Not since Vice President Dick Cheney told Senator Pat Leahy (D, Vermont) to "f*ck off," the brouhaha over Reverend Jesse Jackson’s off-screen, hot-mike remarks referring to Barack Obama’s comments to African-American families, has sent the political media into assumptive chaos. With the audio bleep and the printed letter replaced with some sort of typographical symbol, one can only assume that whatever he said, it must have had some apocalyptic component.
"There’s a lot of conclusion-jumping going on right now," said one Jackson spokesperson. "Jesse doesn’t even remember what he said."
"We’ve put our best research team together to dig into the possibilities," said Wharton School of Spelling Dean, Daniel Webster IV. "We know there’s an n a t and an s in the word, but after that we’re running into a myriad of supposition that has experts scratching their heds...I mean, heads."
Possibilities...
-Nats: Most often referring to the Washington National’s major league baseball team, a Jackson favorite, but also a common misspelling of gnats, a small bug. Since this was an audio catch, Jackson could have been referring to gnats, though, if so, Jackson would have done better to brush off the bug, rather than cut it off,. That is, of course, unless Jackson mistook a leech for a gnat, which with the leech’s tendency to latch on to its prey, cutting them off would be more appropriate.
-Nits: Once again we’re in the insect area here. Nits are the empty eggshells from which the lice have hatched out. Health officials have always recommend the cutting of the hair when lice and their nits are found. This then would have been a rather goodwill effort by Jackson, but not READ THE REST OF THE STORY HERE.
Award-winning TV writer and author, Steve Young, blogs at the appropriately named, steveyoungonpolitics.com