The words “she couldn’t kick a ball through the uprights” had barely crossed Gary Barnett’s lips when the loud smack of hands hitting foreheads resounded throughout public-relations land.
“Who didn’t get a leash on that man?” groans Stefanie Jones, owner of a Denver PR firm that helped shape John Hickenlooper’s image during his run for Denver mayor.
“It’s going to be a textbook study of what not to do for years to come,” adds Jones.
But let’s be fair. The embattled University of Colorado football coach is hardly the first — and won’t be the last — public figure to say something inappropriate in a moment of unguarded emotion.
“The fundamental principle we try to counsel our clients on is to think before you speak,” says Steve Sander, president of Sander/GBSM public-relations firm in Denver.
Oh, if it were only so.
Sometimes what spills from famous mouths is career-busting, and no amount of groveling can undo the damage.
Consider what happened to another Colorado sports coach, Dan Issel. On Dec. 11, 2001, frustrated by his team’s loss, the former Denver Nuggets coach raged at a heckling fan: “Go drink another beer, you [expletive] Mexican piece of [expletive].”
Television cameras were rolling, and despite the subsequent apologies to the Hispanic community, Issel was gone.
If the comments don’t outright destroy, they can certainly define, gluing the words to the person for posterity.
A generation ago, fabulously rich New York real estate maven Leona Helmsley supposedly told her housekeeper: “We don’t pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes.”
Bad move, considering she eventually went to prison for tax evasion and mail fraud. Whether Helmsley actually said it or not, the quote forever is associated with The Queen of Mean.
Same deal for former President Bill Clinton. He served two terms in the White House, but what many people remember most is his straight-faced assertion during a Jan. 26, 1998, press conference: “I am going to say this again; I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
“It defines Bill Clinton’s presidency,” Jones says.
In fact, the statement is so intertwined with Clinton’s legacy, it has made the newly revised edition of “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations,” appearing on page 840 right above another infamous Clinton utterance about the sex scandal: “It depends on what the meaning of the word `is’ is.”
Why do some comments haunt, while others disappear into the sound-bite graveyard?
It’s a great mystery not easily explained even by those who make their money crafting image.
Politicians can sometimes bob and weave if the outrage after a comment can be quickly spun to seem only a partisan reaction.
This is especially true in matters of policy. (Think President George W. Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address and his labeling of Iran, Iraq and North Korea an “axis of evil.”)
“It has to do with the emotion tied to the statement,” Jones says.
Certain disaster-prone topics all but guarantee a hurricane-force reaction. Rape is one. Race is another.
“It’s extremely difficult to recover” from a gaffe about those, Jones says.
Take Brig. Gen. S. Taco Gilbert III and his comment about the alleged rape of a female Air Force Academy cadet: “If I walk down a dark alley with hundred-dollar bills hanging out of my pockets, it doesn’t justify my being attacked or robbed, but I certainly increased the risk by doing what I did.”
Ultimately, the general was reassigned.
Apologies can help. But not always.
Sander says the public has a great deal of savvy in determining what is heartfelt and what is not.
The effectiveness of an apology also has a lot to do with the track record of the person, he says.
“People are generally more forgiving when somebody is attempting to be funny,” he says.
Time tends to be the great arbiter of what sticks and what doesn’t.
“It’s people like Trent Lott and Gary Barnett,” Jones says, “that keep people like me in business.”
