"George Bush" and "Colin Powell" walked into a bar over the weekend. They were Tased and pepper-sprayed before the night was through.

Cops were called, blows were exchanged and clouds of pepper spray wafted through the air, adding to the weekend ambiance in Shreveport, Louisiana.

The occasion was a wrap party for "W," filmmaker Oliver Stone's recently completed drama about the current president's road to the White House.

Unlike Mr. Bush, Josh Brolin, the actor who plays the 43rd president, isn't on the wagon. According to reports, Mr. Brolin was putting away a few drinks with cast and crew because that's what generally happens at wrap parties.

Jeffrey Wright, who plays the former secretary of state, was Mr. Brolin's drinking buddy that night. Before he won an Emmy and a Golden Globe for his portrayal as Roy Cohn's nurse in "Angels in America," Mr. Wright played Martin Luther King Jr. in the HBO film "Boycott."

With Colin Powell now under his belt, Mr. Wright has become the official go-to guy for nuanced takes on inspirational African-American leaders.

On Saturday shortly after 2 a.m., Mr. Wright and Mr. Brolin were ensnared in a drama neither wanted to star in.

According to the celebrity Web site TMZ, they "were pepper sprayed and Tased by cops" when the cops entered the bar to break up a fight. TMZ also reports that police officers "went on a vulgar rant" that was captured on a cell phone video.

Mr. Wright was "repeatedly Tasered and pepper sprayed as he lay prone on his stomach in the street," while racial epithets rained down on him, according to TV station KTBS and TMZ.

All of the elements of another major racial frisson in popular culture are present in this incident, but the story hasn't gotten much traction beyond the liberal blogs.

Perhaps recent reports that Fox News has footage of Rev. Jesse Jackson using the "n-word" to refer to blacks in general has eliminated everyone's right to do a lot of screaming about this issue for a while.

Once upon a time, Jesse Jackson insisted that every rapper, musician, comic and ordinary citizen has an obligation to scrub the word from our vocabularies. There was no excuse for its continued use, he said.

Two years ago, he led the pitchfork brigade against disgraced "Seinfeld" actor Michael Richards when he used the epithet repeatedly during a disastrous comedy club show.

As a courtesy, Mr. Richards appeared on Mr. Jackson's syndicated radio show to apologize. Mr. Jackson accepted his apology, but warned that it would take time for the comedian to "earn back" the trust he lost. Imagine that!

In the wake of publicity about his own use of the term, Rev. Jackson issued the second apology in a week for his language: "I am deeply saddened and distressed by the pain and sorrow that I have caused as a result of my hurtful words. I apologize again to Sen. Barack Obama, Michelle Obama, their children as well as the American public.

"There really is no justification for my comments and I hope that the Obama family and the American public will forgive me," he said.

Given the monumental nature of Mr. Jackson's screw-up, slapping the Shreveport police around for peppering Jeffrey Wright with "n-bombs" feels wildly inappropriate.

Mr. Wright might have to take the fall for all of us until we can straighten out the hypocrisy of it all.

Yesterday on "The View," Whoopi Goldberg extended the power of the "n-word's" evil franchise over us when she got into an argument with co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck over Rev. Jackson's use of the word.

Ms. Goldberg repeatedly used the word to demystify it for the audience and drain it of its power. Ms. Hasselbeck made a very good point when she said she couldn't teach her kids not to use the word if her black co-hosts and their children used it without regard to how it hurt society.

A tearful Ms. Hasselbeck then said something fairly profound, though questionable from the perspective of many blacks: "We don't live in different worlds."

Folks who understand my politics know that I have no sympathy for right-wing politics, but I find myself more in agreement with Ms. Hasselbeck than Ms. Goldberg on this point.

There's an odd sort of self-victimization in the popular embrace of this word. What next -- minstrel chic?

Until we get our act together, celebrities like Jeffrey Wright will continue to suffer at the hands of racist cops while we're feeling around in the dark for the last vestiges of our moral authority.