No Save Button For A Bad Case Of The Stupids

I know there are people who believe in the existence of the stupid question, but I haven’t counted myself among them.

Personally, I like to think that some queries lack accuracy, others are improper and still others share aspects of both. But stupid? No. I find it hard to knock an effort to gain information.

I do, however, reserve the right to change my opinion, if it seems to be the smart move.

Yes, I’ve heard the quip about how keeping quiet and appearing to be stupid is preferable to opening one’s mouth and removing all doubt --- some good advice found in similar quotes attributed to Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln.

But sometimes, when it comes to questions, a person just has to go ahead and ask, anyway.

It might be the best one can say in trying to figure out what political analyst Mark Halperin was thinking when he said what he said on MSNBC during the cable news channel’s June 30 “Morning Joe” show.

What Halperin, an editor-at-large at Time magazine, said about President Barack Obama -- a crude comment depicting the president as a part of the male anatomy -- got him suspended "indefinitely" by MSNBC. The vulgarity came in answer to a question about the president’s demeanor at his news conference the previous day.

But what put Halperin on a greased slide to a bad place was a question of his own. Instead of providing his analysis of the news conference, he asked co-hosts Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski if MSNBC’s seven-second delay button was working.

As it turned out, whether it was operational didn’t matter; a producer reportedly pushed the wrong one after Halperin went ahead and made the offensive remark, which could be heard by viewers.

Having toiled in the field of journalism for more than twenty years, I came to the conclusion long ago that reporters have plenty of better things to worry about than the risk of appearing stupid --- especially when there’s a fair chance that the risk is a horse already out of the barn and long gone down the road.

But now, well, I think it might be a good time to revisit my opinion about the non-existence of the stupid question.

Meanwhile, on the matter of analysis -- political or otherwise -- I'm thinking: never mind Mark Twain and Abraham Lincoln. Maybe the fellow who summed it up best was a plain talker and true Renaissance man named Forrest Gump.

"Stupid is as stupid does," observed Forrest, who did pretty well for himself without the benefit of a delay button.