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

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

no, the point was that there's a fallacy in the notion that racist -- or murderer -- is something you are rather than something you do. you can spend all day every day thinking about killing people, but if you never hurt a fly you're not a murderer. you can spend all day every day hating black people, but if you never visibly or vocally act on it, for the purposes of the society you are not a racist. our codes of racial conduct are entirely bound up in how we act toward each other. so michael richards is now a racist in a way that some guy who legitimately hates people of other races but has never once articulated or demonstrated it is not. we get bound up in these questions of essentiality -- is someone a racist in their soul or something -- but those questions are not the point.

I think this is completely OTM.

The question in my mind is, what happens when, in a black-white confrontation, the black person says (in effect) "I think you're a piece of shit specifically because of your whiteness". Does this break the social contract in the same way (though obviously not to the same degree)?

Because it sounds like Richards probably wasn't responding to a racially-based taunt -- "you suck because you're white". But I'm curious as to whether there's a way he could've replied "you're _____ because you're black" -- and not in a soft-pedaled, good-natured way, but with as much vitriol as his heckler did -- or whether it's his obligation to just not go there.

xpost it's a completely self-involved apology is OTM;

the reason he relied on this was because somewhere inside him he believes it

I'm still not so sure of this, I think "go for the jugular" could have been as much as, if not more of, a factor.

i'm not sure about this, so don't think comparisons to murder/murderer are accurate in this way either, altho it is interesting to think about (not me 'murdering people' i mean).

no because that part of the social contract is built around our specific racial history. i mean, there's the generic part that is just, basically, in a multicultural society the resort to ethnic/religious/whatever insults is a generally bad act. but the whole section on black-white relationships is a lot more detailed and a lot more complicated. calling someone a cracker or a white motherfucker or whatever doesn't draw on hundreds of years of slavery, subjugation, rape and murder. but calling someone a nigger and saying "50 years ago we would've..." does. it is an offense of entirely different magnitude.

But that laughing--oh man. A signal moment in the history of television.

gypsy and and what, cf. horseshoe upthread, in a time-travelling response to lurker 2421 - link

He/she wouldn't -- that was Richards's most egregiously racist and offensive comment, to be sure. Including the normative "we", etc.

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no because that part of the social contract is built around our specific racial history. i mean, there's the generic part that is just, basically, in a multicultural society the resort to ethnic/religious/whatever insults is a generally bad act. but the whole section on black-white relationships is a lot more detailed and a lot more complicated. calling someone a cracker or a white motherfucker or whatever doesn't draw on hundreds of years of slavery, subjugation, rape and murder. but calling someone a nigger and saying "50 years ago we would've..." does. it is an offense of entirely different magnitude.

No, I completely agree.

But -- setting aside the lynching comment, setting aside the word "nigger" -- in short, setting aside Richards's specific offenses:

Is there any way a white improv comic can respond to an attack on his "whiteness" with a counterattack on "blackness"? Or is he obligated to shrug the racial element off?

(This isn't meant to be a rhetorical/baiting question, I'm honestly curious as to how people think through this stuff)

I assume you mean the mark foley comment, its a reference to the Onion political cartoon in which the cartoons 'defends' mark foley. Except I'm being entirely serious, to a degree - while its important Richards understands that he harbors racist tendencies to me the idea of labelling someone 'racist' is less about damning them and more about getting them to understand exactly what that means and what should be done about it.

lurker, does the phrase "common courtesy" mean anything to you??

seems SO unlikely in the first place why even bother to consider adequate responses?

well, two things. on one hand, yeah, obviously in these situations the person becomes kind of a scapegoat, a sacrifice that the rest of us make to prove that we're not racist, and so all the huffing and puffing and shocked-shocked moralizing seems self-serving. but on the other hand, not "losing self-control" is part of the deal here. we don't mandate that nobody harbor any racist or bigoted beliefs; we can't mandate that. what we mandate -- in some cases by law, in others (like this one) by custom -- is how people act toward each other. and so maintaining "self-control" is actually really important. and the social insistence on maintaining self-control, and the sanctions we impose for not maintaining it, are our primary mechanisms for protecting people against the effects of bigotry. if michael richards or mel gibson throws a racist fit and there's no consequences for it, then our protections against racism -- which are kind of shaky to start with -- are eroded a little.

'd like to see him make an apology that seems to indicate some understanding about why his words were inappropriate,

well, me too. but it's possible that if he were the kind of guy able to do that, he'd also be the kind of guy who wouldn't have flipped out in the first place.

He was kind of like the dad that brings his son back to the store and forces him to return all of the candy he stole.

Right, this is exactly what I'm talking about -- the idea that we accept that you can't hit back in the same way. Because I think (and I may be totally wrong here) that's actually central to Richards's meltdown! He basically is saying "You think I won't call you on this because you're black", I think that's the thing he's tapping into.

The thing is, rap battle, the dozens, putdown comedy, shit like that -- you're supposed to be able to say anything. You're supposed to say "Your mother is a sore-infested crack whore" etc. etc. and the other guy laughs it off. So the idea that there's this third rail is worth talking about, because I think it's exactly this line that Richards consciously crossed.

yes! if they are really funny!

But wasn't he being heckled for being an unfunny has-been? Why does race have to play into it?

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