The Crucifixion of Kramer

[thedrifter]

November 24, 2006
The Crucifixion of Kramer
By Bob Weir

I’ve never been a fan of Seinfeld, and I’m not very familiar with the characters. When the show went into syndication a few years ago, I began to come across it whenever I did any channel surfing. I don’t know anything about Michael Richards, the guy who played Kramer on the show.

When I read about his onstage rant at a comedy club in Hollywood last week, I figured the guy has some serious anger management problems. Anyone who has performed in front of a live audience knows of the danger posed by hecklers; it comes with the territory.

Hence, when Mr. Richards was interrupted by a small group at a nearby table, he should have been competent enough to deal with it without engaging in racist invective. Having said that, let’s look at what it means to lose your temper and make a few stupid remarks in the ultra-sensitive country that we’ve become. Since the guy imploded onstage, the video quickly made its way onto the international airwaves, resulting in the type of condemnation that should be reserved for, say, a man who butchered 2 people and got away with it.

When OJ Simpson was acquitted by a predominantly black jury, there were scenes of black people celebrating the gross injustice all across the country. The pain on the faces of the Brown and Goldman families, as they sat in the courtroom watching the murderer being congratulated for beating the system, was heart-wrenching to all decent people. Yet, we didn’t hear from Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, or any other so-called black leaders.

Anyone with an IQ higher than a fire hydrant knew the man was the killer. Imagine if a white man had just slaughtered 2 black people and left that much evidence behind. If a white jury acquitted him, there’d be rioting from coast to coast. Recently, when the obnoxious monster tried to thumb his nose at the public again with his “If I did it” obscenity, where was the denunciation from the black community?

Why didn’t we see Mr. Sharpton on the David Letterman Show castigating those responsible for foisting that pathological display of arrogance on our nation? Are a few forbidden words by a disgruntled, has-been comic worse than a tantalizing tongue-in-cheek “confession” from a murderer who cheated justice? To say our priorities are distorted is a gross understatement.

When someone like Mr. Richards makes a bunch of stupid comments he’s immediately crucified and no one seems to have the courage to point out that it was merely some angry words from an emotionally disturbed man, it wasn’t homicide.

How many people know that the blacks at that table were referring to Richards as a “white cracker”?

Evidently, it’s okay to be pejorative toward whites if you’re black. In fact, it’s acceptable for blacks to use scurrilous language toward other blacks, as is often heard in the lyrics of rap music. Moreover, blacks can use similarly disparaging words toward other ethnic groups and refer to women in the vilest type of street language imaginable.

The question is: do blacks have some special privileges granted to them by the Constitutional description of freedom of speech?

Whites and blacks have fought, and often died, in the struggle for equality. However, it appears that what we have arrived at is a disproportionate equality that gives blacks the exclusive right to be offended by non-blacks. When Eddie Murphy or Chris Rock make racist comments about whites during their standup routines, there’s no hue and cry from the white community. But, let a white comic take similar jabs at blacks and you’d have an earthquake that would shatter the Richter Scale.

Undoubtedly, there are those reading this who will accuse me of racism, but that too, comes with the territory. Someone must point out these things to a public that has become robotically trained to go into knee-jerk mode every time some white fool blows his cool. This marvelous, melting-pot experiment in democracy will never work until we rid ourselves of this one-sided view of race relations. If certain words and phrases are to be prohibited from use by one segment of society, they must be prohibited from use by all. Otherwise, the countless number of lives lost, both black and white, to obtain “equality for all,” has resulted in a most bizarre and incongruous definition of the phrase.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Richards' outburst reveals 'pathetic moral state' of nation

Posted: November 25, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern

Let's take a closer look at so-called comedian Michael Richards' racist outburst that is capturing so much press and airtime. The incident, and what has ensued, tells me more about the overall pathetic moral state of our country than it does about racism.

Richards claims he's not a racist, despite attacking a black heckler at a comedy club where he was performing with a string of the most inflammatory, demeaning, and vulgar racial slurs.

Is it possible that he's not? Maybe. It's possible that he's just a moron.

But check out the deep soul searching that this inane incident has provoked across the nation.

The general sentiment is pretty much captured in a column by The Washington Post's Eugene Robinson who sees in what happened here sad proof that "racism is not dead" in America.

I am in complete agreement with Mr. Robinson that racial animosity lives. But I certainly didn't need Michael Richards' imbecility as proof of this.

If we should be thinking about anything, it should be to try and understand why, after all these years, racial consciousness persists.

As satisfying as it might be for some to watch, Mr. Richards groveling around on television apologizing isn't going to help much. Nor are any sums that left wing legal entrepreneur Gloria Allred might extract from him. Nor are apologies to Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton (the knee-jerk assumption that these two black ministers speak for 40 million black Americans I think is equally racist).

