This Nashville college is apparently led by a quivering marshmallow:

President Randy Lowry just sent the following email to the Lipscomb community. pic.twitter.com/pMFkLpCaEw

— Lipscomb University (@lipscomb) September 15, 2017

And then this Facebook post went viral out of Texas. This nut photographed it in a Hobby Lobby store:

Are we really going to have to deal with the demonization of cotton now? Really? 

If the presence of cotton triggers you, guess what? You are a pluperfect idiot. And if you allow yourself to be intimidated into begging forgiveness for having displayed a cotton stalk, you make the ‘Leave Britney Alone’ Guy look like Otto von Bismarck.

via GIPHY

Honestly, people. Honestly. This country is having a nervous breakdown.

Or maybe it’s a plot by the American Wool Council…

UPDATE: As a reader said in the comments, there’s more to the Lipscomb story:

Lowry said he would make “special efforts” to talk to students who were offended by cotton stalk centerpieces that were set out last week for the dinner he hosted for black students enrolled at Lipscomb.

“We’ll invest a lot of time this week talking with students and trying to understand at deeper levels,” he said. “Rather than running away from something, I’ll lean into those kinds of conversations and relationships.”

Some students took to social media to criticize the centerpieces, which they considered a callous symbol of slavery. Students also took issue with the menu, which featured collard greens and corn bread a day after Latino students had come to Lowry’s house for fajitas.

On social media, students described Lowry’s initial reaction to their concerns as flippant. They said he brushed aside their concerns and suggested cotton was not offensive.

OK, I take back what I said above. That really is insulting. I thought it was merely a decoration, like at Hobby Lobby, and that it happened to have been present in Lowry’s house, not intentionally put there for the black students. Who were served collards and corn bread. By a university president. In 2017. Turns out that Lowry did owe them an apology, and that he is a dunderhead, but not for the reason I thought.

UPDATE.2: I agree with this reader:

When did it become impossible to say that something was in bad taste and probably a poor call, without either going full-on “white supremacy” or defending something dumb because there are supposedly bigger issues at play?

It was tone deaf. It could be read as passive-aggressive. There’s just as little reason to defend this particular faux-pas as there is to attack it as part of some master plan to bring back Jim Crow.

Everyone can learn from it, apologize and don’t do it next time. But we probably won’t.

Strikes me as a hopelessly lame attempt by the president to be woke, like someone’s hapless dad trying to “relate” to the youth. It makes me laugh. I think laughter and mockery is probably the best way to handle it. Alternatively, this could be an opportunity for offended students to respond to the president’s apology with charity and grace. But no, we’ll have World War III over it.