This is a holiday weekend Friday. A time when you’re physically sitting at your desk but mentally swimming in a happy-hour margarita. So my latest offering is nothing too taxing. It’s just an observation inspired by Willie Geist’s “Week in Review” on “Morning Joe” today. He opened the segment by focusing on Mitt Romney’s homecoming tour of Michigan and all of the odd things he’s been saying.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

In the Geist montage you see Romney saying, “I love this state. It seems right here. Trees are the right height.” And “I like seeing the lakes. I love the lakes.” And “I love cars.”

Now, if you’re as twisted as I am, then you were immediately transported to the hilarious scene in Christopher Guest’s 2000 movie  “Best in Show,” when character Sherri Ann Cabot, 36, discusses all the things she and her 80-year-old husband have in common.

You know, we both have so much in common. We both love soup and, uh, we love the outdoors. We love snow peas. And, uh, talking and not talking. Uh, we could not talk or talk forever — and still find things to not talk about.

Cabot tries her best to make her odd circumstances seem normal by bringing up tenuous connections that only serve to highlight the absurdity of her situation. So, too, is Mitt “I like cars” Romney. This son of Michigan and of a former three-term governor of that state shouldn’t have to do this. But when you’re trailing a guy who lost reelection to the Senate in 2006 by 18 points you have to do something.

So, that whole Bayer aspirin-contraception thing Foster Friess said on MSNBC yesterday was all a big joke. An old and lame ditty the mega-wealthy backer of Rick Santorum thought would be appropriate to repeat on national television and right when the nation is embroiled in a very serious debate over the issue and religion. To his credit, Friess asked for forgiveness on his blog last night.

Today on Andrea Mitchell’s show, my aspirin joke bombed as many didn’t recognize it as a joke but thought it was my prescription for today’s birth control practices.… After listening to the segment tonight, I can understand how I confused people with the way I worded the joke and their taking offense is very understandable. To all those who took my joke as modern day approach I deeply apologize and seek your forgiveness. My wife constantly tells me I need new material — she understood the joke but didn’t like it anyway — so I will keep that old one in the past where it belongs.

I give Friess credit because he’s owning up to his boneheaded mistake, something very few people in the realm of politics who are caught in a vice of idiocy of their own creation ever do. Friess acknowledges the anger his dumb joke ignited. Not in the patronizing “If anyone was offended” vein that has as much sincerity as one of Mitt Romney’s “I’m one of you” speeches in Michigan. But in a forthright manner that leaves no doubt — at least to me — that he understands the mess he’s in. And Friess flat-out asks for forgiveness. Rick Santorum’s reaction to all this, on the other hand, was lacking.

After writing last weekend about the sublime flip-flop of Richard Nixon’s trip to China 40 years ago today, I received many comments that make his journey look even smarter than I had thought.

So as an unlikely pre-Presidents’ Day bouquet, here are some more kind words about Nixon — or at least his role in plotting the world-changing China trip. The thrust of these comments is that Nixon began planning his breakthrough years before he pulled it off and was relentless in driving it through to completion.

I offer this clarification because, given the national Nixonophobia, credit for the China opening usually goes to Henry Kissinger, his national security adviser. Kissinger handled his part of the opening superbly, but, as he told me last week, it couldn’t have happened without Nixon.

Take these as amendments to what I wrote on Feb. 12. If you want further reading, the story is told in “White House Years,” the first volume of Kissinger’s memoirs:

— Nixon began laying the groundwork more than a year before his election, in an October 1967 article in Foreign Affairs titled “Asia After Viet Nam.” He wrote: “Taking the long view, we simply cannot afford to leave China forever outside the family of nations.” He argued that this meant “pulling China back into the world community — but as a great and progressing nation, not as the epicenter of world revolution.”

— As president, Nixon covered his tracks. At his first White House news conference on Jan. 27, 1969, he was asked about improving relations with Beijing but demurred: “I see no immediate prospect of any change in our policy.” The real message was conveyed in a Feb. 1 memo to Kissinger: “I think we should give every possible encouragement to the attitude that the White House is ‘exploring possibilities of a rapprochement with the Chinese.’ This, of course, should be done privately, and should under no circumstances get into the public prints from this direction.”

— Nixon tried to signal the Chinese through various channels, including a conversation with French President Charles DeGaulle. But the sneakiest, and almost most comedic, attempt was through the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw, which since the Korean War had been the place where the United States and China passed messages.

Kissinger urged the U.S. ambassador, Walter Stoessel, to tell the Chinese ambassador at the next cocktail party that the United States wanted to talk. Stoessel apparently assumed this was just a Kissingerian fantasy and did nothing for several months. But after a nudge from the president, he pulled aside the Chinese charge d’affairs at a Yugoslav-sponsored fashion show in early December. The Chinese was so skittish that he fled, but Kissinger had the State Department spokesman announce the contact the next day. The Chinese got the message and invited Stoessel to their embassy a week later. The game was on.

— The Beijing train was slowed by the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970, but it got rolling again soon enough — partly because the Chinese were so eager for it. For example, I mistakenly credited Nixon for encouraging the U.S. ping-pong team’s visit to China in early 1971, a public symbol of the thaw. In fact, the invitation was pushed by the Chinese, who apparently wanted to put some public pressure on Nixon to hurry up.

“It really was Nixon who conceived this and brought it along,” recalls Richard Solomon, who worked on China for Nixon’s National Security Council staff and is now president of the U.S. Institute for Peace. It still feels awkward for those who grew up in the shadow of Watergate to praise Nixon, but in this case, he amply deserves it.

Things came in twos this week. Two polls showed President Obama’s job approval rating cracking 50 percent. Newt Gingrich joined Sarah Palin as the two most disliked politicians in America. The whole contraception fracas has split the Catholic Church in two. And a couple of Chinese guys took the nation by storm. New York Knick Jeremy Lin shot and assisted his way to stardom in the Big Apple. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping wooed his way from Washington to Iowa as part of a dress rehearsal for when he becomes the Big Cheese of China next year.

In the old days, I’d tell you to break out the No. 2 pencil for this p-Op quiz. But we’re in the electronic age. So, get clickin’.

Foster Friess proved to be a real pill on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports” today. Mitchell asked the mega-wealthy and conservative bank roller of Rick Santorum’s presidential campaign if he had any concerns about Santorum’s comments on social issues such as contraception and women in combat. Friess’s stupefying, backward and dangerous response had jaws dropping from coast to coast.

People seem to be preoccupied with sex. I think it says something about our culture. We, maybe, need a massive therapy session so we can concentrate on what the real issues are. This contraceptive thing. My gosh, it’s so inexpensive. Back in my days they used Bayer Aspirin for contraception. The gals put it between their knees, and it wasn’t that costly.

So, in a Friess world, women could protect themselves from the amorous (and otherwise) intentions of men as long as the Bayer doesn’t slip from the knees? And I thought Santorum saying that contraception is “a license to do things in the sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be” was bad. The Friess remark was so out-there that even my editor asked me, “Are you kidding me???”