Allow me to suggest that racism and racial consciousness persist and loom large because we choose it to be this way.

Eugene Robinson says that Michael Richards did not see a heckler. Instead, says Robinson, he saw a black heckler. But we live in a country that insists on placing all its citizens in racial categories and using measures of how these categories stack up as measures of national decency.

Every major institution _ business, government, educational _ one way or another keeps track of how many blacks it has on board. Every major corporation has a diversity officer to make sure the colors of the beans are in order. Every corporation gets surveys from the NAACP asking them how many blacks they've got.

When I get a loan from the bank, the loan officer sheepishly asks if it's OK to report that I'm black.

We have institutionalized race consciousness to the very core of our society, so it should be evident why it persists. It's the law.

These laws, by transforming human beings into racial categories, dehumanize blacks and whites. Blacks feel less personally responsible for their own lives and whites are forced to relate to blacks as beans to count rather than human beings. One result is animosity of blacks toward whites and whites toward blacks.

Which leads to the second, and related, point. Racism is no longer understood as a moral problem. It is a political problem.

The success of the civil rights movement of the 1960's was its moral power. The few prevailed over the many because they had moral conviction _ truth _ on their side.

Dr. King's "I Have a Dream" speech was not a speech. It was a sermon. He talked about character and exhorted Americans to strive for liberty because we are "God's children."

King was not an impractical man. He knew that laws needed to be passed to deal with segregation and the absence of equality under the law. But he also knew that law "cannot change the heart" and that for us to become a greater nation, we needed to be a more moral nation.

This said, consider the circumstances of the Richards incident. It took place in a comedy club in Los Angeles. These places are cesspools of profanity and degrading sexual and scatological humor, delivered in a haze of alcohol.

The black heckler yelled out, "It's not funny. That's why you're a reject. Never had no shows, never had no movies. 'Seinfeld' _ that's it."

This tastelessness doesn't justify Richards' racist diatribe. But on the other side of the coin, blacks who want a better world ought to get out of the gutter.

For me it is commentary on our overall sorry moral state that as news shows obsessed over this mindless incident, they totally ignored an Associated Press story this same week reporting that out-of-wedlock births in the U.S. reached 37.5 percent in 2005, a record high. The figure for blacks is almost double this.

Perhaps this holiday season it is worth considering that racism will be with us as long as evil remains within us. The answer will not come from politicians and lawyers.

It will come only when we raise ourselves up. Only then, in the words of Dr. King, will we be able to say "thank God Almighty, we are free at last."

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Last Thoughts on Michael Richards
By Paul Beston
Published 11/27/2006 12:08:43 AM

The Michael Richards mess -- a sitcom star, nearly a decade past notoriety, talking trash in a Los Angeles comedy club -- seemed like a one day story. But as always with such things, it is the reaction to the event that is of interest.

As far as Richards is concerned, he seems determined to outdo the ugliness of his rant on November 17th with the servility of his multiple acts of contrition. His publicist, casting a wide net for overstatement, says that his client has opened a "terrible racial wound in our nation," and Richards has dutifully gone groveling to Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson. "We might turn this minus into a plus," Jackson says, and he doesn't need to say for whom. As Star Parker points out, Richards' turning to Jackson and Sharpton as the representatives of the black community is condescending in the extreme. Meanwhile, the men in the audience who were the targets of Richards' insults have retained legal representation to seek damages.

Those who genuinely object to what Richards said are not contradicting themselves if they also abhor how the victim mentality and its representatives swoop down instantly, like buzzards picking the carrion apart before the blood has dried.

It has been pointed out that Richards is apologizing only because the incident was captured on tape. If it were not for the You-Tubing of America, the pressure on him to apologize would be infinitely less. It was only when millions of people were able to view the incident that some public statement became necessary.

Some cite this as proof of Richards' insincerity, but in truth the video audience is the only one worth apologizing to. The live audience is fair game, since going to a comedy club is something like sitting ringside at a prizefight: you might get sprayed by some nasty stuff.

Anyone familiar with comedy clubs knows that the style of performance is often quite abusive. It seems to me that people who attend such venues expect this kind of material and this kind of treatment -- as long as it is at the expense of others, not themselves. It's the same philosophy that feeds the success of radio shock jocks like Howard Stern: the comedian as bully, with an audience watching or listening in adoration as long as none of the abuse comes their way.

At the Laugh Factory, a few black audience members heckled Richards for not being funny; he responded with references to lynching and multiple repetitions of the word "******." One of the men then responded, "That was uncalled for!" Indeed it was, and Richards' response was way out of proportion, but the audience members had initiated the exchange. They liked dishing it out, but didn't care for taking it.

