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Summer Of Gaffes

Dotty Lynch is CBSNews.com's Political Points columnist. E-mail your questions and comments to Political Points



The gaffe police had a wonderful summer filled with shock and guffaw. Starting with Mel Gibson in late July and followed quickly by Andy Young, George Allen and the always reliable Conrad Burns, reporters laboring through the dog days and political operatives who spend their days doing damage and controlling had lots of fodder.

Looking back at the stories, many were covered like they were part of the technology beat. The cutting edge way to report these moments was via a discussion of the role of YouTube and the Internet. Golly, gee whiz, look how fast this stuff gets around. If it weren't for the Internet, we wouldn't know about this stuff. Wow.

But in each one of these cases, it is really the statements themselves and what they reveal about the person uttering them that is the story. Despite the careful packaging of handlers and spin doctors, occasionally we get a glimpse of reality – and often it's not pretty. And each of these guys has some personal history that suggested their words were more than just an isolated oops.

Mel "the Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world" Gibson has been engaged in a huge PR campaign to overcome criticism that "The Passion of the Christ" fostered anti-Semitism, and that in some comments he seemed to be downplaying the Holocaust. For ADL President Abe Foxman, the new outburst validated his suspicion of Gibson. "Now it's clear that what motivated Gibson is not a pure theological view. Now, in a moment of weakness, thanks to alcohol, we know what's really in his heart, his gut, and his mind," Foxman said.

Rev. Andrew Young used an interesting strategy to try to make Wal-mart more attractive to blacks – blaming a trifecta of groups for being much worse for the black community than Wal-Mart would be. "But you see, those are the people who have been overcharging us, selling us stale bread and bad meat and wilted vegetables. And they sold out and moved to Florida. I think they've ripped off our communities enough. First it was Jews, then it was Koreans, and now it's Arabs; very few black people own these stores."

Young lost his fat contract with Wal-Mart, an organization other Democrats are bashing like crazy and he has spent his summer vacation on bended knee, writing op-eds and meeting with every interest group he offended.

In 1979, Young resigned from the Carter administration after it was revealed that as U.S. ambassador to the UN he met secretly with a representative of the PLO. The incident has been portrayed as a major fracturing of Black-Jewish relations and there was an ugly undercurrent of resentment by black leaders that Young had been forced out because of pressure from Jewish Democratic donors. The latest comment, which seemed so out of character for an admired civil rights leader, set off louder alarm bells because of Young's history.

Similarly, Republican Senators George Allen and Conrad Burns' recent remarks about "macacas" (Allen) and "little Guatemalans" (Burns) are part of a larger political context. Allen appeared in a campaign commercial when he ran for governor in 1993 wearing a confederate flag in his lapel and, in fact, was a big champion of the flag as a college student. He now calls it youthful rebellion, but Virginia Democrats have been planting the seeds of Allen and racism for months and it gave the "macaca" comment some context. His campaign manager blamed the hoopla on the media and its demand for perfection, and the fact that it is a "tough year to run as a Republican," but Allen has been scrambling to get out from under for a week.

Montana Senator Conrad Burns, who is in a very tough reelection campaign, seems to have a proclivity for gaffes. Earlier this summer, he attacked firefighters who greeted him at the airport for a "piss-poor" performance fighting forest fires. He then joked about hiring a "nice little Guatemalan man" who may have illegal aliens working for him to paint his house. Since Burns was elected and reelected despite the fact that he had referred to Arabs as "rag-heads," and talked about living with blacks in D.C. as a "challenge," he may not be as worried about his mouth as Mel, Andy and George.

Nicolle Wallace, the former Bush spokesperson who has done her share of damage control, has been quoted saying that "I think if we get to a point in politics where politicians can't be human, then they move farther away from us, and I think that that's a dangerous thing. I think that's something we should all guard against."

Joe Klein, in his book "Politics Lost," also decries the canned nature of modern political campaigns and yearns for spontaneity.

This summer, we have seen and heard a lot of spontaneous remarks. The truth may set some people free but for celebrities and politicians, it is often more than they want us to know.

By Dotty Lynch

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