I thought I'd throw a bit of a different, and unaccrimonious, twist to this thread. Back in the late 50s I was living in Everett, Washington in what was, for those times, a racially mixed neighborhood. A very genial and quite large African-American lived two houses up the street. He had a black lab that he named "Nigger." Many a I saw him step onto his porch and, in a booming voice, loudly call his dog: "Here, Nigger, Nigger, Nigger." And then he would laugh uproarisously. I thought the performance delightful, dare I say funny? dennis eddings