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

Here's video of Michael Richards, a.k.a. Seinfeld's Kramer, stinking up the joint recently at The Laugh Factory. Responding to a heckler, Richards goes on an n-word tear that starts out like a Lenny Bruce/Dick Gregory-ish bit that's trying to straddle off-color (literally) humor and social commentary but then never climbs above simple offensiveness. Proving that audiences really do run the world, the offended heckler gets off the best line in the exchange (which is not saying much, to be sure) when he makes fun of Richards' meager post-Seinfeld career.

Richards has already apologized for his rant (to his slim credit, he didn't blame alcohol), which has been called a career killer. Though that, pace the heckler, presumes that Richards was not already a Hollywood nosferatu.

A number of people I know have drawn parallels between Richards' yapping and the musings of Sacha Baron Cohen's Borat, who trades in similarly offensive stereotypes and has freaked the shit of some observers even as he rules the nation's movie roost. Why is one considered awful while the other is dubbed comic and box-office gold (though to be sure, Borat has his detractors)?

I don't think it's too complicated: First and foremost, the audience is in on Borat's shtick. On some level, we can feel superior to the poor fools who are revealed as chumps. What makes the Borat stuff more interesting is that we often feel sympathy for the stooges, especially the ones who are trying to be polite to the crazy Kazakh and then get goaded into offensive or humiliating speech and behavior. In the end, I think Borat is in many ways a satire of American "friendliness" (every state in the Union, it seems, claims to be the friendliest of all), of our national willingness to want to respect the customs, traditions, and mores of foreign cultures (we're a pluralist melting pot and all that). Perhaps most important, there's an unmistakable sense of control: Cohen knows what he's doing, it's planned out, etc. You never confuse Cohen the creator with his characters and hence, even if you don't find him funny, you know on some level you're brothers under the skin. Unless you're those South Carolina frat boys. Or the guy who beat Borat up in New York after thinking he was serious in a sexual advance (even more evidence that the audience has a mind of its own). Which is the point: Borat creates an in-group between him and his viewers, while Richards simply alienates his crowd.

Part of what is disturbing about Richards' performance is the palpable sense of flop sweat, of desperation. You see a guy who reaches first for the easiest comeback to an African-American heckler and then can't trade up to actually being funny, to pull himself out of a simple assertion of power (whether based on skin color or, tellingly, celebrity). In that failure--especially coming from the actor who was truly transcendent as the funniest next-door neighbor in sitcom history--you see an ugly pentimento of the worst sort of race relations.

this apology is not about making amends -- and really, how could he? -- but about subtly shifting the victimhood from the people in the club/whoever has had to be exposed to this shit/race relations/anyone who has to hear the sorta bullshit backbending we've seen on this thread to himself. it's a completely self-involved apology

i agree with this to at least some extent. but i thought he was also explicitly saying in part that he wanted to limit the impact of the incident on the public - trying to mitigate any incitement it might have provided to further racism in the public at large. i'm not certain about the extent to which that effort was in good faith, but i also didn't see a reason to be more than somewhat skeptical.

again, my point is i think both lynching and a dude-cracking-up-and-using-the-word are 'racism', but to merely leave it at that fails to examine whether they aren't motivated by different impulses, and might also be a poorer way of addressing the problem than just shunning the dude.

xpost I think he's saying "nigger nigger nigger" dude.

Right, but right afterward he says some other shit that's illuminating about why he went there. Well, it could be illuminating, or it could be just bullshit excuses.

are there many instances of a white comedian performing to a predominantly black audience (where race-based heckling may be somehow deemed more 'acceptable')?

I'm going to assume everyone's past the "OMG is it really racist to call black people niggers and talk about how they should be lynched" (hint: yes) and into the "interesting social analysis of how incidents like this are perceived by the public" part.

P.S. Y'all have no idea how infuriated I get by this aggrieved-white-people backlash against blackness where some people work from an assumption that black people get away with everything and can't be criticized and OMG lucky black people living it up with hos in hot tubs and are cooler than white people and better at sex and can beat you up and c.; this perception of black privilege (based in part on fetishization of blackness) is like a form of white psychosis every bit as pitiful as old-school racism.

