Isaiah Washington: "Sticks and stones...."

People have been asking what I think should be done about Isaiah Washington and his homophobic insults hurled at Grey's Anatomy castmate T.R. Knight.

It puts me in mind of the saying in my childhood, "Sticks and stones will break my bones, but names will never harm me." Certainly words can be harmful, if we let them be. But they don't have to be.

We need to focus on the people with the real "sticks and stones," a president and Congress that continue to treat lesbians and gays as "3/5th of a human being" and not allowing them to marry, because it will undermine the sanctity of heterosexual marriage. What utter nonsense. Ann and I have been married nearly 25 years and have never felt our marriage even a tiny bit threatened by anyone else getting married. That's what concerns me much more than words, even stupid and hurtful ones.

Surly we need to ignore the latest Hollywood publicist antidote to abominable celebrity behavior - rehab. We know that's phony as a $3 bill. Has anyone who went to rehab ever reported back to us. Come on folks, if you behave like a moron, take it and move on.

So, what is to be done?

The most obvious response is, if ABC doesn't fire Washington, we'll boycott the show. But if such a boycott is successful and endangers the show it will hurt all the cast (including T.R.) and workers involved. This would be extremely unfair since many of them have been very forthcoming in their support of T.R.

So I don't have an easy answer, but I have been toying with an idea that targets sponsors, I'll let you know when I work it out. Till then....