I agree with CrazyEddie20 so im not gonna repeat what he's said, but I will add that we need to stop living in this parallel belief that we are absolved from responsbility and consequences for their actions if we say "oops, I didnt mean that or its not what I meant."
Today, society believes it can do or say whatever it wants whenever it wants to whomever w/o accepting responsibility or consequences. Society doesn't work that way. It's never work that way.
Panetta had a choice. He made his decision to make that gesture in that moment to that person. He has to live with the consequences of that decision. Its not an oops moment. It's a "I f**ked up moment" and accept responsibility for your actions.
Actions have consequences and we as a civil society need to realize that we are not absolved from those responsibilities.
Society seems to believe in "innocent until proven guilty" in everything other than perceived bigotry. With alleged bigotry, it's clearly "guilty until proven innocent." I don't think it SHOULD be that way, but it clearly is.
With Reilly's whole "rag it" incident, he was considered guilty from the start from people like you. Hfboards, twitter, and the hockey subreddit were a tire fire. But Reilly was able to "prove" his innocence. Gm's and teammates stuck up for him. The ref denied he yelled it. So good for Reilly. But what if he was unable to prove it? What if the ref said he wasn't sure what Reilly said? Reilly's life deserves to be ruined over an unproven misunderstanding?
Panetta is a similar situation. He was accused of a racist gesture, but he said it was a non racial "muscle man" pose. Of course, right out of the gate, people like you chose "hate him first ask questions later." He was guilty until proven innocent. Then it was noted there were no racist words or sounds and that he was yelling "tough guy" while he did the gesture. Then it was shown that he does that "muscle man" pose in the past. Then all his teammates came together and supported him and his character and said he does the muscle man pose regularly.
So for even misguided people like you who believe in "guilty until proven innocent", is there not enough evidence of his innocence yet? There are NO other backstories of racism and no off-putting social media tweets from Panetta. Do you think his teammates would really be supporting him if he showed warning signs of racism in the past?
Given the new evidence, most people's opinions have switched on a dime. Go look at the hockey subreddit. Those borderline organizing lynch mobs against Panetta are now apologizing and acknowledging they were wrong.
You and Crazyeddie are among the VERY small minority who still consider Panetta in the wrong.