Jon Margolis, former chief political reporter for the Chicago Tribune and the author of "The Last Innocent Year: America in 1964," lives in northeastern Vermont, where he writes and teaches.

Nobody ever said it was easy, being in this news biz. One blankety-blank thing happens right after another, or—worse, now that there’s this 24-hour-a-day cable/talk radio/blog domination—the next thing happens even before the first thing has stopped happening. They’re yelling at you from the right side, scoffing at you from the left, lying to you from both sides, and, well…you know how it is...a fella (and we’re talking here about fellas of both genders) can get confused.

    And maybe not see what’s coming at him and/or her.

    Case in point: the now almost-forgotten Harry Reid gaffe.

    (But now pause for a moment to consider the absurdity – yet accuracy – of the above sentence. This is being written just 10 days after the story broke, perhaps six days since it dominated the airwaves, cables, blogosphere, and to some extent the printing presses. Now…Poof! It’s the new world. Deal with it).

    It wasn’t easy being any kind of journalist—reporter, commentator, television host—at least not the kind of journalist trying to practice what is generally considered journalism. As in, covering the news and conveying empirically testable accuracy (sometimes known as ‘telling the truth’) without becoming a participant.

    For instance, picture yourself as a reporter listening to, or a TV news show host interviewing, a United States Senator, the Republican National Chairman, or a well-known commentator decrying the “racist” remark of Sen. Reid, the Nevada Democrat and Majority Leader.
    
    This is news. The comments of a senator, a party chair, or even a well-known commentator can’t be ignored. The reporter has to report them. The host has to hear them and respond respectfully. That’s the covering the news part of the assignment.

    But somewhere in the back of the reporter’s or host’s mind, wasn’t there a little voice telling him/her that in fact Reid’s remark, while impolitic, was not the least bit racist? And that somehow—without of course, saying, “Senator (or whoever), that’s a lot of hooie,” shouldn’t he/she inform readers or viewers that what the senator (or whoever) is saying is…a lot of hooie?

    That’s the telling the truth part of the assignment.

    The genesis of this contretemps was, of course, the publication of Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime (Harper-Collins), John Heilemann and Mark Halperin’s tell-all book about the 2008 presidential campaign.

    In what the authors describe as a "private" conversation, Reid said “the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a 'light-skinned' African American 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’"

    This was not racist. It was a gaffe in the now-classical definition first attributed to Michael Kinsley: speaking a truth best left unspoken for reasons of political self-interest. As it turns out, the “private” conversation was with the authors. Reid seems to have thought it was off-the-record. Regardless of the ground rules the three men had set and whatever miscommunication there may have been, the responsibility here is the Majority Leader’s. If a politician doesn’t want to be quoted saying something, he shouldn’t say it.

    To their credit, some journalists pointed out that Reid’s political analysis was accurate. On NBC’s Today show on January 11, Gwen Ifill noted that “There is actual political science that backs up (Reid’s assertion)…there is evidence to support that people – whether it is a matter of voting for a white candidate or voting for a black candidate – if a person is very much different than who they are, or what they perceive the mainstream to be, they are less likely to vote for that person."
(Gwen Ifill on  the Today Show)

    At least on the air, though, few if any of those who claimed that Reid’s remarks were “racist” or “racially insensitive,” were challenged.

    To be sure, the “racially insensitive” charge becomes minimally arguable in considering the second half of Reid’s comment, that Obama does not speak with a “Negro dialect.” Just as true as the skin color factor, of course, and for the same reason (a person tends to vote for a candidate who is more “like me” in looks, sound, style, etc.).

    But “Negro?” We don’t say “Negro” any more, do we?

    Oh, this is a whole separate and potentially fascinating discussion. “We” don’t. But who are “we”? And who determined that “we” don’t?  A whole lot of African-Americans of a certain age (Sen. Reid’s) say it. So did Martin Luther King, Jr., who lived during the time when “Negroes” replaced “colored people” (as in, the National Association for the Advancement of) as the preferred term.

    So Reid was possibly guilty here of being an old guy, maybe a slightly out of touch old guy, which is not the same thing as being a racist.

    What is not arguable is that there is no comparison –“no,” here, meaning zero, zip, nada, bupkiss—between what Reid said and the words which cost former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi his Republican leadership position in 2002.

    A point journalists should have made clear when interviewing or writing about politicians who made the comparison, such as Republican Sen. John Cornyn of Texas, who said Democrats defending Reid were guilty of using “a clear double standard,” or Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele, who said, “Democrats feel they can say these things and they can apologize when it comes from the mouths of their own. But if it comes from anyone else, it’s racism.”
(Capitol Hill politics on the Today Show).

    Lott, of course, had regretted that Strom Thurmond didn’t win the 1948 presidential election. Let’s see: One senator yearns for a country led by an avowed segregationist; the other ineptly explained his support for a black presidential candidate. This is supposed to be comparable?

    Someone also might have noted that while Democrats certainly made as much as they could out of Lott’s blunder, it was not they who cost him his leadership position. It was George W. Bush’s White House.

    And what was it that nobody noticed?

    That they were all pawns in a brilliant marketing campaign.

    Or so it seems. If the authors, their agent and the publisher did not orchestrate all this publicity by carefully revealing the most outrageous passages of the book, then they’re just about the luckiest authors, agents, and publisher extant. It was a bi-partisan, bi-ideological effort; no one comes out of the pre-publication publicity looking worse than Sarah Palin, unless it was the man who put her on his ticket. (Well, OK, maybe John and Elizabeth Edwards). Regardless of the politics, though, it was quite an impressive PR juggernaut.

    This is an observation, not a condemnation. All writers, agents, and publishers try to drum up sales for their books. No reason they shouldn’t. Every reason for journalists, as they report the various brouhahas resulting from the carefully leaked excerpts, to let their readers, viewers, listeners know that what they are contemplating is, among other things, a sales operation.