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

too late, lurker

Eppy and Jaymc OTM, though

First of all, behavior is all we can go by. Second, the goal in identifying racism isn't to slap a label on somebody -- as in the witch hunts. The goal IS to curtail certain types of behavior, and to hopefully reflect on ourselves as well. The obsession of some people to affirm that someone IS a racist or ISN'T misses the point. The point being that many of us have a shitload of racist material floating around at various levels, more or less conscious, of our psyches. And that episodes such as the Richards one show, if anything, how that material will spew up to wound others when the surface cracks.

So I dunno, when someone gets pissed off in public and starts yelling about lynching the niggers and it appears that he both (a) kind of dug that one up earnestly and (b) thinks there's anything funny or interesting about it and (c) intends it to hurt and show power over people -- the guy was trying to put down and shut up people by using racial slurs and reminders of racial oppression! -- I think it's probably fair to just go "hey, look at the racist," and not get our panties in a knot like we're on some sort of racial linguistics panel.

Sorry, xpost

Dude, my roommate says you're not funny.

And I responded with:

50 years ago, you'd be hanging upside down with a fork in your ass! He's a n***er! He's a n***er! He's a n***er!

To which he responded:

That was uncalled for. Seriously, STFU, white boy.

And then a third poster wrote:

Hey what's the big deal? Why are you rushing to judge him? I bet nobody's going to criticize the black man for his racism. The white guy was just giving vent to a common frustration that white people feel about black privilege.

I mean, seriously, you'd think that last response was pretty fucked up, wouldn't you? Maybe Let's say somebody on this board, who I know to be black, criticized me thusly:

Dude, my roommate says you're not funny.

And I responded with:

50 years ago, you'd be hanging upside down with a fork in your ass! He's a n***er! He's a n***er! He's a n***er!

To which he responded:

That was uncalled for. Seriously, STFU, white boy.

And then a third poster wrote:

Hey what's the big deal? Why are you rushing to judge him? I bet nobody's going to criticize the black man for his racism. The white guy was just giving vent to a common frustration that white people feel about black privilege.

I mean, seriously, you'd think that last response was pretty fucked up, wouldn't you?Let's say somebody on this board, who I know to be black, criticized me thusly:

Dude, my roommate says you're not funny.

And I responded with:

50 years ago, you'd be hanging upside down with a fork in your ass! He's a n***er! He's a n***er! He's a n***er!

To which he responded:

That was uncalled for. Seriously, STFU, white boy.

And then a third poster wrote:

Hey what's the big deal? Why are you rushing to judge him? Is he really a racist? I bet nobody's going to criticise the black guy for his racist comment. Why can blacks get away with it and not whites? The white guy was just giving vent to common frustration that white people feel about black privilege.

I mean, seriously, you'd think that last response was pretty fucked up, wouldn't you?

I don't think that anyone's irredeemable, but the way that other people use the word "racist" makes me think that they do, which is why I hesitate to use it. A lot of the time, I *do* get a "witch hunt" vibe rather than a "helpful learning experience" vibe. This could all be a huge misunderstanding, though.

You can't be a freemason if you're Catholic, since bead-fumblers adhere to the power of confession. That's how all those Knights of Columbus halls got started.

Aren't we all racists to some extent? Don't we all harbour assumptions about groups of people? When someone says "SUV-driving Republican" they are in a sense being racist or classist or some kind of -ist.

I think what he did was really horrible and unforgiveable and I don't feel bad for him if he never gets work again.

I just think whether or not someone bears the label "racist" is irrelevant. Maybe he's a worse racist than many, although not as bad a racist as the people who beat people up or scare people away from polls.

His apology seemed sincere - and I appreciated that his answer to what he would do now was "personal work" cuz he does need to do some soul-searching -- maybe out of this will come something good. Maybe he'll set up a fund or some other good work.

I still think too that it was an act gone awry. He was doing improv - he got into the role of the white belittled man lashing out at the black guy, trying to grasp at the former power when he was "the man" - and he let it go too far. That's not to say there's an excuse for it.

Comedy clubs are where it's okay to touch nerves. Comedians are the ones who lay bare our discomfort. He started some kind of national dialogue, if not a race war, that is bigger than him and probably good to have - so in the end, I don't think it was such a bad thing.

we've come a long way, baby.

