DENVER, Colorado (AP) — Colorado Gov. Bill Owens apologized for saying “the natives are getting restless” during a conference on tribal gambling.

Owens made the remark at the Western Governors’ Association Summit after a participant’s microphone wouldn’t work and he urged it be fixed quickly. Some attendees told the Rocky Mountain News the audience fell silent, then groaned and chuckled.

Wonderful. At least he didn’t make any remarks about “redskins” and “firewater.”

As the story notes, everybody took it well enough, and that’s a credit to the audience in an age where too many people wake up in the morning hoping for nothing more than an opportunity to get offended about something. So in a vacuum this isn’t a big deal.

In context, though, it’s a different story. The context is Owens’ unrelenting campaign of stupidity, in which he never misses a chance to somehow harm or embarrass the state. The highwater mark was probably during the fires of 2002 where he assembled every camera and reporter he could find and dramatically announced to the world that “today the entire state is burning.” Many of us wondered if it wouldn’t have been more efficient to just ask America directly if they wouldn’t mind taking their vacation dollars somewhere else, and I can only imagine the gratitude of those in the state’s tourism industry at his full-frontal on their financial solvency.

Bill Owens for governor of the Persistent Vegetative State…

[THX: Bella Ragazza.]