I am not a DBA but using webmin to connect to mysql there is an icon for table permissions that looks like you can change permissions for individual tables. Maybe something has go wrong there. Just a suggestion for something else to try before you pull all of your hair out.
Well, I downloaded webmin and set it up. So far so good. It's not the interface I would like, but I don't seem to get any errors this way. Of course, I'm editing the table as root, so it had better let me do what ever the heck I want! :-) I'm going to install usermin and see if that helps any. If it does, at least I'll be able to use webmin while I figure out the root of my difficulty. It certainly gives my back access to my database, which is incredibly nice. Thanks for the idea. I'm going play around with these permissions more. --andy