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__SO WE'RE ALL COOL WITH "niggardly" NOW.
_______________{UH ... AREN'T WE?}

______BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK | Last week, locking up the illiterate and hard-of-hearing vote, Washington Mayor Anthony Williams accepted ombudsman David Howard's resignation for having used the word "niggardly" (correctly, to mean "miserly") in front of co-workers, who misinterpreted it as related to "nigger." Naturally, editorial wags pounced on this savory, using it to advance agendas in venues from the Washington Post (municipal government is out of control) to the Wall Street Journal (PC morons are destroying civilization) to Britain's Guardian (here's what happens when you franchise the language).

"It's like Ebonics," said New York Times op-ed columnist Frank Rich. "It's op-ed heaven." For his part, Rich made only passing reference to the scandal, in a Saturday column asking why Betty Currie, long assumed a non-negotiable GOP witness in the Senate trial of President Clinton, was passed over for Sidney Blumenthal, with uncharacteristically PC sensitivity on the part of a prosecutorial team including white-power motivational speaker Bob Barr. There was "no credible on-the-record explanation for this omission from the prosecutors," Rich wrote. "But the niggardly, not-for-attribution mutterings were clear enough: The 13 white men cowered at the prospect of throwing hardball questions at an African-American woman who might break into tears."

At least, that's what Rich's column in the dead-tree Times said. But visitors to the Times' Web site Saturday morning found this D.C.-friendly version of the second sentence above: "But the not-for-attribution mutterings ..."

Had "niggardly" been sanitized for the online readership -- on the same morning a Times editorial denounced Howard's ouster, yet? According to the Times, no. Rich says that, wanting to reference the D.C. controversy but constrained by a 700-word limit, he decided at the last minute to insert the hot potato as a shorthand. Rich phoned in the addition around 8:15 Friday night, but, said Rich Meislin, editor in chief of Times Electronic Media, the site apparently picked up the earlier draft.

In any case, Rich's allusion and the mix-up showed that the Times is no more immune than D.C. City Hall to the "niggardly" fallout. In the Times' online forum, one reader (who says he saw Rich's column in print) posted Saturday morning, "Did you use the word 'niggardly' to make a point? To make a joke? To reinforce today's vocabulary word? I hope it is not a point of honor to defend the brave use of a word so easily misconstrued."

By 1:10 p.m. Saturday, "niggardly" was silently restored to the Web site of record, mostly with the approbation of forum participants. Indeed, you could say D.C.'s phonics poster children handed the country a much-needed gift last week, an issue that opinion-makers right, left and center could universally agree on. But the defenders of the dictionary -- legion, and still queued up six abreast -- haven't acknowledged a couple of unpleasant, unspoken truths, the first and worst being that, losing the battle of public opinion, the "niggardly" bashers may already have won the war.

Like it or not, the word is now radioactive; having defended it, no one can now use it -- especially in racially mixed company -- without raising the question of motives, which, however, few will dare voice. So odds are we'll lump it in with the actual epithets and, in our grand tradition of racial denial, clam up about it. In theory, you, I and the columnist next door will defend to the death our right to say "niggardly." But in practice, will we use it? Or will the caution linger in the back of our minds -- you do the rhyme, you do the time? (Even before the Washington incident, the Dallas Morning News had ixnayed the word after its use in a restaurant review raised ire.)

N E X T_ P A G E | Newspapers gently describe what word "niggardly" sounds like