I’ve got some questions for my progressive readers. When you think of Colin Kaepernick, do you define him by his quiet kneeling and many thoughtful interviews? Or do you define him by the socks he wore once, dehumanizing cops as pigs?

When you think of writer Ta-Nehisi Coates, do you define him by his hundreds of thousands of eloquent and meticulously researched words? Or do you define him by his call for violence in Baltimore, or his dehumanizing statements about the heroic cops and firefighters who rushed into the World Trade Center on 9/11?

Is Samantha Bee defined by the time she accused a cancer patient of having “Nazi hair”? Or when she used a vile epithet to describe Ivanka Trump?

I can do this all day. (Joy Reid, anyone?) Because recently I’ve been led to believe — repeatedly, in fact — that online mobbing most definitely does not reflect intolerance towards conservatives but instead is wholly targeted at the people who are really bad. And how do we know that they’re really bad?