None of this exonerates Richards -- he said what he said, and people are free to draw their own conclusions about him. Jerry Seinfeld, who acted as a good soldier (as well as a careful businessman) in getting his friend Richards a prime apology slot on David Letterman's show, spoke about how sickened he was by Richards' remarks. You want to say, "But Jerry, these people were in a nightclub. Who were they expecting, Jimmy Stewart?"

Although his outburst appeared spontaneous, Richards seemed to be aiming for Lenny Bruce territory -- trying to shock people by breaking a taboo, followed by a lecture on how it's only a word (Richards said something to this effect on the tape). I think taboos are vastly underrated myself, but people who go to comedy clubs tend to feel differently. No one is forcing them to choose foul-mouthed comics for their evening entertainment.

Those black Americans who have resurrected the use of the most notorious racial epithet as an ironic statement of rebellion or racial pride or God knows what else are reaping the whirlwind by doing so. Gangsta rappers and their ilk have made the word more casual and less taboo, while also insisting that only they have the right to wield it. Outbursts like Richards' are inevitable in a climate that on one hand is overrun with political correctness and on the other mocks the very idea that there is such a thing as bad taste.

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Kramer meets the Godfather
By Bob Weir

The scene is a darkened, wood-paneled office with a huge oak door providing entrance to a dimly lit, sanctified chamber. On each side of the portal stands a tall, husky man wearing a 3-piece suit and a sinister countenance. A grim-faced middle-aged man sits behind a huge desk next to a floor to ceiling window shrouded in dark drapes. He nods solemnly to one of the sentinels and the man opens the door slowly, revealing the drooping, cowering figure of a has-been comic who made the near fatal mistake of using racist language during his onstage act.

The man at the desk nods again and the shivering figure is directed to enter. He walks slowly on wobbly legs toward the outstretched hand of the man at the desk and kneels before kissing the man's ring. The foregoing is a perhaps imaginative fictionalized account of a recent meeting between Michael Richards, the Kramer character in "Seinfeld" and the "Reverend" Jesse Jackson, the race-baiting agitator turned "Capo di tutti capi" in charge of all prohibited speech and black-white controversies in the country.

When Mr. Richards erupted in spasms of racist rhetoric during his routine at a Los Angeles comedy club it was a foregone conclusion that he'd inevitably have to prostrate himself at the feet of the Godfather and beg for forgiveness. After the comedy club outburst was broadcast to every planet in the universe, Jackson didn't waste any time calling for a boycott of the latest DVD Seinfeld season being offered for sale.

When Richards finished groveling at the feet of the hypocritical hustler, he crawled out of the room metaphorically on his belly, grateful that his life had been spared. Then, the "Reverend" put in a call to the news media, telling them that Richards had shown the proper respect, but should get treatment for his malady.

Let's face it: what Richards did on that stage was one of the ugliest, most despicable tirades ever viewed on national television. It seems quite evident that he has some issues to deal with. But, is Jesse Jackson qualified to give absolution to someone with a bigotry problem? I seem to remember this so-called "Reverend" having his own fit of hateful invective. Some years ago, in what could only be described as a vicious anti-Semitic remark, Jackson used insulting words toward New York Jews when he referred to the city as "Hymietown."


It would seem just as clear that Jackson is in need of treatment for his own malady. To whom did he go to beg forgiveness? Did he pay a visit to a rabbi and get advice on his condition? Did anyone call for a boycott of the Rainbow/Push Coalition and a plea to stop donating to any of Jackson's other enterprises? I don't remember anyone calling for the complete destruction of the man because of a poorly chosen utterance that was delivered in anger. Moreover, so far as I know, no one asked him to his face if he had used that term at any other time in his life, or prescribed a visit to a psychiatrist.

He wasn't constantly badgered and forced to do a repetitious mea culpa. Attorney, Gloria Allred didn't go on national television to proclaim that she was suing Jackson because of the emotional damage he did to the Jewish residents of the Big Apple.

I don't doubt that Jackson has some serious issues with Jews and probably with all white people. Does that mean he gets a pass because of his darker skin pigmentation? After using such bigoted language, how does he have the standing to chastise others for doing the same thing?

After one of my recent columns was published, I was accused by some of being a racist because I said racist words should not be used by people of any color. Some, who described themselves as black, told me that it's okay for them to use such language toward each other, but whites have no right to use it. That is utter nonsense! No one has a monopoly on speech in this country. Either stop it for all, or stop it for none! If any good comes of Richards' bad behavior, it will be a national discussion of the need to apply uniform standards for speech to all groups, equal as we all are under our Constitution.

Ellie