Gail: Pecker politics definitely tops anything else we can possibly talk about. Still, I have to ask you about Virginia. You wrote a very powerful column taking the governor’s side. I wonder if that’s what convinced him to refuse to resign.

Bret: Thanks, though I think he had made up his mind before my column appeared.

Gail: But we may differ on this blackface thing. I came from a pretty conservative background but I can’t think of ever seeing anybody at my college putting shoe polish on their face or a sheet over their head under the theory that it would make them look cool. And Ralph Northam was in medical school! I know medical students aren’t all the omni-dedicated healers we saw on “E.R.” But good grief.

Bret: I don’t know if we really differ. But I think context and intention matter. Billy Crystal did “blackface” for a Sammy Davis Jr. impression, and I don’t think Crystal is racist in any respect. Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Sarah Silverman, to name a few boldface names, have all done blackface. If we’re going to start excommunicating people from public life for this, we’re going to destroy a lot of people who almost surely intended no harm.

Gail: Yeah, but I don’t remember Billy Crystal doing his act with a guy wearing a sheet.

Bret: That’s true. And I think that’s in a different league in terms of offensiveness. But again, I think we need to better understand the context, whether it was connected to a pattern of behavior, and whether it was ever repeated. And again, we are talking about an incident from 35 years ago followed by an admirable life without any hint of racial bias.

Right now, Northam’s real moral jeopardy is that he has contradicted himself and is doing a duck-and-cover move. He has a good opportunity to rise above it, first by clarifying how exactly that photo ended up on his yearbook page — and whether he’s one of the people in the picture, as he now claims he isn’t — and then by explaining why the casual racism of a past generation mustn’t be communicated to the present.

Gail: I do find it hard to believe he looked at that picture and said: “Who are these people? How did they get in my yearbook?” He’d be a gone goose now if the Legislature wasn’t busy talking about trying to impeach the lieutenant governor over some terrible allegations of sexual assault.

Did you know Virginia has, for all practical purposes, a one-term limit for governors? I’m wondering if that has anything to do with all these crises.