`Speech kills': Try it yourself.

Byline: Tim McCaffrey

COLUMN: The Beaten Path

Anyone who has ever had a conversation in a bar is familiar with axioms. A conversation will be going on, and someone will whip out one of these hoary, self-evident truths and the conversation will stop momentarily while everyone else simply nods their heads in agreement.

You know the old standby phrases: A picture is worth a thousand words; knowledge is power; there's a thin line between love and hate; defense wins championships; and there are several more. The problem is that we've all heard each of them so many times that they've lost their impact; they don't have that new car smell, if you will. Therefore, I propose a new axiom for people to toss around at dinner parties: Speech kills.

OK, I realize that my "new" axiom totally rips off another well-known saying. That was a conscious decision I made to help market my new invention, because if people are already familiar with the pattern, it will be easier for them to remember. That is also why I used the word "kills" when there isn't actual death involved. It's catchy. This follows the pattern of the people who sell "Swiss Navy" watches on the streets of New York City. Also, as far as I know, there isn't a copyright office for cliches, so I should be on safe ground.

Now for the reason behind my invention:

It seems that the news that we hear and watch every day is dominated by misstatements. Essentially: "Did you hear what that person said? Those other people are incredibly offended. The horror!" These issues will sometimes die down quickly, but sometimes they will acquire a life of their own and be the topic of hand-wringing conversations for days at a time. The ramifications for these actions can range from no punishment at all to a loss of employment; the punishment has a direct relationship with the amount of hand-wringing that occurs.

Politics is a particular hotbed for this sort of activity. The most extreme example of this in recent memory was Massachusetts' own junior Senator John Kerry, who said, "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it." Kerry had a number of other mishaps (like when he ambled into an Ohio store, opened his Ivy League mouth and said, "Can I get me a hunting license here?"), but the quote about voting for and then against the $87 billion could very likely have cost him the presidency.

The current presidential race has been chock full of these sorts of statements (many of the below were found at politicalhumor.about.com). Senator Barack Obama has chewed on his own foot a number of times: He called his own grandmother a "typical white person"; called female reporters "sweetie" a number of times (they hate that); he said that certain voters "...get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."; and finally, he said, "I've now been in 57 states - I think one left to go."

Hillary Clinton chimed in with her own recollection that "I remember landing under sniper fire," when it turned out that there had been none and John McCain asked, "You know that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran? Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran."

These statements - which in past days might have been simple slips of the tongue that were forgiven by the press corps - are now blockbuster news stories. The quotes are repeated so much that they actually come to define the speaker. After a while, simply due to these quotes, people come to believe that John Kerry is a flip-flopper, Barack Obama is kind of an idiot, Hillary Clinton is a liar, and John McCain is a war monger. The person is simply defined by their sound-byte and world events are impacted by those slips of the tongue.

Speech also seems to kill people who discuss sports; particularly when those people attempt to discuss race. The earliest example I can remember is Howard Cosell, who said, while describing an African-American football player, "Look at that little monkey run."

But these types of issues seem to crop up every single day. Within the past week or so, Don Imus, famously fired for his statements about the Rutgers women's basketball team, created another flap with his comments about footballer Adam "Pacman" Jones. Imus' comments about Jones actually knocked another controversy (involving golf commentator Johnny Miller's comments about Rocco Mediate) off the air waves. And then Shaquille O'Neal lost his special deputy badge for performing a freestyle rap song that contained racial references.

All of these comments were dumb, but I'd like to know how many hours of talk radio and talking head news shows were spent discussing the comments and what those comments might mean about the people who uttered them, and whether the person should be punished for their comments. It almost seems as if the news companies throw every comment they can find against the wall in the hopes that one will strike a chord with the public and cause people to watch/listen to news programs and call talk shows.

I find the entire process of weekly controversies tiresome. To me, news is when something actually happens - like when Dick Cheney shoots a guy - rather than when something dumb is uttered. Therefore, I would like to propose the following: When you hear someone talking about something dumb that some famous person said, rather than discussing it in depth, stop for a moment, shake your head and say, "Speech kills."

Then go buy another round.

Tim McCaffrey is a freelance columnist who lives in Clinton. He can be reached at [e-mail].