Michael "Kramer" Richards racist tirade (1 Viewer)

[John_Graz]

http://people.monstersandcritics.com/article_1224364.php/Seinfeld_Richards_apology_from_Late_Night?compage= 10&comcount=13&comlimit=10

"Seinfeld" star Michael Richards, who unleashed a torrent of racial epithets at a pair of black hecklers at the West Hollywood, CA. Laugh Factory on Friday, has issued an apology Monday night on "Late Night With David Letterman.

Letterman: "Why don't you explain exactly what happened for the folks who may not know."

Richards: "I lost my temper on stage. I was at a comedy club trying to do my act and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage and said some pretty nasty things to some Afro-Americans, a lot of trash talk, and uh..."

Letterman: "And you were actually being heckled or were they just talking and disturbing the act?"

Richards: "That was going on too."

Richards: "...You know, I'm really busted up over this and I'm very, very sorry to those people in the audience, the blacks, the Hispanics, whites - everyone that was there that took the brunt of that anger and hate and rage and how it came through, and I'm concerned about more hate and more rage and more anger coming through, not just towards me but towards a black/white conflict.
There's a great deal of disturbance in this country and how black feel about what happened in Katrina, and, you know, many of the comics, many of performers are in Las Vegas and New Orleans trying to raise money for what happened there, and for this to happen, for me to be in a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, you know, I'm deeply, deeply sorry.
And I'll get to the force field of this hostility, why it's there, why the rage is in any of us, why the trash takes place, whether or not it's between me and a couple of hecklers in the audience or between this country and another nation, the rage - "

Letterman: "But Michael, let me interrupt here for a second and ask a question about had the people doing the heckling or the people who were not paying attention, had they been white or Caucasian or any other race, what would have been the nature of your response then?"

Richards: "It may have happened. It may have happened. You know, I'm a performer. I push the envelope, I work in a very uncontrolled manner onstage. I do a lot of free association, it's spontaneous, I go into character...I don't know, in view of the situation and the act going where it was going, I don't know, the rage did go all over the place. It went to everybody in the room....

Richards' publicist Michael Levine, whose clients have included George Carlin, Sam Kinison and Rodney Dangerfield, said "I think it's a career ruiner for him. ... It's going to be a long road back."

 

[Billy C.]

Laughed out loud at that one!

 

[Nick Martin]

Forget that reason - it's just a damn good show all around. Kramer is one aspect of it, but not the source of its greatness.

I wouldn't let OJ ruin my viewings of the Naked Gun movies, as dumb as they may be and I wouldn't let Richards ruin Seinfeld.

Of course, I laughed through the whole video anyway. It was so angry, so full of hatred, and therefore so ridiculous...watching a man flush his career and reputation down the toilet all because of a few stupid words...how could I not find that funny?

My views on that word are a little different. I don't think of that word as being linked solely to color, but attitude, dress sense and moral structure (or lack of it).
Being someone with a black father and 'mixed' mother, somehow I don't get offended by words like that.

 

[chuck_b]

That was my point.

The show "Seinfeld" and this event almost a decade later should have no coorelation The fact that that show was his defining moment as a cast member does not make this latest event by him a defining one for the show.

 

[Jerome Grate]

First the guitar guy video was way out of line for that guy to hit the heckler, and it's sad because I really appreciated Kramer on Seinfeld, but his comments had to come from the heart even in the midst of anger. That kind of behavior you can't defend because it will always be there. I never had the urge to purchase Seinfeld the series so no issue there, but this incident was completely self destructive.
I've seen some comedians handle hecklers really well, in fact sometimes they can do a complete set on the heckler and not loose a bit of funny, in this case that was hate.

 

[Dave_Brown]

"Oh no, she must have heard us, now she thinks we're racist!"
"Not that there is anything wrong with that"

 

[Carlos Garcia]

Now THAT is funny!

 

[LarryDavenport]

Considering Jerry was booked on Letterman to promote the 7th season of Seinfeld on DVD, they do have products to sell. I wonder if Richard's rant will effect sales.

I was surprised to hear that Richards was even doing a stand up act. Before Seinfeld he was a sketch comic on Fridays, and he wasn't particularly funny back then. Playing Kramer was the only thing he was ever good at.

 

[TravisR]

In another similar thread, I said how the only thing damaged by this is Michael Richards' career and that was over the second that Seinfeld went off the air anyway.

