Question Celebrity

A recent B-List celebrity kerfluffle inched the status of the f-word (that is, the derogatory schoolyard epithet for gay men) toward a level most often reserved for the n-word (that most flammable of racist labels, when it's not being freely bandied about in hip-hop hits).

Actor T.R. Knight came out to People magazine last fall after two of his "Grey's Anatomy" co-stars, Patrick Dempsey and Isaiah Washington, got into a fight on the set. What was the fight about? Among other things, it was because Washington called Knight the f-word. Any male, straight or gay, who did time in a junior high school gym class has been called this word, but that was then. The f-word isn't merely an adolescent slur anymore; it's surely been the last word some have heard before losing consciousness in a hateful attack. At the Golden Globe awards in January, Washington denied ever having called Knight the word and made it worse by saying the word again -- D'oh!

That did it. Knight found himself going, on the gay-issues scale, from zero (closeted, working, ho-hum actor) to 60 (proud symbol of victimization). Luckily, there's the "Ellen" show: A couple of days after the Globes, Knight and Ellen DeGeneres awkwardly discussed how the whole thing made him feel, yet both seemed counterproductively nervous. Knight once again stated how much he disliked being defined by his sexuality. (Aren't straight actors who populate the gossip pages pretty much always defined by their heterosexuality? All that dating, dumping, marrying, impregnating, divorcing? How come only gay people have to worry about overstating their private selves?) ABC, the home of "Grey's Anatomy," and others issued more statements of regret and displeasure re the f-word. According to USA Today, thousands of viewers have signed a petition asking that Washington be canned from the show. At last, Washington formally apologized and admitted that "there are issues I obviously need to examine within my own soul, and I've asked for help." (Help defined: He fired his publicist and met with gay rights groups. Then came reports that he checked into a rehab center, where one can only hope there's lots of bear-hugging.) And T.R. Knight? He may one day be defined only by his acting, but I have a hunch he'll always be defined by his sexuality -- that dude who got called the f-word and kept having to explain to the media how it's-not-a-big-deal-but-it-is, lending the incident, and the word, far more power than either ever deserved.

E-mail: celebrity@washpost.com.