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

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."

From : Uri Frendimein
Sent : Tuesday, November 21, 2006 12:19 PM
To : [email protected]
Subject : BLACK PEOPLE NEVER THINK THIS. AT ALL.


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Wow, guess you've never heard of macho insecurity??? Please stop with the bullshit conjecture already.

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.

no jaymc i just think it ends up in a tail-chasing merry-go-round. i'm a cynic.

"The insane thing about this is that I'm not a racist", yeah, that made me cringe to say the least. "And check out my website, www.blackpeopleloveus.com!"

THAT'S WHAT YOU THINK

xpost

And for all of those saying that anyone can say a patently offensive word over and over again and NOT be a racist, then I hope you petition the moderators to unban Jay Blanchard. He only used a bad word once.

And I don't think you can be a Jewish Mason. Unless you're Jackie Mason.

That's Nude Spock and he's emailing you because he got banned from posting. He thinks you're Nabisco because he's not very bright.

WTF, lurker, people's aren't just "conflating," they're offering one fairly basic answer to the question:

"where this outburst came from" = "Richards' racism"
"what it reflects" = "Richards' racism"

That's a very simplistic, straightforward answer, but that doesn't mean it isn't accurate.