Not the gaffer, but the gaffee

Forget about the gaffe, it's the media mindset that makes so much of gaffes that is the real issue, says Clive James.

Step forward anyone who has never made a gaffe. But that very instruction would be a gaffe if you delivered it to an audience of people in wheelchairs.

You would be in the same verbal slide-area as President Bush, who instructed a press correspondent to stop hiding behind his dark glasses, and it turned out that the correspondent was legally blind. But really President Bush is in the same verbal slide-area as us. We all make gaffes when speaking impromptu, and the only remarkable thing is that we don't do it more often.

The American presidential election is still six months away and judging from the current coverage you would think that the outcome was going to be decided by gaffes. In the mini-election still being fought out between the Democrat contenders, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, most of the news between contests in the individual states is provided by whether or not either candidate has made a gaffe lately.