I don't like what he said but in no way will that effect the fun I have watching Seinfeld.

 

[John_Lee]

The more I listen and reflect, the increasingly I am convinced that Richards just isn't that smart. Maybe smart isn't the word, savvy might encapsulate it better.
He got angry and something in his 'lizard brain' said 'what'll hurt this guy the most?' He didn't think about the rest of the audience. He certainly didn't think about the rest of the nation. And I'm pretty sure he didn't think through the ramifications of hurting this heckler in the most effective manner he could think of on the fly.
I don't think his outburst reflects on his day-to-day mindset, I think it reflects a deficit in his ability to think clearly in the heat of the moment. I also think it reflects on his ability to engage in high thinking.
I think, in the moment, the only thoughts running through his mind were;

what'll shout this guy down, and
I've heard other comics use vitriol to effectively shout hecklers down, and
the 'n-word' is the most effectively vitriolic thing I can think of. Let's go with that.

 

[mattCR]

Somehow, this will taint every viewing of "UHF" I have from here on out. I'm waiting for Weird Al to issue a statement.






Come on, what he did is terrible, but I have no idea how it impacts anything that happened years ago. There are lots of people who have done some terrible things, it doesn't change the way I look at the stuff they did before things went bad. If it did, there would be a lot of music I could never listen to.

 

[chuck_b]

I bet sales will INCREASE. If anything, it just reminded everyone of the next release of DVD's and gets MORE exposure for the show. Just trotting Jerry out once a year for the next DVD release may have been getting stale by now - anything Seinfeld right now will create attention and sales.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Nicholas Martin wrote #23)


Exactly. Mr. Richards (as well as numerous others) should take a look anew at the history of another "stand-up" comedian of note, Mr. Dick Gregory, whose 1964 autobiography is entitled---you guessed it---with the same word that Richards so ragingly hurled out in anger in that comedy club: Nigger: An Autobiography.

Hey, I had to read this for a book report and class presentation when I was in high (or junior high) school.

It was a highly interesting book, one from another era, but one still relevant today (or, in this case, yesterday). Of the many sad and funny anecdotes in the book, the most memorable and funniest to me is totally instructive here:

Faced with a torrent of heckles from some members of nightclub crowds that included the so-called "N-bomb", Gregory learned to play along and devised the perfect retort: (approximate) "You hear what he called me? Roy Rogers' horse!"

That's how ya handle a heckler!

 

[Chris Lockwood]

> Playing Kramer was the only thing he was ever good at.

He was pretty good in UHF, too.

 

[Yee-Ming]

I'm somewhat surprised that his own publicist would say something like that; I'm guessin the publicist is dropping him pronto, and trying to distance himself from Richards.

After all, if you are the man's publicist and still trying to spin things for him, you'd never admit this is a "career ruiner", you'd say things like "he's really sorry", "he'll take a hit for a while but I'm confident the public understands he said what he said in the heat of the moment, and they all love Cosmo blah blah blah".

 

[Chris Lockwood]

What's a publicist supposed to do? Try to make it sound like he didn't say anything bad?

Maybe the strategy is to act like his career is over, lay low for a while except for a round of apologies, then make a comeback.

I don't think his career is over forever... I'll bet that within a couple years he'll be back to being a has-been former sitcom actor and mediocre stand-up. Seinfeld running forever will ensure that he's not forgotten, and at some point someone will hire him for the curiousity value, if nothing else.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Well, no, but rather than pronounce final rites over his career, I would've thought that the statement would be full of lots of mea culpas and that he's really sorry. Then again, perhaps the publicist did in fact say all that, but the only interesting quote was the "career ruiner" one.

Although the strategy you've outlined rather makes sense as well. Let the dust die down on this one before he show up again at all.

 

[Patrick Sun]

It was weird seeing an ad spot on the Seinfeld 7 box set, and the last show of Kramer is him as turkey for dinner.

 

[Chris]

I totally forgot about UHF. Haven't seen that in a while. Still makes me laugh. The whole movie makes me laugh.

 

[Holadem]

Agreed. That was a rather curious thing to say. There are endless ways to spin this thing into something less final than "a career ruiner". I am thinking your first guess is right - he is bailing. After all, no career for "Cosmo" means no job for him (assuming he is his full time publicist).

--
H