BOSTON -- Maybe it’s the heat. It is officially now the silly season, after all. Although these days, serious media attention to trivial and irrelevant stories is pretty much a four-season preoccupation.

It’s not even the “dog days” of August, when everyone’s nerves are truly shot, everyone’s shrink is on vacation and the really, really stupid stuff happens.

Like wars. (See “Aug., 1914, WWI…”)

Just the same, some fairly smart people (two of whom are running for president) said some fairly stupid things in the past week or so. Some others DID some pretty stupid things.

August is shaping up to be a banner month for idiocy this year.

Perhaps the nuttiest thing anyone uttered recently actually involved that very word. (“Nuts.”) Um, that was, in fact, what the Rev. Jesse Jackson said he would like to cut off of Senator and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama. Nice, huh?

Jackson of course didn’t say such a thing to Obama’s face. He uttered it sotto vocce, as they say, thinking his mic was off during a break in a TV interview.

Here’s a little tip for Rev. Jackson, who ought to know better by now: when wearing a microphone, ALWAYS consider it on. It’s so much safer.

Oh -- and I wouldn’t expect an invitation to stay overnight at an Obama White House anytime soon.

Recent stupid human comment No. 2 came from former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm, who is the senior economic advisor to the presumptive Republican nominee for president, Sen. John McCain.

In an interview, Gramm asserted that America has become a nation of whiners “.” More curiously, he also argued that the economic downturn doesn’t actually exist. “You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” said Gramm.

Here’s a little tip for Phil Gramm: leave the Sigmund Freud stuff for the shrinks. (Who are all, as we’ve noted, on vacation in August.)

On the other hand, Gramm may be on to something. Because skyrocketing energy prices are certainly a big factor in our current recession. And the last time I filled my gas tank from empty it cost me nearly $100. And I experienced profound mental depression as I drove away from the pump.

But the single most stupid thing I can think of in the last week has to do with a parade.

Now, usually, unless a huge, flying Cat in the Hat balloon gets caught on a lamppost in New York, parades do not generally showcase stupidity. Whimsy and nudity, sure, in the case of some gay pride parades, for instance, but not generally rank, outright, ought-to-be-horsewhipped stupidity.

Cue the annual parade “Horribles” in the upscale, north-of-Boston suburb of Beverly Farms. Beverly Farms sits squarely in the Bay State’s “polo belt,” as I like to think of it, surrounded by other classy enclaves like Prides Crossing and Magnolia.

Nothing wrong, either, with an irreverent annual parade that pokes fun at politicians and celebrities. Only this year, several floats were devoted to viciously (and obscenely) mocking pregnant teens in nearby (and far more blue-collar) Gloucester. See for yourself .

Yup, plenty of money up there in Beverly Farms. Plenty of stupidity, too. Class? Not so much.