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

(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...)

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Whenever anyone says out loud "I'm not a racist" red flags red flags

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It depends on how you define racism. I find myself sometimes jumping to conclusions about people based on how they look. For instance, I'm surprised when someone who looks very middle class and conventional turns out to like edgy music. Yes, I'm a racist in that sense. Are you?

kingston:canada::san pedro de macoris:dominican republic

(the baseball fans will understand this)

there were a couple of dudes in my high school that were into being pro rodeo riders (southern MN)..they were cool guys, absolutely crazy, they be all like "oh yeah i got a punctured lung no biggie" unreal.

but yeah i mean rodeo's not like huge in rural mn like it is out west, but we always had one at the county fair when i was a kid, i would always get excited for it...i won a Rondo (obscure mountain dew-ish brand of pop) there once at the fair rodeo in a raffle.

That's all I was sayin'.

http://www.singers.com/choral/choralimages3/TallisSpem200.gif

But yeah.