The recent flap over Seinfeld comedian Kramer calling two black hecklers at a comedy club the N word points up the need to update those old racial epithets into something more modern, more gentile. 

In other words, we can still insult each other and not be so harsh about it. 

For example, instead of calling someone the N word, a word that originally and innocently referred in Latin to the color black. Instead, you could yell, "hey you, the tanned fellow in the third row!"

What's harsh about that? "Fellow" is a pleasant word. "Tanned." Everybody wants a healthy looking tan. Millions go to Hawaii to get one. If tanning isn't desirable, why are there so many tanning parlors run by huge blonde Amazons?

Even though your intent may have been hostile, you couched the words in a more benign cast, two or more word combinations free of any previous negative taint.

Let's say you're black, and want to insult a white. Don't call him Honkey. That sounds dumb. He's not a goose. Don't call him Whitey either (for example, "Hi Whitey Either!"). Whitey is a character from the old Leave it to Beaver Show.

It's time to gloat.

Nancy Pelosi, the new Speaker of the House of Representatives, said Democrats would not gloat over the downfall of the Republicans. 

They wouldn't make verbal attacks, celebrate, be smug, puff themselves up, engage in you-got-what-you-deserve type behavior, or call the opposition "traitors."

In other words, act the way the Republicans have for the past four years.

Since she won't gloat, I will.

The gods blind those they wish to destroy. 

The Republicans, not satisfied with their disastrous performance, misleading the public into wars based on false evidence and assumptions, ignoring global warming, and the biggest spending debt in US history. More than all the other administrations from George Washington on combined.

Hurricane Katrina bungling.

I can't fit the entire list on the page. It's too long.

As if that isn't enough. What more could they possibly do?