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

"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?

I used to be extremely radical when it came to feminism/sexism; but I try to shrug it off these days. I realized that all it did was piss me off and gave me a crap day, y'know, but the other didn't change and would just go on with his day not realizing that I was feeling shitty/angry about it.

Shit,I'm rambling. Whatever.

it's strange, but what IS his responsibility to people as a "public figure" or "beloved sitcom doofus"? i wonder about things like that. if he was some no-name hack comic doing the same exact thing we never would have heard about it. charles barkley to thread.

He's obviously shaken up about it all.

Yeah, shaken up about the whole world thinking he's a racist and possibly not getting any more gigs ever!

i really do think it has to do with the public nature of it. most people don't have nation-wide scorn and ridicule heaped upon them when they fuck up. and this makes people feel sorry for or feel empathy for someone who is the target of MILLIONS of people's rage.

interesting that ordinary people want to 'forgive' a rich and succesful guy who doesn't even know who they are?

i'm sure the tv-familiarity comes into play generally (not really with me), but i also don't regard him as a rich and successful guy, or at least a successful guy. not solely because his persona to the extent it exists is that of an ordinary guy, but because the dude was never more than a sideman and is basically washed-up. and the US v UK thing about wealth.

it's interesting that another public secret this reveals (and maybe is fuel for seinfeld's and rodriguez' reactions) is that 'comedy' at its core is basically a medium by and for losers.

white ppl in general want to draw the line between themselves and 'racists' at like, klan/neo-nazi involvement, rather than just unconscious biases & predjudices

you mean white ppl besides you, right? what unconscious bias and prejudice did he reveal (other than the fact that black people on average have less opportunity than white)?

this is like the guy who hits his wife & then explains he was mad - well yeah, i imagine you dont beat your wife when shit's all good

are you saying that he isn't legitimately contrite/self-evaluating? or that he's done it before?

has anyone mentioned how intrinsically xenophobic Seinfeld seemed? (to non-worshippers only, perhaps) The characters were defined by their inability to look 5 feet past the end of their noses, which is why I found it much more sour and less 'delightful' than its mainstream Show About Nothing hype

you didn't get how self-aware the show was on that score? that was sort of the entire point.

Thank God we have celebrities to remind us that racism, repressed homosexuality, spousal abuse, etc exist at all.

i dont think its a UK vs US thing about wealth, you just think you can only be rich if you have a magnum of learjets

yeah, basically. this is completely OTM.

you mean white ppl besides you, right? what unconscious bias and prejudice did he reveal (other than the fact that black people on average have less opportunity than white)?

you are really straining on this one, aren't you?

In the 15 or so episodes I've seen, not anywhere NEAR enough. If it had been, it wouldn't have been popular.

be that as it may, i think americans of all classes are more wont to regard even super-rich guys as ordinary.

but that's the thing, this idea that it isn't racism unless it's a lynching, you're not a racist unless you wear a white hood, etc. the point is that those words and that assertion of power are all sitting there, with all of their history, accessible to any white person -- or any non-black person, really -- in this society. they don't have the power they used to -- saying "50 years ago we would've" doesn't actually turn 2006 into 1956 -- but they still have a lot of power because of the history they deliberately invoke. it's like this loaded gun that is supposed to be locked up in a museum exhibit and we're all supposed to agree not to use it. when someone goes ahead and uses it anyway, they're violating part of our complicated modern social contract.

and having a racist tirade in public is not in any way like smoking one cigarette or kissing one guy, unless you think cigarette smoking or guy kissing are somehow morally comparable to racism.

nor is it morally comparable to murder, was the point.

I thought Letterman did a good job interviewing him, actually, considering the circumstances. He tried to keep the rambling on track and brought the focus on race when Kramer started to wander off into tangent-land