His being fired isn't necessarily in response to outrage. The current CEO explained it pretty well: that behavior wouldn't be tolerated by a community member (moderator would remove it), and if a moderator made the comment, they would be removed as a moderator. At the co-founder level, breaking community standards (and probably other issues in the past) carry higher consequences.

The community standards of Rep Genius aren't necessarily the standards of any other community, though clearly there were members of the public who found the comments to be insensitive and out of line, their desire to call this out and the large response could be called outrage, but it's probably more appropriate to call it widespread disappointment.

One could just go to the dictionary definition of outrage though: arouse fierce anger, shock or indignation. or violate or infringe flagrantly (a principle, law, etc.). In this case, the community standards of Rap Genius or even just the standards of the general public.

I would say it meets both definitions, 1) it aroused anger and shock, in particular because it was done by someone with such visibility and done in such an insensitive way so close to the time of the actual event (this is something that is often important to consider, rage is proportional to closeness of the event, is that OK? I don't get to decide that.) 2) He infringed, and flagrantly, again, because of his visible position, and the infringement, again, is one of a community standard, which isn't necessarily defined in black and white.

edit: I didn't downvote you in this thread, at the root or otherwise, and I hope that other HNers do the same, civilized discussion is the only way that these kinds of issues can be (if possible) understood. There is no universal standard for human behavior, so there will always be disparate opinions and views.

My favorite twist on the Golden Rule: Do not do unto others as you would have done unto yourself; You may have different tastes. Do unto others as they would have done unto themselves.