This boogie man will get you

Actor Isaiah Washington is in trouble over words:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Isaiah Washington, who does the healing as a doctor on "Grey's Anatomy," is the patient now.

He's in therapy for his use of an anti-gay slur against a castmate.

"With the support of my family and friends, I have begun counseling. I regard this as a necessary step toward understanding why I did what I did and making sure it never happens again," Washington said in a statement Wednesday. "I appreciate the fact that I have been given this opportunity and I remain committed to transforming my negative actions into positive results, personally and professionally."

Washington took a break from filming Tuesday to meet with gay rights activists and offer help in educating the public about the cruelty of such words, an offer the activists called sincere.

Whether Washington was receiving outpatient counseling or had entered a facility was not specified, and the statement did not indicate whether he would miss work on the show.

I'm sure he remembers this word:

The Spanish word negro originates from the Latin word niger, meaning black. In English, negro or neger became negar and finally nigger, most likely under influence of French nègre (also derived from the Latin niger).

In Colonial America, Neger (sometimes spelled "neggar") prevailed in northern New York under the Dutch and also in Philadelphia, in its Moravian and Pennsylvania Dutch communities. For example, the African Burial Ground in New York City was originally known as "Begraaf Plaats van de Neger."

In the United States, the word nigger was not always considered derogatory, but was used by some as merely denotative of black, as it was in other parts of the English-speaking world. In nineteenth-century literature, there are many uses of the word nigger with no intended negative connotation. Charles Dickens, and Joseph Conrad (who published The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' in 1897) used the word without racist intent. Mark Twain often put the word into the mouths of his Southern characters, white and black, but did not use the word when speaking in his own voice in his autobiographical Life on the Mississippi.

I'm just saying . . .