced my eyes to cooperate long enough to read through his stupid text. It was a tweet from some celebrity. I called Greg back angrily.

"So?"

"Did you read the quote?"

"Yeah, and?"

"He insulted you! Made some racist and homophobic comments on top of that."

"Are we reading the same quote?" Maybe I was just tired, but this wasn't making much sense to me.

"Look, you wanted to boost your image, up your visibility, this is the moment." He seemed insistent, but I wasn't able to connect the dots.

"How will this work again? Look's like a typo."

"It ain't no typo, you moron. Read it: 'Look at my new gay-black suit!'"

"I think it ought to read 'gray-black'."

"Shut up. Who taught you how to read? Get your head in the game!" Greg sounded pissed. "Your image is all about bein' sharp on your YouTube channel in your gray-black suits. Clearly he's making fun of you."

"But I'm white and heterosexual." This sounded especially dumb to me, but Greg seemed to be certain it was the moment to catapult me to fame. "I do wear gray suits, but that's beside the point."

"Who asked you? Just listen. Already got the tweet set up in response, plus an email to several major news outlets. You just gotta give the word."

"And people are gonna care that this supposedly 'hurt my feelings'?"

Greg sighed.

"You been livin' under a rock, dude? Seriously? People love this shit. They'll eat the guy alive. You'll have more victim-views on your channel than you know what to do with."

"Don't you think people are gonna see through it all?"

"You're shittin' me, right? See through it? Happens all day, every day. Now shut your trap and get on it, you got be first. Nobody cares about the second guy with hurt feelings."

There was no changing his mind on this. I guess it was worth a shot, nobody ever had to apologize for falsely accusing anyone of anything.

"Ok," I finally relented, hoping to just get back to bed. "I guess I'm a little bit hurt."

"That's the spirit!" I fell heavily back onto the bed. "And don't go back to bed! I'll have either Fox News or CNN ready to talk to you in 20 minutes or so!"