On Tue, 15 Jan 2008, Dean S. Messing wrote: > And then there's David Howard, the head of the Office of Public > Advocate in Washington D.C. in the late 90's, who dared to use the > word "niggardly" while discussing the budget with city employees. > Within days Howard was forced to publicly apologise and resign because > of such a "racially insensitive" remark. I thought it was stupid, too, and in his place, would not have felt obligated to respond politely. Perhaps "People who do not know what 'niggardly' means should not pretend that they do." Maybe "I suppose some of my new detractors are people who don't know what 'niggardly' means and think that they do. I suppose that some of my detractors are people who know what 'niggardly' means and are pretending that they don't." Some reporters questions should have been answered with something like "I don't feel obligated to assume that black people are both ignorant and stupid." -- Michael hennebry@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx "Those parts of the system that you can hit with a hammer (not advised) are called Hardware; those program instructions that you can only curse at are called Software."
