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

I can understand why YouTube comments threads would have people arguing about this, since YouTube comments threads seem to be populated exclusively by repulsive morons; I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out why ILX would have to argue anything out about this.

P.S. I am really sick of people who are all like "black people call each other nigger all the time" -- this is a severely fucked-up perception based on people getting their information on What Black People Do All the Time pretty much solely from hip-hop videos and The Wire and shit, and I seriously wonder if people who say that honestly believe that the middle-aged woman in the next cubicle at work seriously goes home to her kids and says "what's up, my niggas, we're having Applebee's tonight!"

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, November 20, 2006 4:09 PM bookmarkflaglink

conversely, this has aged like fine wine

Quite the time capsule, this.

I sometimes think about this incident as something of a watershed moment, since it took place in 2006, right between the launches of YouTube and the iPhone. Only a few years earlier, and the video wouldn't have made its way to the Internet so quickly and been watched so easily.

I also remember my reaction on this thread, which I'm not proud of now. I was very bothered by the fact that people were so quick to call Richards a racist based entirely on the video. In my mind, it was an argument against essentialism (is he "really" a racist, or did he just do a racist thing?) -- but it ultimately amounted to a defense of Richards that I shouldn't have been so invested in, with the privilege of viewing such incidents from a purely academic perspective.

i know no one knew what racism was in 2006 or whatever but fucking hell

Is your experience so limited that you've never seen non-racist people behave this way? I know a guy from Texas...he will say some of the most racial shit you ever heard right to a black man's face...He's a blues musician...that doesn't stop him from making chicken jokes...

yeah, that was called out in 2006 and isn't really in the spirit of the revive