WTF?: "Seinfeld"'s Michael 'Kramer' Richards in Weird-o-Rama Onstage Meltdown

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Whoa hold on, Michael Richard has done this... once and you can say he was provoked whereas Imus has done this multiple times and is, in some respects, a journalist/member of the media/whatever.

Yeah but Richards' rant was outright hateful!

― Curt1s Stephens, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:07 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah Richards went on and on enough that there's not much that can explain it except outright hate, short of maybe a severe nervous breakdown or paranoid episode.

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:14 (nineteen years ago)

When you tell your mom and dad you wish they would die, do you really mean it?

xpost

― JW, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:17 (nineteen years ago)

Which is all the more reason why these apologies are so ridiculous, ESPECIALLY coming from Imus, who is an experienced jock and is very calculated in his "telling it like it is" barbs. The only thing he really feels he did wrong here was to miscalculate. It's like a four-year-old apologizing because mommy got madder than he thought she would. (xpost to self)

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:18 (nineteen years ago)

[/awkward syntax]

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:20 (nineteen years ago)

I think we're on the same page.

― JW, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:23 (nineteen years ago)

heh, was out of country when story broke, am late in stating the obvious, I suppose.

My only other reaction is that the whole thing says almost as much about the nation's prejudice in favor of athletes as it does about racial prejudice. By which I only mean I don't think the story would be as big if Imus had denigrated Henry Louis Gates or something.

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:31 (nineteen years ago)

Yeah, I can't see the current ruckus happening if he had called Angela Davis a nappy headed ho.

― BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:41 (nineteen years ago)

i dunno, all of nyc calls a-rod a giant purse swinging homo and no one raises an eyebrow

― rps, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:43 (nineteen years ago)

In fact I've heard WABC jocks say borderline racist things about black politicians and intellectuals plenty of times.

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:44 (nineteen years ago)

OTfuckingM

There was some story about how that game was *surely* the biggest day of their lives. Ughhhhhh.

― JW, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:45 (nineteen years ago)

Ha, yeah, I think the myth and idealization of the scholar-athlete are probably pointing up the horribleness of his target a little bit. But not THAT much, really. People totally suspend the scholar-athelete myth when it comes to black men (accurately, but often selectively aimed at black men), all the time ... and surely the scholar-athelete ideal is way closer to true with women's sports, where there's not loads of money involved ... and they were, athletically speaking, the underdogs here ... and just generally when a small, specific bunch of girls from places like Newark go to college and are an unlikely sports success and then for zero reason you gratuitously insult them w/r/t race and sex (and let's face it, more than anything CLASS), it's just ... ridiculous.

If a right-wing radio guy had said something similar about, say, abstract "welfare recipients," there'd be grumbling and complaint but not this level of furor -- because that's the current mode of subtextual racism. Whereas the Imus comment kinda points back to an older and more blatant and more hurtful form of racism, which is the kind where you remind specific people that no matter WHAT they do -- college, hard-earned athletic success, whatever -- you're still gonna see them as ghetto, as low-class hos, as dirty and worthless and beneath you.

Note that that's the exact same mode as the Gwen Ifill cleaning-lady comment, too! And I hate to say this, because it's going to sound weird, but ... well, people get away with faintly racist comments when they connect them to behavior and culture, insulting abstract stereotypes of bad things that black people are supposedly like. But Gwen Ifill is ... professional, educated, has a newscaster voice, and is socially no different from any white journalist. So calling her the cleaning lady has that same undertow -- "no matter what you do, how successful and mainstream and respectable you are, you're still a nigger."

And I say that'll sound weird because I don't mean to suggest that it's somehow more okay to make racist remarks about poor, uneducated black people than it is to make them about Gwen Ifill. It's just that when you're doing it to Gwen Ifill, you're making it clearer that you're not just one of those racists who has issues with perceptions of "black culture" -- you don't care WHERE black people are in our society, you're still going to keep sneering that they're beneath you.

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:58 (nineteen years ago)

Apparently I don't know how to spell "athlete."

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 00:59 (nineteen years ago)

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0028,goldstein,16350,1.html

― rps, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:35 (nineteen years ago)

little thick with the nazi comparisons, esp at the end there.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:54 (nineteen years ago)

By the way, back to Hurting upthread: I think the sad fact is that most Americans don't really care that much if someone is racist, sexist, or classist, so long as they don't feel like they're in the group being insulted. They might not like it, and they'll criticize it, but they don't want anything to change because of it; they cordon off "race" as a specific, minor, and unimportant issue. E.g., in this case, what everyone probably wishes -- from the media Imus works in to his listeners/viewers -- is that he'd just not say anything too over the line, and they could go on as they did before, appreciating him in every other way.

