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

It should have been Carrot-Top

*I apologize for ever aspect of this post

ihttp://youtube.com/watch?v=7mFyKNxXFGM&mode=related&search=

none of this thing had any artistic intent behind it. it was in no way a botched routine. yes, the rawness of the stage might have been a factor driving the reaction, but it was not the primary one. (though it's a notable irony that 'comedy' deals so often with race among other differences) no, the dude did something more elemental than that. he got called out and he felt seriously one-upped. so he flipped and did what lots of people in a position of serious weakness might do - he immorally went for a perceived comparative advantage. it could be i'm taller/bigger than you. it could be i'm richer than you. it could be i'm stronger than you. it could be i'm smarter than you. it could be i-know-how-to-reach-level-whatever-on-super-mario or i-know-more-klingon-than-you or whatever-the-fuck crazy thing some crazy dude comes up with. what could he tell about these people? he was whiter than them, and he went there. 'judgement' had nothing to do with it; it was a fight or flight reaction. maybe that's a revealing moment for which 'racist' is the only word. or maybe it demeans the concept to apply it to a sad dude who feels like a loser and says something in public that is not only hugely socially unacceptable/potentially career-killing but also something that he knows full well outside the moment is completely irrational, that in the moment means something to him emotionally indistinguishable from "you're short," and that he's obviously quite genuinely remorseful about. or at least to use the same word you would apply to someone who lucidly affirms/acts on support for racial violence and institutionalized prejudice. the fact that the impact was such a foregone conclusion should demonstrate how completely irrational he must have been at the time. not to mention the incredibly weird fork-torture-flipout, and his yearning for the good old civil rights era lynchings when he was, uh, a 7-year-old Angeleno. admittedly, it's harder to imagine he flipped out on that level for 2 whole minutes, but maybe being on stage and digging a big hole would do that to you.

again, this isn't to excuse or mitigate his behavior in any way. but i think if we just deem this a sudden outburst of long-suppressed secret racism, or even if we recognize that's not what it is but refuse to be concerned with the 'motivation' any further, we're failing to really address an issue that might be bigger than the dude who played Kramer. I actually think the Mel Gibson incident is similar in some respects, even despite the obvious differences there in his demonstrated history/associates/remorse level/personality. admittedly, also, Richards isn't much older than George Allen, and age/location were no bar to that dude's confederacy-fetish, but I don't really see Richards having spent his whole adult life using traditional racist (and misogynistic) trappings as outlets for his pronounced sadistic/antisocial tendencies (but maybe there are even lessons about the Allen thing here too).

the difficult question for me here is whether he 'believes' what he said, whatever that actually means. i think it's totally obvious that he doesn't hate black people or regard what he said as in any way appropriate. but i think this thing did reveal that he was willing to try to enjoy his white privilege, such as it is, however briefly/instantaneously, if made to feel worthless by someone who happened to be black. in simply stamping down that reaction as racist, though, are we also pushing the proposition of white privilege closer towards public secret territory?

i think he intuits some of these ideas, but doesn't entirely get all of them, and i think he's authentically at least somewhat confused about the meaning, both personal and public, of what he said. i give him at least some credit for assuming responsibility to confront both of those things.

http://bestmessageboardever.com/uploads/post-1452-1164078301.jpg

i saw michael richards in a grocery store in santa monica about a year ago. dude looked old, sort of benign but just enough creepiness to make you think twice about approaching him.

i think the most profound thing in it, if there's profundity to be had, is when he says "there's still those words, those words, those words." like an incantation to himself. like someone who's just conjured the candyman but doesn't quite believe it. there are still those words, and you can't take them back.

i mean, obviously it's mostly a tantrum. christ knows why or what exactly made this the night for him to flip out, but one guy pissed him off and he flipped out. would he have flipped out at a white guy or a pretty girl? we'll never know and the question's irrelevant. what matters is that he flipped out at a black guy, and in flipping out at a black guy he drew upon this whole deep bilious well of american racial hatred that we all know is there, and we all know the history, and we mostly try to do our damndest to just leave that thing boarded up and papered over and hope that over time it'll all drain away. but then something like this happens, and all of that papering over doesn't seem to be worth much, and suddenly everybody's implicated. if he can flip out like that, then so can anyone -- because someone cut in front of you in line, or is talking too loud in a movie theater, or, you know, beats you to a good parking space or a good seat on the subway.

that "50 years ago" comment is lacerating because it's true, and because invoking it is essentially wishing for it, and in that second that's what he's really thinking -- that 50 years ago, motherfucker, we would've pulled your car over on your way home and...

which is, on the one hand, just another revenge fantasy, like the scrawny kid fantasizing about pulverizing the bully. except that it's a fantasy that draws on real history and real violence and puts the whole vile, hateful past at the service of petty, personal vindictiveness. which is, of course, exactly how that power was used "50 years ago" -- by guys who had had a bad night and were looking for someone to take it out on.

i can believe he feels bad about it. he should. but it's not like feeling bad is going to make it go away.

