THE BELL CURVE:

Was it just me or were the front pages of the Pilot and Times, while celebrating a visit from the president of the United States this past week, also littered with sorry local events that competed daily with the collapsing economy for reader attention?

For example, President Obama came visiting for a chat with real people, but the headlines often had more to do with who was there and who wasn’t.

Meanwhile, the American Civil Liberties Union found it necessary to file a lawsuit to get the attention of our school district with regard to an alleged bad case of homophobia at Corona del Mar High School.

And the same disease seems to have infected the Newport Beach Police Department, for which we taxpayers will be footing a $1.2-million bill.

Among other things.

Mostly, the president’s visit was a joyous affair that echoed his sweeping victory in November. The only visible glitch in Costa Mesa came when his social handlers screwed up their dance cards by neglecting to invite several local Republican office holders.

This apparently was accidental, and the president apologized and promised to make amends. But the absence of four-fifths of the Costa Mesa City Council from the presidential festivities was both deliberate and childish.

Only Councilwoman Katrina Foley showed up to offer an appropriate welcome from the public officials of the city where the president was speaking. When asked if she was surprised by the defection of her associates — all of them had tickets — she said, “No. Just disappointed.”

She went on to add: “In a situation like that, the mayor is top dog and takes the lead. That didn’t happen. But I don’t think the recognition we got was diminished as a result. The closest thing to an official greeting came from our fire and police chiefs who talked with the president backstage. All in all, we had a great press day.”

Mayor Allan Mansoor explained this absence of civil courtesy in the missing four by telling a Pilot editorial writer that, with the exception of Foley — a Democrat — his associates on the council shared his view that it would be “frustrating” to have to listen to Obama talking about “fiscally irresponsible policies.”

This treatment should have made Obama feel right at home since it reflects the sour grapes mentality of the Republicans in Washington that shreds the bipartisan vision the president apparently still harbors. And as practiced by the Republican majority on the Costa Mesa City Council, it was simply rude and childish.

These people seem unable to separate the presidency from the man holding that job — something we had to learn the hard way during eight years of George Bush.

That separation makes it possible to heartily dislike the president while respecting fully what this title represents. Grown-ups are able to do that — and sometimes they even get elected to public office.

It’s hard to untangle the confusion at Corona del Mar High School in the disparity of stories and the tenuous connection — if any — between a student performance of the musical “Rent” and a video that is alleged to have discussed raping and then killing a female student at the same school. Inhabiting the space between these two extremes is that old devil homosexuality and the student rift between supporters and opponents of the anti-gay marriage measure, Proposition 8.

The American Civil Liberties Union says this jumble indicates an environment driven by homophobia and resulting in “a school gone awry.” When neither the school nor the Newport-Mesa Unified School District acted quickly or firmly enough to “resolve this situation,” the ACLU — reluctantly, it says — filed a lawsuit requiring the school and the district to “act now to remedy the situation so the students can go to school in a safe and secure environment and not be dragged through a lawsuit.”

In the barrage of statements and denials that followed, I looked for a cool head and tried Dana Black, who heads up the Newport-Mesa School Board. She was willing but not yet in the loop.

She said she was “proud of the kids at CdM for how they are handling all this.” As for school board involvement, she said: “The principal has jurisdiction over what happens in his or her school, Then the buck moves to the district office, the superintendent and then the public, where our role is to advocate for children.”

But slogging through levels of bureaucracy isn’t the shortest route to being heard. Parents who feel cut off or summarily treated, Black pointed out, can go to a public meeting of the school board and sound off.

Newport Beach police Sgt. Neil Harvey also needed a place to be heard when he was repeatedly denied promotion to lieutenant after 27 years of service in which his performance reports were mostly considered good to excellent. So he sued. And a jury of his peers awarded Harvey $1.2 million to compensate for the money the jury thought he should have earned as a lieutenant.

Finally, when Bill Lobdell came to the lectern in the Newport Beach Public Library on Tuesday, I warmed myself at his success. He was pushing a book he has just published called “Losing My Religion,” and he was kind enough to include me in his credits as “my one and only journalism teacher, the first person to tell that I could be a professional journalist.”

It may sound fatuous but watching the success — his book is in a second printing — of a former student is almost as exciting as achieving it oneself. And Lobdell had no idea he was lighting a match that would inflame many thousands of readers with his anguished journey from the moribund Christianity of his youth to active atheism, a route, he discovered, well traveled. And that’s what he talked about Tuesday night: his journey. I’m pleased I hitched a brief ride.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.