A recent story the Democrat-Herald has followed — one that’s sad, scary, tragic, senseless and gruesome all at the same time — involves a young man who was jumped and beaten nearly to death by a mob also made up of young people.

If you click on the link and read the story, you’ll notice the victim’s mother thinks the incident arose from jealousy over her son’s girlfriend.

“I’m so angry this happened over as something as stupid as a girl,” the article quotes the mother as saying.

I saw the story and the quote at about 4 p.m. Friday and immediately read the quote aloud to city editor Karen Petersen.

“As stupid as a girl,” I said, expecting, I suppose, for her to join me in thinking that the phrase sounded quite demeaning to the female gender.

“That’s how (online editor) Graham (Kislingbury) read that quote too, but I wasn’t offended by it at all,” Karen said.

“Girls are stupid?” photographer David Patton said. “I didn’t know girls were stupid.”

And thus ensued a lively discussion and analysis, newsroom-wide, regarding the mother’s choice of words.

It was basically a 50-50 split, with the men more apt than the women to take offense at the comment.

Karen’s basic point was that jealousy was a poor reason for people to fight.

“First off, regardless of what was behind it, this wasn’t a fight — this was an attack,” I said.

“Crime of passion. People shoot each other over relationships,” said Patton, noting that this sort of thing is at least a common reason, if not necessarily a good one, for violence.

“To me,” I said, “in addition to coming across as a put-down for girls, what the mother said implies that there could be a smart motivation that would justify that kind of attack. ‘… as stupid as a girl, not something important like a spot on the football team.’”

What do you think? I know the mother is very upset and this is not intended as a criticism of her grasp of language nuance, but do you see any problem with how she expressed herself?