(xpost w/gabbneb)

LOL Do you think you can drug me and play with my toys? You've got ANOTHER THING COMING buddy

(Richards' career will suffer more than any of the UC cops'.)

which is why i'm not shocked by this at all to begin with. slow news week, i guess. or more interesting to ilx than those kids who got killed in alabama today, or something.

That said, after watching the footage, it's clear that Richards 'went too far.' I mean, shit, I wouldn't have said any of that, meltdown or no. But I still think he should stand behind what he said - even if he's all 'it was the coke' - instead of becoming a genuflecting little weasel about it.

I find political correctness teeth-gnashingly offensive. To whom do I address the poison postcard?

Florida Cracker Country and the sites notable What's a Cracker/" page

and then there's the Florida Cracker Horse and Florida Cracker Cattle

and we cannot forget the Cracker Village or the Florida Cracker Trail.

Whoops - almost left out the Florida Cracker House Plans.

I also got a lemonade at this place, last time I was in St. Augustine:
http://i130.photobucket.com/albums/p257/HedgePigLove/My%20Refrigerator/cracker.jpg

I kinda get the feeling that the word "Cracker" just isn't as emotionally charged as some others mentioned up-thread.

# WTF?: "Seinfeld"'s Michael 'Kramer' Richards in Weird-o-Rama Onstage Meltdown (666 new answers, last at 12:36 am)
-- the car, the hole, and the peekskill meteorite (theundergroundhom...), November 20th, 2006 10:39 PM. (later)

amazed that this thread went that many posts w/o anyone mentioning this.

I remember a Saturday Night Live skit from many years ago when Chris Rock was attempting to come up with a new slur for white people because he felt that the current ones, "honky" and probably "cracker" as well weren't nearly offensive enough.

Racial Slur Database

Racial Slur Database

if it's possible to have 'less grounds' for such an outburst, Atkinson was not performing improv stand-up or under any emotional stress at the time. however altho fired from his job he has appeared on TV shows and been the subject of several interviews in the press since then and generally a sense of tolerance seems to have prevailed which suggests that rehabilitation IS conceivable (altho i know it can be v different in the US).

however, this was absolutely awful to watch(and the act itself of course) and there is obviously something wrong with this guy. he needs help.

I was sort of reminded of Richards' old colleague, Andy Kaufman, the reaction he received many years ago when he did this bugged-out entreaty before an audience (I think it was following the Friday's incident?) "I've lost my job and...Why are you laughing? This isn't a joke..." The obvious difference, of course, being in Kaufman's case he was totally 'in character' as he always was, whereas Richards was truly, visibly disturbed...

What do you think the audience's laughter is a reflection of? Emotional distancing from the situation? A generalized jadedness our society feels towards entertainment stars (i.e. their perceived superficiality, etc.)? The desensitization of their behavior when channeled through the mass media lens ("this is just another act")?

"He was drafted during the Vietnam War and stationed in Germany as one of the co-directors of the V Corps Training Road Show. He produced and directed shows dealing with race relations and drug abuse; "This was a successful, educational operation, boosting the morale of our men and incorporating the arts into the service." He then spent two years in the Army developing educational skits and a couple more years "finding himself" at a commune in the Santa Clara Mountains; he drove a bus and developed a stand-up comedy act in 1979."

a sense of tolerance seems to have prevailed which suggests that rehabilitation IS conceivable

uh, big ron seems pretty unreconstructed about the whole thing, i think he genuinely believes hes a victim of 'political correctness'. he probably genuinely believes hes not a racist either

but the sense of tolerance that 'seems to have prevailed' is more the public deciding 'ah whatever, i like ron, you know' and 'forgetting' the racism thing, rather than ron rehabilitating himself

"this crap"

what a car wreck. and watching letterman try to be serious is ridiculous. roger otm

yeah this is what i meant, i wasn't talking about ron himself