Please, please don't think I'm trying to excuse him. Even if they had said anything, it would not excuse what happened, but I would be curious to know.

But like Gibson with his incident, the fact that his rage binge and batshittedness manifested in these remarks...well, shit like that doesn't come out of nowhere.

That's what strikes me about this. Maybe what the heckler said to him was so bad it made him blow off & go into some sort of mad tirade, but to come out with that? So fucked up.

(ok tying into weird white paranoia ade or nabisco - i get em confused - were mentioning above) there's this one highway exit near auburn alabama that pretty much from what i can tell all ga bulldogs fans are gonna hit anytime the auburn-ga game is there (context), one of the last exits before you're back in ga. i'm driving back thru alabama late one night and i stop at this exit for gas and to use the john and inside the restroom is just an insane amount of lengthy detailed like unabomber manifesto level stuff from different people or pens at least about how 1) blacks run alabama (different term than 'blacks' used obv) 2) blacks have it so easy in alabama and get away with stuff that liberals won't let whites get away 3) and this is why alabama isn't better off. it was damn near a detailed position paper on pro-segregation, anti-affirmative action, o if only whites had the same rights that blacks take for granted, and how come they get to use the n word btw. literally four walls covered with the stuff. and then, the saving grace that saved me from being merely repulsed/terrified by it and amplified how happy i was gonna be to be back in ga (where of course we don't have racism lol), written above this mess above the toilet oblivious of the surrounding white rage: "GO DAWGS!!!"

white people be fucked up and weird, film at 11.

lol the ontario one said 'GO ARGONAUTS!!!'

I mean, seriously, you'd think that last response was pretty fucked up, wouldn't you?

I would! It's a good thing, then, that no one made that argument. (Describing a phenomenon isn't the same as arguing on behalf of it, or making excuses for it.)

I don't think that anyone's irredeemable, but the way that other people use the word "racist" makes me think that they do, which is why I hesitate to use it. A lot of the time, I *do* get a "witch hunt" vibe rather than a "helpful learning experience" vibe. This could all be a huge misunderstanding, though.

No, I think you're OTM, and this is what troubles me about the word "racist" -- the witch-hunt, otherizing vibe of it (ironically enough). I don't know there's any way around it, though -- in other words, I don't know there's any way to make "racism" a strongly negative value, as it should be, without making "racists" a category of (in essence) non-persons, the Evil Other, people outside the social contract who Aren't Like Us who it's OK to hate. And I don't find that impulse trustworthy.

I would love to know what those guys said to him that made him absolutely flip out like that.

I think we all would, yeah.

Fair enough, nabisco, and his outburst was alarming, though I've always thought of Richards as the kind of person I would avoid anyway due to plain weirdness, but the point that jaymc was making, I think, was that people are or are not mechanics in a much more concrete way than they are or are not racists. Everybody who's not a saint has said or thought something at somepoint in their lives that conflates indivduals with whole swathes of the population that share some historical or genetic similarity.

I also want to say that even as a mutt of European extraction, I don't understand the 'how come 'cracker' isn't as objectionable as nigger complaint'. First off, it strikes me as an argument for just the opposite: how come 'nigger' isn't as 'acceptable' as 'cracker'? Secondly, 'cracker' offends me but how can it be expected to carry the same threat of degradation, objectification, violence and oppression as 'nigger'? Implying I'm a racist by way of 'cracker' isn't the same thing as calling as referring to someone of African descent in a way that implies that they're hardly human and only good enough for servitude. Thirdly, it's not as if refraining from calling people hurtful epithets is based merely on some kind of racial truce. If calling me 'cracker' is tantamount to saying that I have carte blanche (see what I did there?) to say 'nigger' then it's special pleading by a racist, 'cause anyone else, without regard to the person's race, would say 'asshole'.

Fixed.

(It would be a shame if this was my only contribtion to the thread, but pretty much all of the rest of my views are "nabisco OTM". Hey, maybe that's what happened, Michael Richards had an fair and sensitive funny-till-it-hurts set all written, and Paul Rodrigeuz went on before him and stole it, leaving Richards to wander the untrodden paths...)