I’ve paraphrased slightly in the headline in honor of his immortal Gates/Crowley gaffe. Conspicuously and lamentably omitted from the clip below: The One’s thoughts on just what it is that’s teachable about this “teachable moment.” To see what the master wordsmith came up with in that vein, we turn to the ABC transcript:

“If there’s a lesson to be drawn from this episode, it’s that rather than us jumping to conclusions and pointing fingers at each other, we should all look inward and try to examine what’s in our own hearts and, as a consequence, I think we will continue to make progress,” he said.

That’s as vapidly safe a conclusion as one could possibly draw, which, given how many landmines the people involved in this story have already stepped on, is probably the wise way to play it politically. Speaking of landmines, retiring liberal lion David Obey would like you to know that he’s quite outraged at the “piggish character assassins” at Fox News who were so “eager to peddle” Breitbart’s clip by, er, not running it until after Sherrod was already fired. Meanwhile, Media Matters might just have blown the lid off a vast right-wing conspiracy to push the clip on Monday, even though … none of the alleged conspirators, which include yours truly, were in contact with each other. In fact, I didn’t even e-mail Ed about the story until 6:30 on Tuesday night, shortly after the NAACP issued its second statement vindicating Sherrod. What can I say? The Journolisters may be pros but we, alas, are amateurs.

Update: A lingering mystery to this fading story: How did Sherrod find out in advance that the tape was about to be made public?