This column reminds me of the “modified limited hangout” made famous by John Ehrlichman during Watergate. You remember John Ehrlichman, don’t you? You remember Watergate, don’t you?

Well, it doesn’t matter if you do or don’t, because I’m not going to write about Watergate anyway. Why bother? It’s history, isn’t it? Who cares.

But just when you think people don’t care about anything, they call you a fascist pig, or something like that. So of course people do care; they just don’t care enough to think of inventive insults.

What I am beginning to understand is that some people prefer not to see the editor of a local newspaper in Montana write about things that happen in Texas; or Washington, D.C.; or Iraq. They want you to write about something you know about, and there is no reason why any American citizen would know anything about what’s happening in their country or their world, is there?

So I’m not going to write about presidential politics today, although I want to. There is plenty to write about regarding the junior senator from Illinois, but what’s the use? It doesn’t do any good anyway. People either do or don’t get Barack Obama already, and really, what is the point of trying to persuade people who already have their minds made up?

It seems like the best thing to do is write about something safe, something saccharine, something that won’t get the folks on the Internet all riled up …

So what about that rain? That was something, wasn’t it? I mean, the Inter Lake ran a story only a couple of weeks ago saying the “‘August singularity’ is not just folklore,” and then, bam, like Zeus heaving a thunderbolt from Mount Olympus, the skies open and rain spills down on Northwest Montana in a manner vaguely reminiscent of the downpours preceding “THE” Flood.

But relax, I’m not going to write about THE Flood. That would naturally make people think about church, and church would make them think about religion, and religion would make them think of God, and the next thing I know somebody would accuse me of shoving religion down their throats, and I’d have to read some book about atheism to do penance, and if that isn’t a conundrum I don’t know what is, which is why I am not writing about THE Flood.

I am writing about the rain, however. I mean, I guess I am.

It really wasn’t all that much rain, after all, and what’s the point of writing about the rain in Northwest Montana when people are starving in China — hold it, that’s a misplaced idiom, and obsolete to boot.

But about that rain … I’m glad I finally found a topic everyone can agree on, and one that a country editor can write about without being told he is all wet. Or did I?

• Frank Miele is managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake and writes a weekly column. E-mail responses may be sent to edit@dailyinterlake.com