I can understand the impulse behind this kind of cordoning-off -- it's totally natural and makes sense -- but it's all dependent on not really caring how awful these kinds of insults are, and putting your own tastes and convenience above the horribleness of the thing done. (In a way people wouldn't with plenty of other types of horrible comments, actually -- nobody would cordon off a joke about child molestation that way.) Point being that comments like this aren't actually taboo -- people seem to criticize them as "inappropriate," or impolite, but they don't actually get that gut-level taboo "you are a truly bad person for saying that" reaction.

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 01:55 (nineteen years ago)

Kiss Me
http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/don_imus_freshintel.jpg

― danbunny, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:03 (nineteen years ago)

There was some story about how that game was *surely* the biggest day of their lives. Ughhhhhh.

no one says such things about white athletes

― gabbneb, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:03 (nineteen years ago)

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:07 (nineteen years ago)

i don't think he's that bright

― lfam, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:12 (nineteen years ago)

Like most successful political-radio dudes, he seems like too much of a bull-headed, cantankerous old dick to think of polite ways out of stuff. (Reasonable people make for bad radio -- possibly they spend too much time pausing to actually think about what they're saying.)

― nabisco, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:15 (nineteen years ago)

xxpost That's probably partially the truth, but more true in his head is probably what I joked about earlier about him self-applying the "honky" label. He's thinking, "Well hell, I've always been a bit of a race comedian, how is this so bad?"

they don't actually get that gut-level taboo "you are a truly bad person for saying that" reaction

Which is likely how Imus gets away with saying blatantly racist things. His remarks go un-criticized, and his own attitudes go unexamined. For a long, long time.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:17 (nineteen years ago)

stern was recounting how many times he heard imus referring to th secretary at wnbc as a n---er,in a riff that actually made me laugh out loud.

― danbunny, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:19 (nineteen years ago)

By now he's like your old racist grampa. He ain't going to change.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:19 (nineteen years ago)

By the way, back to Hurting upthread: I think the sad fact is that most Americans don't really care that much if someone is racist, sexist, or classist, so long as they don't feel like they're in the group being insulted. They might not like it, and they'll criticize it, but they don't want anything to change because of it; they cordon off "race" as a specific, minor, and unimportant issue. E.g., in this case, what everyone probably wishes -- from the media Imus works in to his listeners/viewers -- is that he'd just not say anything too over the line, and they could go on as they did before, appreciating him in every other way.

I can understand the impulse behind this kind of cordoning-off -- it's totally natural and makes sense -- but it's all dependent on not really caring how awful these kinds of insults are, and putting your own tastes and convenience above the horribleness of the thing done. (In a way people wouldn't with plenty of other types of horrible comments, actually -- nobody would cordon off a joke about child molestation that way.) Point being that comments like this aren't actually taboo -- people seem to criticize them as "inappropriate," or impolite, but they don't actually get that gut-level taboo "you are a truly bad person for saying that" reaction.

okay this actually explains this whole thread in a way that I didn't understand before, so thanks.

― horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:20 (nineteen years ago)

i think what you meant to say was, nabisco OTM

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:21 (nineteen years ago)

I like to use different words sometimes.

― horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:22 (nineteen years ago)

yeah, that was pretty excellent

― gbx, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:23 (nineteen years ago)

i think if u spent alot of time fixing your hair before a huge televised basketball game u would be insulted if someone referred to ypur efforts as "nappy"

― danbunny, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:24 (nineteen years ago)

I imagine Imus to be the kind of guy who excuses himself by thinking/saying things like, "It's no big deal if I call a black person a nigger, because everyone knows I don't really hate black people."

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:25 (nineteen years ago)

stern was recounting how many times he heard imus referring to th secretary at wnbc as a n---er,in a riff that actually made me laugh out loud.

oh my I'd love to hear this.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:28 (nineteen years ago)

I meant nabisco otm, but also, this is an invisible wall I run up against every time I talk about racism and I think I understand the "argument" such as it is a little better now.

