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

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

yeah. there's this obsession with figuring out if someone is "really" a racist. which in some cases is actually sort of provable -- george allen comes to mind, the way one person after another came out with stories about him -- but in a lot of cases is down to the unknowability of what's in someone's "heart." but all we can really judge by are actions. saying michael richards is not a racist, or mel gibson is not a racist, requires some moral jujitsu: he committed racism, but he's not a racist. which is kind of like saying, i committed murder, but i'm not a murderer.

maybe that should be expected when you do yr mea culpa on a talk show whose host has personified pop irony for 25 years, and (on air)displayed the social consciousness of a newt? (unless the recent Bill O'Reilly stuff counts)

that sounds like a clever ironic joke but he was for real

God, why do I bother, really?

we're not talking about mel gibson right?