I was watching a rerun of the medical drama "House" the other night and I was struck by the following exchange that took place between Dr. House (a white Hugh Laurie) as the excentric but brilliant diagnostician and his subordinate Forman (a black Omar Epps)who wears the chip on his shoulder like a medal of honor.

If you have never seen the show, allow me to begin by explaining that everyone has a contentious relationship with House, he's completely disfunctional on a human interaction level and treats everyone with equal distain - he's the penultimate equal opportunity insulter. In his typically arrogant, yet effective manner, House has given a black patient the correct medicine for the patient's illness (specifically for black people) but represented it as being something else (medicine prescribed for white people with the same condition) in order to gain the skeptical*** patients acceptance of the treatment.

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