Another stupid story sinks amid death and destruction

It’s funny — not in the “ha-ha” way but in the sad way — how it takes total devastation and thousands of lives to knock a stupid, nothing story off the front page and off cable news.

But that is just what the tragic and ultra-destructive earthquake in Haiti did to “Negrogate,” the furor over the slip of the tongue among friends that was never meant as a malignant comment. Look even on the Web page of the most politically polarizing cable news network, Fox, and you don’t see anything about Harry Reid on the main page — or at least I didn’t this afternoon. There are hardly any political stories on there at all. It’s all Haiti, where it rightfully should be.

The all-Harry-Reid-beating-all-the-time has stopped, for now. That is even though the stupidity of “the message” has become all politics. It has to have political polarization or it is not on cable news, at least. But such stupid stories haven’t always been limited to party politics. Remember Chandra Levy?

I have mentioned here before but I think it is worth mentioning again the worst “sort-of-true” prediction I ever made.

In August 2001, when Gee Dubya was out cutting brush all day on the Crawford ranch, not much was in the news. That is except for the Chandra Levy-Gary Condit story.

During that time I was sitting in a holding room at an airport in Waco awaiting Air Force One’s arrival. I forget the occasion. I was among a group of reporters and news photographers who were waiting to be screened, mostly for the photographer’s camera equipment, by the Secret Service and the then ATF. Our conversations ended up on the Chandra-gate, I mean no disrespect to the murdered woman, but the story did not merit the media’s shock and awe it was given.

One news photographer, predictably from CNN, said he thought the Levy story was a great one. I said I thought it was a dud, but I added, “It will probably stay as the lead until someone crashes an airliner into the Empire State Building.”

We were just journalists talking. We engaged in gallows humor and idiocy because of what we’ve experienced or because we were just a bunch of geeks. Never did I ever imagine something similar as I predicted would happen in less than a month. I really did feel bad about making that comment after 9/11.

In reality, the Harry Reid story is even less compelling, and certainly even less dramatic and interesting than the Levy story. Reid was being just like I was among those geeks in Waco. He didn’t mean anything by it. But for good measure and the sake of the black vote, Reed apologized and President Obama said “de nada.”

The semantics of the Senate Majority Leader’s verbal faux pas — sorry I didn’t mean to have to chi-chi foreign words so close together — are about the only thing interesting in this whole mess. It’s not like Reid used the “N” word, or as the little ol’ white ladies I grew up around used to say politely, “Nigra.” He didn’t even say “colored.” If some blacks are offended, I’m sorry. But if they are, I think they could more constructively put that upset toward being used by the Republicans to  put one more hole in the Democrats’ big tent.

I am no Harry Reid fan. Ditto for Nancy Pelosi. I would rather see decent Democrats elected than both of those whatevers. But sometimes I just wish stupidity could be abolished, at least just for a little while. Maybe it can be put aside to help some folks, mostly “of color,” who are hurting really bad in Haiti.