Bret Boone is a wet bag of kitchen trash that was left in a sweltering garage while the homeowners went on summer vacation for two weeks

Of all the things that have transpired in the past year-and-change, one of the very few that I like is that people with terrible, reprehensible, inhumane thoughts now feel emboldened to volunteer their nuggets of ignorance. I’d rather know upfront if someone is a bigot or some other sort of human debris than be left in the dark unaware of their repugnance. Gone, it seems, are the days when hateful chatter is reserved for echo chambers, but keep in mind that these people are still cowards. They now vocalize their disgusting views only because they have seen that others share them, much like a schoolyard bully who had kept to himself and tortured insects until he found a few other kids to stand behind him when he starts fights. One such coward is former Padres second baseman Bret Boone.

Another good thing that has happened in the world lately is that some semblance of attention is finally being paid to the scourge of sexual harassment and violence that is perpetrated constantly and swept under the rug far, far more often than not. Well, at least that’s a good thing if you’re a decent human being who cares about things like justice and, you know, other people. For those who don’t fall into that category, the mere concept of sexual harassment is something to be discounted, ridiculed or even denied outright. That’s where Boone comes in.

And apparently when Boone comes in, he comes in like Kool-Aid Man. This morning he had some hot takes making light of sexual harassment, invoking the absurd trope that even smiling at someone will now be regarded as harassment, and for some reason saw fit to unleash this in a Twitter direct message to Seattle PI reporter Stephen Cohen.

Good em-effin’ grief. This reads like satire or a comment under a local news station’s Facebook post. The bit about his golf foursome made me laugh at first because it seemed so haughty, but then when it sank in I was quickly disgusted at the thought of what that meant. I do not want to imagine what him and three other guys are doing on a golf course or anywhere else if, as it seems is implied, they oppose being joined by someone who views harassing women to be A) bad, and B) an actual thing. It reeks of classic boys-club complicity.

Since I started writing this, I noticed that he tweeted an apology, which *fart noise *

It’s very well written as far as apologies go. There will definitely be those who give him points for owning it and so on, but I have trouble accepting that someone could amazingly undergo a complete 180 on four decades of beliefs in under 12 hours. It’s a little too similar to the tale of Saul on the road to Damascus, and I started having doubts about that when I was five.

The thing I love the most about this apology is comparing its tone to that of his tone in the DMs. He stormed into the DMs like a gunslinger barging through saloon doors, but once he faced public backlash he was a dead ringer for a beagle puppy who puts its tale between its legs once you see the spot on the rug. It reminds me of what I was ruminating on in the first paragraph, well before I’d read his apology. In particular, the word “coward”.