Seems to me a combination of really poor quality[0], meandering writing by McNeil and obsession with the “cancel culture” narrative by many approaching the story is obscuring that real story here, talking McNeil at his word, is “management anti-labor negotiator leads effort to force out perennial labor negotiator who was a long time thorn in the side, and when the pretext on which that effort was founded fails to lead to the target handling the situation quite badly enough to justify firing, the details of the internal investigation (with additional embellishments designed to be provocative) conveniently leak to an outside media org, providing pretext for another round of action in which the target is finally forced out”.

If we accept McNeil’s narrative, and cut through the weeds of the meandering explanation, it seems very much to be a story of repeated attempts to find a way to leverage whatever material was available, including especially McNeil’s known prickly, defensive lack of tolerance for what he sees as BS, especially about himself, to maneuver him into a situation where he could be fired or forced to resign, not something genuinely driven by offense at him using a particular word, or disrespecting tribal shamans, or telling stories about his encounter with partially nude dancers, or any of the other incidents cited in complaints, together or separately.

[0] EDIT: arguably, some really poor quality writing on my part is obscuring my point here: in regard to McNeil’s epic, I meant “poor quality” only in terms in efficiency in conveying his side of the narrative of his being forced out for the benefit of readers looking to be informed about that, which superficially seems to be the putative intent of the piece.