Virulent Foot-in-Mouth Disease Strikes Again

We all say things we later regret. I call these “Oh-my-God-isms.” As in, “Oh my God, did I really say that?”

The difference between us saying these things and public figures saying these things is that we have fewer people to apologize to afterward.

Recently, a Texas politician said a very stupid thing, which almost goes with the territory in Texas. The trouble with Texas politics is that everybody there wants to sound “down-home.”

So they are always saying things like: “There’s nothin’ in the middle of the road ‘cept a yellow line and dead skunks!” or “Being called a liar by my opponent is like being called ugly by a frog!”

It can be a good technique, but sometimes you end up repeating these old sayings without even thinking about them.

Saying things without thinking seems to be the specialty these days of Clayton Williams, the Republican candidate for governor of Texas. Williams recently decided to hold a cattle roundup at his ranch. It turned out to be a rainy, foggy day and so Williams decided to talk about the weather.

This should have been a safe subject. But not with Clayton Williams.

Williams said bad weather was like rape. “If it’s inevitable, just relax and enjoy it,” he chortled.

Not everybody chortled back.

I don’t doubt that Williams had used that line lots of times before. But that was the problem. He didn’t even think about what he was saying.

He didn’t stop and think that his comment was crude, hurtful, wrong and just plain stupid.

When he was questioned about his comment, Williams at first dismissed it.

“That was a joke,” he said. “It wasn’t a serious statement.” Then he added, “If anyone’s offended, I apologize.”

“This is not a Republican women’s club that we’re having,” he went on, proving no matter how stupid you have been, you can always be more stupid if you just apply yourself.

“It’s a working cow camp--a tough world where you get kicked in the testicles if you’re not careful. It’s a different world.”

Well, yes, it is a different world. A world where jokes about women, blacks, Jews, homosexuals, the disabled, Poles, the Irish and about two dozen other groups aren’t tolerated in public. Maybe some day they will not be tolerated in private either, but you have to start somewhere.

In any case, a day later, Williams decided he was very, very sorry.

“I apologize from the bottom of my heart,” he said.

It’s hard to know whether to have sympathy for Williams. Some do, believing he never meant to say what he said, that it was a true “Oh-my-God-ism.”

Others have survived similar stupid statements. Like when George Bush flew to New Orleans for the Republican Convention in 1988 and met Ronald Reagan on the airport Tarmac.

Bush began showing off his grandchildren, including the children of his son Jeb and daughter-in-law Columba, who is a Latina. Bush referred to the grandchildren as “the little brown ones.”

There was an immediate outcry, but it was quickly muffled when later that same day Bush announced he had selected Dan Quayle as his running mate. The “little brown ones” got passed by as everybody concentrated on the big goofy one.

And then there was Nancy Reagan, who had a truly bizarre “Oh-my-God-ism” in February, 1980. She was campaigning for her husband in a suburb of Chicago while he was campaigning in New Hampshire. In one of those stunts that never seem to go right, she was talking to him on the phone while her comments were being carried by loudspeaker.

Mr. Reagan said he was looking at a beautiful 16-inch snowfall and Mrs. Reagan said how she wished he could be with her in Illinois to see “all these beautiful white people.”

As soon as she said it, she hesitated, turned pale and said softly: “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean it.”

And most people had sympathy for her because her statement was so screwy, it was pretty clear she didn’t really mean it.

Columnists rarely commit “Oh-my-God-isms” because copy editors read our stuff before it gets in the paper and thereby save us from ourselves.

Only once did I slip up badly, and this was at a wedding reception. A variety of liquid refreshments had been consumed and many of us were over-served by the time the toasts began.

Which did not stop me from standing up and beginning a long and rambling toast that took note of the fact that the bride and groom had been living together for some time before the wedding. This would have been OK, except the parents of the bride had been unaware of this little fact. And I only learned they were unaware of it when the father of the bride stood and threw his champagne glass at my head.

I sat down feeling dumb and embarrassed and wondering why on earth I had ever gotten up to speak in the first place.

A friend sat next to me and told me not to feel bad, that we all say things we regret.

But I notice you didn’t get up and make a fool of yourself, I told him.

“That’s right,” he said. “Because I learned long ago that you never have to apologize for something you don’t say.”

And that is such a good lesson, I wonder why more of us don’t learn it.