I was thinking about this thread a lot last night, and I realized that what it came down to was that my definition of racist (noun) was narrower than other people's, that I was didn't think that behavior alone was sufficient to slap a label on someone. And this is maybe because I think people are basically good, and because I scare myself sometimes when I think how easy it would be to commit immoral or illegal actions, despite thinking of myself as basically good, too. There's probably some personal baggage here, but whatever.

I'm still inclined to think that "murderer" and "racist" occupy different categories, that the first is an unavoidable label that one assumes after one has committed a cut-and-dry crime, whereas the other is more like the word "evil," which requires shades of meaning and determination of intention. But I'm not entirely sure why I think that, and I can totally see why Mark and Jesse prefer to sidestep all that and just use the infinitely simpler "did a racist thing = is a racist" formulation.

I can't find a transcript of the whole thing, but I feel like the "You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherfucker" line points to my reading (of why Richards went there). Maybe I'm wrong, though.

xpost Nabisco, the thing is, I think the "psychosis" you describe -- an assumption that black people get away with everything and can't be criticized -- is exactly what Richards is tapping into! I mean, it makes a lot more sense to me than some other explanations.

i think the suspicion is that they're not motivated by different impulses. that the impulse is maybe the same. the action is different, of course, and michael richards is a long way from being guilty of lynching. but it is exactly the recognition of the impulse that makes this an issue.

I'm still inclined to think that "murderer" and "racist" occupy different categories, that the first is an unavoidable label that one assumes after one has committed a cut-and-dry crime

ever talk to a convicted murderer? they always have excuses and reasons and context too. they don't want to be judged and labeled on their one mistake either. i mean, not there isn't a categorical difference between killing someone and acting like a bigot. of course there is. i just think the obsession with whether someone is "really" a racist puts the emphasis in the wrong place. for the purposes of this analogy, michael richards is basically a charged and convicted racist. he can do his time, do some penance, maybe somehow discharge a debt to society. but, you know, this goes on his permanent record and there's no way around it.

altho it could be a good excuse to post pics of samantha morton

"You think I won't call you on this because you're black."

Like, general info for white people: NO BLACK PEOPLE EVER THINK THIS. AT ALL. Given the whole history of this country, I'd say black people are by and large going to tend to think the opposite -- that people will single them out for criticism and mistreatment because they're black. Imagining that black people are operating from a position of smug privilege on this point is -- honestly, seriously, for reals -- absolute paranoia on the part of white people. Like completely insane schizophrenia-level radios-in-my-teeth paranoia.

Lurker it's not what he's "tapping into," it's what he'd appear to be fucking experiencing, flat-out. And like I said above, I don't even want to dignify this with any kind of "oh was it actually bad what he said" wrangling: dude gets annoyed with some black people and his best shot back is "lynch the niggers?" He's looking at black people, searching for an attack, and that's the image that flashes into his head? Honestly: anyone on this board who doesn't get why that's just flat-out indefensibly disgustingly wrong is someone I don't want to talk to ever again.

anyone on this board who doesn't get why that's just flat-out indefensibly disgustingly wrong is someone I don't want to talk to ever again

I think you're arguing with phantoms, no one (least of all me) is saying that it's anything but flat-out indefensibly disgustingly wrong.

Huh?

Yeah, that's why I cried during that This American Life episode where the prisoners put on Hamlet.

If that's the case, then Richards was executing a preemptive attack, because he wasn't responding to racist comments--kind of the Bush Doctrine of racial pejoratives.

And who the fuck are all these people just itching to get back by "responding in kind". I mean, WTF?!?!

And how about, when this actually does happen, saying something like, "That's uncalled for."

I mean, seriously, I'm not crying for myself because I don't "get" to say the shit Richards said.

i think it's an assumption not a suspicion. and maybe it's right. but it seems unexamined to me.

