pariah?

Have you noticed the word ‘pariah’ being used quite a bit in beltway vocabulary in the last couple weeks? I believe it started when a former US presidential candidate who served in Vietnam referred to the US as an “international pariah.” It’s surprising that no one has bothered to look up the etymology behind this word. It derives originally from the Tamil word for drum or drummer, but came to be applied to the Pariah caste in India and appears to be analogous to untouchable. In a political climate in which a firestorm erupts immediately and without fail over the use of ‘articulate’ and in which one can be fired form a normal job for using ‘niggardly’ - a word of perfectly innocent Scandinavian derivation - how is it possible that so many politicians and talking heads can use what might be described as another country’s ‘N’ word?

N.B. At the time of posting this entry, there is an apparent act of vandalism on the wikipedia entry for 'pariah'. It currently states that "John Kerry, the pariah of the democratic party, in an apparent jab at President Bush, used the word to describe the United States in 2007."