― horseshoe, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:29 (nineteen years ago)

I think the sad fact is that most Americans don't really care that much if someone is racist, sexist, or classist, so long as they don't feel like they're in the group being insulted. They might not like it, and they'll criticize it, but they don't want anything to change because of it; they cordon off "race" as a specific, minor, and unimportant issue.

Honestly, I think people in general tend to "cordon off" everything that Doesn't Affect Me Directly -- I'm not sure that race is any different in that way. It takes a really massive, visible injustice to activate people's sympathy/outrage to the point of triggering action -- think Emmett Till, or the water hoses.

(Or, to put it differently, to the point where you'll hear someone say things like "I don't much like black people/gay people/etc., but what they did to him ain't right".)

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:32 (nineteen years ago)

It takes a really massive, visible injustice

funny that at that point in my reading of the sentence, i was already thinking "fire hoses".

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:34 (nineteen years ago)

getting beat up is nothing. getting beat up on television, however...

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:35 (nineteen years ago)

Okay also following this story I am really serious about this: Imus's ABSOLUTE best excuse would be to pretend he wasn't aware of the significance of his words! Like, "I was playing with slang, but I'm an old white guy, so I didn't really understand the implications, and I'm really really sorry."

...what do you think the chances of this are, btw? i have, in my life, heard ppl old and young alike "try" out slang and fail miserably. usually, if you call them on it there's an honest "oh no shit? holy crap embarrassing" or a defensive "but THEY etc etc"

― gbx, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:37 (nineteen years ago)

or a defensive "but THEY etc etc"

see also the political cartoons thread

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:38 (nineteen years ago)

then again i'm on a campus where i hear (white) bros answer their cell phones "whuddup my nigga!" all the time

― gbx, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:38 (nineteen years ago)

see also nabisco being otm re: middleaged women and applebee's

― gbx, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

indeed

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

getting beat up is nothing. getting beat up on television, however...

Hey, remember that footage that went around a while back of the UCLA student getting Tazered in the computer lab? Reading a text description of it was one thing, but watching the footage made me want to start a riot. Such is human nature.

― lurker #2421, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:39 (nineteen years ago)

the footage of a chicago cop repeatedly punching and kicking a woman half his size is my current favorite example of same. You can describe it all day long, but hey people do shit. Seeing it makes you nauseated.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:53 (nineteen years ago)

Um.

― HI DERE, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:55 (nineteen years ago)

i mean, decribing it gets your blood up a little, sure, that's some fucked up repugnant shit. But footage gets an emotional reaction that you can never muster for printed words.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:57 (nineteen years ago)

this is why i go to the movies.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 02:59 (nineteen years ago)

There's a media overload problem at work here, too -- we read about horrible things all the time, but most of those things we (to borrow a phrase) cordon off into the part of our brain reserved for same-ol-bad-news. But to see something like firehoses, or Vietnam, or Rodney King, or what have you, it reconnects you with the news in a sudden and lizard-brain kind of way. And our lizard brain is still in charge, ppl, don't think it isn't.

― kenan, Thursday, 12 April 2007 03:38 (nineteen years ago)

Re: the scholar athlete/black male thing - at Rutgers, I was part of a group that was lobbying to tone down the football and basketball programs and move them to Div I-AA (not a very popular cause, as you can imagine). I can't tell you how many times I heard people argue "This is the only way a lot of these [inner city black] kids get a chance to get an education."

How can someone say that and not realize what they are implying?

BTW Rutgers had something called the Educational Opportunity Fund, a scholarship/preparation program to bring poor kids to Rutgers (academically promising ones). It was grossly underfunded.

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:35 (nineteen years ago)

had/has

― Hurting 2, Thursday, 12 April 2007 04:35 (nineteen years ago)

he's well-assisted... by two new york tabloid newspapers that, you recall, are GOP and at least centrist/moderately neo-con in orientation...

Way late and upthread, but gabbneb repeatedly OTM in that post and on this thread.

― Ben Boyerrr, Thursday, 12 April 2007 08:52 (nineteen years ago)

Okay also following this story I am really serious about this: Imus's ABSOLUTE best excuse would be to pretend he wasn't aware of the significance of his words! Like, "I was playing with slang, but I'm an old white guy, so I didn't really understand the implications, and I'm really really sorry."

-- nabisco, Wednesday, April 11, 2007 7:07 PM (Yesterday)

haha stern has been saying the same thing.

― chaki, Thursday, 12 April 2007 09:18 (nineteen years ago)

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