Why would anyone participate in America’s unserious, self-serious political-media culture unless their livelihood depended on it? In a world of endless entertainment options, who would choose to divert themselves by scarfing down the woke Twitter-puke du jour?

The most embarrassing thing about this is that Jay Feely is a former NFL player. No guy who earned a paycheck playing football should need a weapon to remind his daughter’s prom date that There Will Be Consequences if he gets aggressive with her afterward.

Wait, let me check my notes: Jay Feely was … a kicker? Ah, in that case, he should have brandished an AR-15. Even a pistol can’t make a kicker intimidating.

Wishing my beautiful daughter and her date a great time at prom #BadBoys pic.twitter.com/T5JRZQYq9e

— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) April 22, 2018

The obvious point is that both kids are in on the joke. Feely’s daughter seems to have been caught mid-eyeroll while her date looks like he’s stifling an embarrassed laugh at being forced to pose for a picture this corny. Even the white belt with dark slacks plays like a goof on classic cringey paternal attire. The only thing that could have made it cheesier would have been Feely wearing a “World’s Most Dangerous Dad” hat.

But since every brain fart cut on social media is an opportunity for its audience to express their virtuous concern about farts, the usual suspects chimed in with lectures about gun violence and insensitivity to the Stoneman Douglas victims plus a bit of feminist cant about fathers having no right to deny their teenaged daughters sexual agency by policing their chastity. That’s one way to look at it. Since, however, we’re less than six months removed from a flood of news stories about prominent degenerates harassing, raping, and otherwise abusing the women in their lives, which most people rightly see as a serious problem that warrants more public attention, maybe this was just Feely making clear to the guy that his daughter had better not come home from prom with a #MeToo story of her own.

But even that perspective would require taking this seriously. Which would be wrong, because it’s a farking joke.

Like Shania Twain, though, Feely has digested an important lesson in the social-media age: The only way to stop people from Twitter-puking on you is to apologize, even when you’ve done nothing wrong.

The prom picture I posted was obviously intended to be a joke. My Daughter has dated her boyfriend for over a year and they knew I was joking.
I take gun safety seriously (the gun was not loaded and had no clip in) and I did not intend to be insensitive to that important issue

— Jay Feely (@jayfeely) April 22, 2018

The sincerity of the apology is beside the point. The important thing is to bend the knee. Go, Jay Feely, and sin no more.

In lieu of an exit question, a reality check from Bill Maher’s show last month that literally no one outside the political-media online bubble cares about these “controversies.” No one.