Getting canceled over a cancelation? How … meta. Canadian rocker Bryan Adams had tour dates scheduled this spring, including one last night at the Royal Albert Hall in London. Those have all been canceled as a result of the global COVID-19 pandemic, and Adams vented his frustrations on Instagram with the people who created the problem. Adams didn’t do much self-editing when it came to his description of the, ahem, “virus making greedy bastards”:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CADYjsonDVJ/?utm_source=ig_embed

Canadian singer Bryan Adams posted an expletive-ridden rant about his concerts that were canceled by the coronavirus pandemic.

Adams shared a video of himself playing his 1983 hit “Cuts Like a Knife” on a guitar on Instagram Monday morning. In the caption, he bemoaned a series of canceled concerts at the Royal Albert Hall in London, blaming it on wet market vendors.

“Tonight was supposed to be the beginning of a tenancy of gigs at the Royal Albert Hall, but thanks to some f–ing bat eating, wet market animal selling, virus making greedy bastards, the whole world is now on hold, not to mention the thousands that have suffered or died from this virus,” he wrote.

Some people believe wet markets in Wuhan, China, were the the original source of coronavirus. A wet market is a type of live-produce vendor that gets its name from its wet floors. However, there is no confirmed connection between COVID-19 and the Wuhan wet markets.

Bear in mind that the wet-market theory is the least accusatory version of how we ended up in this global pandemic. Scientists (and intelligence agencies) have accepted that the COVID-19 virus originated in bats and crossed over to humans, rather than being a man-made engineered virus. The two possible means for the contagion are either a wet-market crossover or an accidental release from a laboratory. Adams promotes the more innocuous theory, and his rant is aimed at promoting veganism — essentially blaming carnivorous diets in general for the disease.

That, however, doesn’t deter the Woke Police. Almost immediately, Adams started getting accused of being a bigot, even though his Instagram message never mentions China or any ethnicity at all. Apparently, even criticism of wet markets — which epidemiologists have demanded to be shut down for many years now — is raaaacist:

Canadian singer Bryan Adams is being criticized as racist for social media posts in which he blamed “bat eating” people for the coronavirus. …

Though Adams has since deleted his tweet and appears to have disabled commenting on his Instagram post, his rant sparked immediate backlash online, with “Bryan Adams” and “Bryan Adams racist” trending on social media Tuesday.

“Now that I see #BryanAdams trending because he’s a a racist f—wit, I am a lot happier that I converted his concert t-shirt into my first ever homemade respiratory mask,” one person tweeted.

“Well, I didn’t have #BryanAdams being a screaming racist on my 2020 #StoptheMadness Bingo card,” wrote lawyer and media consultant Katie Phang.

What, precisely, about Adams’ rant was racist? No one appears to explain this argument; instead, everyone just accepts it as accepted fact without any basis whatsoever. No one’s arguing that the virus didn’t come from a wet market, for instance, or from Wuhan either, which Adams never mentions. One could criticize Adams for exploiting the crisis to argue for veganism, but that’s pretty petty, under the circumstances … and wouldn’t feed the need for social-media triumphalism either.

Rather than stand up to the mob, Adams capitulated today, saying there was “no excuse” for his rant:

https://www.instagram.com/p/CAFy-nKnkFi/

Want to bet that this won’t satisfy the online pitchfork-and-torch mobs? That’s an easy bet, because they are never satisfied. Even when there’s no real offense, or perhaps especially when there’s no real offense.