printI’ve never been able to watch an entire episode of “Seinfeld,” an insipid and dull skit, with annoying, utterly contrived characters. By contrast, I’m quite capable of enjoying the odd “Everyone Loves Raymond” episode (Doris Roberts as Marie Barone is marvelous). But Seinfeld, including the apparition that went by the name Kramer, was crappy TV.
Now it transpires that actor Michael Richards is every bit as grob as Kramer, the creep he played. (Grob means “coarse, crude, profane, rough, rude� in Yiddish.)
TMZ.com reported that, after being heckled mildly:
“Michael Richards exploded in anger as he performed at a famous L.A. comedy club last Friday, hurling racial epithets that left the crowd gasping… The camera started rolling just as Richards began his attack, screaming at one of the men, ‘Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass.’ Richards continued, ‘You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!'”
To his credit, the man Richards assailed responded in a rather muted manner: “You’re not funny. That’s That’s un-f***ing called for, ain’t necessary.”
Later, the apology factory went into action, and Richards, who should have been banished forthwith from polite company (that doesn’t include mass media), was beamed via satellite into David Letterman’s “Late Show,” where he gruffly proclaimed: “For me to be at a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, I’m deeply, deeply sorry…I’m not a racist. That’s what’s so insane about this.”
No, what’s “so insane” about these episodes is the apology ritual that follows, and the notion that saying sorry is somehow redemptive; what’s “so insane” about these regular installments of pigs behaving badly is the readiness to believe the bifurcation the scumbag will offer up—that somehow an entity other than himself possessed him for the duration of the tirade. Why would the “black community” even want to engage with this sewer rat?
As I see it, the hatred and unwarranted verbal aggression Richards displayed were far less disturbing than his gutter manners and lack of inhibitions in expressing his foul repertoire.
If the pack of pigmies in the press and TV simply shunned Richards, he’d retreat into the septic tank whence he came.
It seemed to me part of the act, the outrage and tantrum weren’t real.
Now why the big deal though. A person goes to that kind of place and that is the type of thing they will probably hear. And why is it a big deal for this guy? A black standup/rapper can say whatever he or she likes about abybody. Nobody mentions that.
This brings a couple of odd things to mind.
Remember George Carlin’s riff on “sorry”? “Everybody says I’m sorry, but remember when you thought it would HELP? I’m SORRY, I’ll never do it again. I’ll turn over a new leaf!”
And years ago there was a program on ‘women in prison’. One young woman had emptied a revolver into a partner over a coke deal gone bad, reloaded and emptied another cylinder into him. In an interview she kept saying, “I’m sorry, OK?” like she expected someone to open the prison door and say “OK”.
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Everybody loves Raymond? Isn’t that the show where that wife heckles her husband consistently? [I didn’t think so. With respect to the parents–the older couple–the husband is in fact consistently cruel and unkind to the wife.]
I don’t really like any TV these days, but I really didn’t like Seinfield. I never laughed at any show.
M. Richards seems to lack some functioning mental inhibitions; wondering if he is schizophrenic in any way. His tirade was so out of control that it seems as though he lacks the normal self control most people have. He seems somewhat mentally deranged.
Michael Richards is known to be one of the nicest guys in the business–down to earth, approachable, an anti-snob. We see him all the time in the market, around town, and he’ll talk to anyone.
I think he lost his temper–we all have–and we should let it go. He apologized, and it seemed genuine to me.
We all flip out at one time in our lives. No big deal.
I am still waiting for Chris Rock to appoolgize for a few racist rants on HBO that make Richards look like a pussy cat – but I am not holding my breath.
Kramer mistook his comedy stage as a free speech zone.
Maybe he thought he could be just as racist and misogynist and “in your face” exempt from decency as the average rapper.
No “hey my nigga” artist ever gets pilloried for using his own poetic streetwise crude words.
Reverse racism is real.
And so is political correctness.
Every college and university in democratic Amerika has adopted speech codes so that no one shall feel offended.
The revolutionaries who liberated these still infant colonies valued free speech above all else.
Their great-great-great grandchildren must be quite a disappointment…
[This is about decency and manners, as I said. I’ve written plenty about free speech, of which I am a radical advocate. Here are the results of a search on this blog. Just because blacks, in their hump-along music, do a Richards every day, doesn’t mean others should join them, or be excused when they do. People here seem incapable of condemning wrong any more; it’s all about, “Is the dude in my camp, or not.”]
I didn’t see the original performance; however, judging by what has been reported, I agree that his manners were poor.
Where I live, however (in Lancaster, up in the high desert above L.A.), it seems like it’s open season on Caucasians… as in, someone behind me was coming out of a convenience store, and was literally screaming into her cell phone, literally inches from my head.
I turned around to ask her to tone it down because she was screaming, and what did I get? I got told to get the f–k out of her way, and I got called a “fat-assed white bitch” (standard epithet these days, it seems).
I came home once and there were a pair of Hispanic teens (boy and girl) and a black teen girl loitering on the driveway of the apartment I rent.
I asked them to leave, and I again got called a “fat-assed white bitch.” (I guess it was okay for them to loiter as long as they were only casing the joint and not actively breaking in.)
This kind of crap cuts both ways. I agree that good manners are in order… but it seems it’s futile to expect any decent manners toward a white person for fear of inciting a racial incident.
Oh, and yes… in the past, both of the VW Bugs I once drove were rear-ended (in different years)… by black men, both of whom were driving more-expensive cars than mine, and in both cases they tried to turn it racial and wiggle out of their obligation to pay for the damage (neither one was insured). The sister of one of them screamed racial epithets into the phone at me.
And while I was working two jobs to pay for the damage to one car (while waiting for the perp to pay for the damage he caused), I got mugged one night while walking from the office building to the then location of the bus station. The two black male nasties said, among other things, “We don’t care if we kill you ’cause you’re white.” They also threatened to kill me if I didn’t have enough money. Probably empty threats, just talking sh!t to me.
But some people would refuse to call that racism… because it was done by blacks toward a white person.
Pam, I am sorry about your experiences, and I can relate. You are right, it is open season on whites, white/Jewish, and many hispanics in California. I don’t think that people appreciate how stressful this all is. Can’t people just take responsibility for their own lives, and not take it out on helpless women?
Everyone is afraid of black people–whites, hispanics, asians–and this fear eventually turns into resentment. That is the root of the problem. Black people hate us–witness the celebration after o.j. got away with murdering two white people. We don’t hate them, we want to see them prosper, and they hate us…
For people like that, I guess we really have to pray for them, big time.
Hi, Concha: Thanks for your comments. I don’t think of myself as helpless… but I too get perturbed at so much attitude in response to asking for a little respect and good manners.
As I suspect most people do, I want to see blacks do well. I would never think of repaying a similar request from a black person with that kind of abuse and attitude.
I will say that being a recipient of that kind of attitude makes me more hesitant to have anything to do with a black person not already known to me… and more and more eager to just avoid black strangers altogether.
I don’t see why you felt it necessary to insult a fantastic show like Seinfeld. [How can one insult a show? We obviously disagree about its merits.]