One small side pleasure of the uranium-from-Niger story (which I otherwise

couldn’t give a fig about) is watching the agonized terror on the faces of

blow-dried liberal network TV newscasters as they have to pronounce the name

of the place. Most have settled in to “Nee-ZHAIR,” on the grounds (it seems

to me) that this is as phonetically far from the dreaded n-word as you can

get and still be understood. Good ol’ boy Bill O’Reilly is sticking with

“NYE-juh,” though. (Which is also how I say it, and seems to me is the

proper–or at any rate, least affected–English pronunciation.)