Youth Baseball President Benched for Calling Whitney Houston the N-WORD…

A president and coach of youth baseball got himself benched (suspended) for a whole season after a strange racist Facebook tirade against late pop star Whitney Houston. In another case of “punishment does not fit the crime”, all parties concerned are not exactly pleased that the man wasn’t terminated from all involvement with the league outright.

First picked up by the Chicago Sun-Times, Westside Baseball president John Kelly’s brief Facebook rant about Houston revolved around the constant media attention netted in her direction since her untimely death. The comment was pretty much awful, unabashedly and unapologetically racist, and, well… you go ahead and read it:

“I’m so sick of reading about this dumb stupid N – – – – – Whitney Houston.”

Whoah, dude! (read: biggest understatement of my career)

An anonymous parent (who wishes to remain so) saw the comment and reported it by re-posting it word-for-word on the league’s Facebook page.

Much to the ire of the anon-parent, and indeed the public, Kelly has been allowed to continue to serve on the Westside Baseball board. Plus, he won’t apologize for anything. Except his use of the n-word (but mostly because he pretty much has to).

“I do stand behind everything I said except the ‘n’-word. I regret using that adjective. Does that make me a racist? Are you kidding me? It was the farthest thing from my mind. I have some amazing friends who are black.”

That’s nice. Except:

“I don’t need this drama in my life. It’s going to affect me hugely, and my business,” Kelly told the Sun-Times.

Wow.

On a scale of 1 to 10, how awful is this?