On a news day so slow that Drudge is red-fonting a story about Hollywood’s Nazi past, I guess this’ll have to do as grist for the outrage mill. Nutshell: CNBC was talking about Rupert Murdoch’s divorce from his wife Wendi. Wendi is Asian. One of the analysts used the phrase “chink in the armor.” There’s not a shred, not a whisper, not a scintilla of evidence that he meant it in any untoward way, and no one’s offering any. The guy didn’t laugh or smirk or do anything to suggest that he intended a double meaning. No one’s claiming that he has a habit of racial cracks. The sum total of the charge against him is that (a) he used the word “chink” in a well-known, unobjectionable context (b) in a conversation that involved someone who’s Asian. That’s what it takes in America 2013 to cause some low-grade media upset about racism.

Naturally Media Matters is in the middle of all this. They asked the Asian-American Journalism Association for a perfunctory denunciation and got one, albeit half-heartedly. Why CNBC even deigned to respond to this idiocy, I have no idea. But now you’re fully caught up on the manufactured transgression du jour. Consider that palate cleansed.