whistler, you are assuming ill intent here without any evidence to back it up. The regional sports networks always have issues with cutting to commercial and coming back. This is most likely due to the staffing/equipment that is in place there -- if they were more talented and/or had better equipment, these issues would be less prevalent. How many times do you see a rejoin and there's seven seconds of silence for no reason? Personally, I have seen that quite a bit. Until we hear otherwise, I am going to go with Occam's Razor here and assume it was just a technical error without any malevolent intent. Check out this for a similar rejoin issue:
https://streamable.com/3359u (of course this was just some naughty language and not a slur.... and it is a very good song.)
Secondly, the fact that he is using the slur is the issue. People have indeed said that word before, and will continue to say it, but society is at least somewhat of the opinion that it is not appropriate to use that word, even in less publicized exchanges. The whole point of it is to not use those words going forward... and it is a big whoop to those who are offended by it. Maybe my pals walk down the same street that your mom, wife, or daughter is walking down and we, in private, have a conversation where we refer to her with the hard C word. You're probably not OK with that even though we weren't saying it on air, or printing it in a newspaper. Just because you aren't offended by a specific word doesn't mean that the word isn't offensive on the whole. And society determines this, not an individual.
Everyone is entitled to their opinion on the appropriateness of using certain words, and certainly Brenneman didn't break any laws by saying the word or face any sort of criminal reprocussions. It seems though that the mindset of American society today is not permissive of some of these words/thoughts that the American mindset might have been permissive of in 1988. This is certainly not unusual for a society to change and shift in views of things. The rights of minorities and women have obviously shifted greatly in the past 100 years. The opinions on alcohol, drugs, gambling, and prostitution have shifted in that time frame as well. And they will probably be even more different in 2045... we may find it almost comical that we locked gorillas up in cages/exhibits when they were perfectly able of acting as sentient beings and deserving of some of the same rights we once said years ago only applied to white males.