A non-story has emerged as a result of Andy Cohen referring to a members of the boy band One Direction as "twinks," a term used primarily by gay men to describe other boyish, usually young, usually gay men. The band and the Bravo host/exec who's addicted to telling everyone how talkative he is were both on Today yesterday and he tweeted this regarding his initial encounter:

Then, he reportedly said on air:

This morning, I went into the normal green room that we typically go into. I barged in, there are all these people in front of us. Oh, it's all the leftover One Direction fans. I barged right into a room of twinks: One Direction! Security was not exactly too tight, with all due respect. I barged right in. It was crazy!

Entertainmentwise says that ensuing angry tweets from Team #1D led Cohen to tweet a retraction:

Those angry tweets don't turn up in a cursory search. If they did exist, they were clearly from obsessives who can't cope with even neutral words said regarding their heroes. Cohen based his assessment off of One Direction's collective boyish, soft, smooth, eager-eyed appearance. He didn't necessarily imply that they are gay, no more than a gay dude who calls another gay dude "girl" is implying that he has an actual vagina. But even if he were implying that, being gay isn't a bad thing either. This was not an insult.

Nobody is actually offended by Cohen's word choice — not even One Direction's spokesperson, who dismissed it with, "it just means attractive." (I mean...depending on your taste, sure.) Being a twink: That's what makes a One Direction member beautiful. Dan Savage freaked out on Twitter about how inoffensive it is, there are confused tweets to Cohen about his reason for apologizing and fewer than 10 percent of people responding to a Huffington Post poll, on this precious, perpetually butthurt Internet of ours, think the term is definitively offensive.

The only one actually shamed by this is Cohen, who's being so politically correct, he's putting (hypothetical) hypersensitive teenyboppers ahead of his own point of view. There are a lot of slurs to describe the way Cohen acted, all of them more offensive than "twink."

[Images via Getty]