We all love a good media spectacle. Particularly when the controversy involves something open to interpretation.

Well, folks, right-wing bigot Rick Santorum might have just shown his hand to not only be a gay-hating, porn-hating, contraception-hating douche, but a racist as well; that is up for you to decide.

While addressing a crowd in Janesville, Wis., Santorum stutters through a sentence that sounds like the following:

“We know, we know the candidate Barack Obama, what he was like. The anti-war government nig, ah, of the ah, the America was a source for division around the world …“

That little “nig” unfinished word Santorum cuts off mid-sentence to then stutter on about for a while and come back into a thought going God knows where is the incident that has folks’ eyes popping out and wide open like an old blaxsploitation movie with Stepin Fetchit.

The question is, did Santorum make a huge political gaffe and nearly describe Obama as a “nigger”? Or was it merely a slip of the tongue where the “nig” word used has nothing to do with the sentence?

Perhaps Santorum was going to call Obama “niggard,” which means stingy or ungenerous. Then Santorum realized the word didn’t really fit with the sentence and stopped.

Maybe Santorum was going to call Obama a “nagger,” like in the episode of “South Park” with Stan’s dad on “Wheel of Fortune” with the topic of “People who annoy you,” and Santorum misspoke but luckily caught himself in time.

Maybe Santorum had just watched “Blazing Saddles” and the “n-word” was fresh on his mind and he thought a momentary reference to Gabby Johnson trying to address the townsfolk of the sheriff’s arrival while the church bells ring would appeal to the Wisconsin crowd, again thinking better of it before finishing.

Wherever your speculation might come down, the Santorum camp is certainly going to play it all off as a non-incident. They will say that Santorum would never use such language and such speculation is a flight of fancy from either the liberal or Romney camp — synonymous camps I do believe, based on the picture Santorum is trying to paint — meant to further sling mud during the presidential campaign.

I can hardly believe that Santorum, or any other candidate, would use a racial slur to describe the president of the United States, but I don’t see a whole lot of wiggle room for what word might have been bouncing around in Santorum’s head.

The long, hard road that is the campaign trail can become so tiresome that the mind wanders, and the only thing you can think of is the appeal of a pillow under your head for a few hours.

We have all been exceptionally tired. Some of us, I’d wager, tired enough that we start babbling and our friends have to stop us and ask what on Earth we were referring to.

Santorum is a smart guy, believe it or not, and his mind might have been wandering a bit. That wandering might have let a bit of babbling come forth. Though he remained sharp enough to give his brain a quick slap on the wrist for letting a racial slur pop in when thinking about his dislike for Obama.

Those naughty words are not unknown to most out there. Many of us avoid using them because they generally have no place in proper speech. But that doesn’t mean the word doesn’t pop up in the jumble of thoughts running at a mile-a-minute as our cerebellum processes language.

But looking back on Santorum and his possibly racist remarks, we can see an event in Iowa when Santorum was speaking about welfare and said, “I don’t want to, to make black people’s lives better by giving them somebody else’s money. I want to give them the opportunity to go out and earn the money.” That comment wouldn’t be too far gone a notion looking at the welfare situation of other states, but Iowa’s food stamp program is overwhelmingly populated by white folks, according to the rest of the video.

Is it out of the realm of possibility that Santorum is a little racist?

Well, no. Being a little racist is, I really hate to say it, a fairly common trait among many people in America. And I also hate to say it, but there seem to be more folks with racist outlooks that vote Republican than vote Democrat.

So there you have it, a media spectacle that will likely have a few minutes devoted to it on “The Daily Show,” while fueling the careers of stand-up comics and talk-show hosts for days at the least.

Whether Santorum was going to use the “n-word” or not, we will probably never know. But then, we usually never know what politicians really mean, do we?