Well, nor am I. I don't think that anyone's arguing that Richards speaks for white people at large. But I think that his meltdown comes from a very specific cultural complex, one that he shares with a lot of white people, and one that Nabisco pretty much nails right on the head.

xpost "tapping into", poor choice of words, fine OK great

the law takes 'passion' into account in dealing with murder, and there is often also such a thing as an insanity defense. i think it's appropriate to judge and label people, but i don't think that should be done without care. and i admit to not having a particularly retributive conception of justice.

Okay -- but so if we downplay whether someone is "really" a racist, that means there's a fuckload of racists out there, including everyone who harbors subconscious prejudices, which is probably most people on this board. At what point does his racism transcend everyday racism far enough for him to acquire the label "racist"? The point has to exist, otherwise the term is largely meaningless.

god this is so otm, tho unlike lurker I wouldn't characterize this is as an SUV-drivin' republican thing. it's a CRAZY WHITE PEOPLE thing. i am a really apathetic and jaded guy who normally cannot get worked up abt any kind of injustice or inequality (esp. when they don't really effect me personally lmao :() yet it drives me nuts when I hear this psycho shit from white people. there's a huuuuge spectrum of white folks who are just ACHING for a chance to show how marginalized they are by the blax and it drives me NUTS, maybe just from an excuse me wtf r u doing/crazy pills angle.

I think you're probably OTM, actually, and this is what's really telling about Richards' outburst -- the fact that he seized on their blackness, that he located his antipathy towards them, and attack on them, in it. What I get from watching the tape isn't a sense of hatred per se, but of resentment that suddenly explodes out of nowhere -- of someone who got their buttons pushed and totally, irrationally detonates, for reasons even they don't fully understand. And who then tries to backpedal by knitting it into some sub-Kaufman thing.

Do tell us which!

i don't think we should reject that approach if it happens to be true (which it probably is). but i'm not sure whether publicly playing up that approach is an effective way of addressing the issue (does the self-examination sufficiently outweigh the backlash?).

there's a huuuuge spectrum of white folks who are just ACHING for a chance to show how marginalized they are by the blax

sure, but i don't think richards is one of these people or that that was what he was saying

it's tempting to ponder whether this one incident makes him 'more of a racist' than someone who harboured bad thoughts about a race of people for years and years without actually speaking out about it or acting on it in any significant way...but trying to establish specific parameters and the marker points on a sliding scale can only remain in the speculative and theoretical so there seems little point in the end.

ffs

spreads straight from the fridge!

So basically "fuck it, he's a racist"?

I don't think it's even necessarily "marginalized" (though there's LOTS of that sentiment), but just this sense that...that black people think of themselves as entitled, somehow. I remember someone telling me that "the black people at my workplace screw around and don't work as hard as the rest of us, but they get away with it because the boss is afraid that he'll be charged with racism if he fires them". Stuff like that.

xpost Yeah, but Tracer, this is something very distinct from, say, the "blacks-are-innately-inferior" type of racism, or even the "all blacks are thugs and welfare queens" style. It's a distinction worth making and naming, I think -- if only because it's a subtler, more widespread, and more socially acceptable form of racism.

xxpost LOL!

Whereas white American paranoia about black privilege is based on complete irrational psychosis, deliberate idiocy, convenient ignorance, self-serving lies, self-serving ahistorical thinking, stupid cultural fetishization, general ass-backward insanity, and just plain douchebaggery.

At what point does his racism transcend everyday racism far enough for him to acquire the label "racist"? The point has to exist, otherwise the term is largely meaningless.

Hey J, do you think a nice non-meaningless place to locate that point might be just this side of standing in public yelling about lynching niggers? I mean, c'mon, we don't spend this much time stressing out on every thread, being all like "well he fixes cars, but I don't know if that makes him a mechanic" -- it's pointless and distracting to respond to stuff like this by getting all metaphysical about racist actions versus racist people, and all it tends to accomplish is to act as a rhetorical smokescreen for the asshole in question to hide behind. Cf Richards' apology! "The insane thing about this is that I'm not a racist -- it just so happens that when I get annoyed with black people, the first thing I remind them of is this nation's long history of brutal disregard for their lives."