Info: November 22, 2006 Posted by: Leon 18 comments

Last night, during my regular session of reading world news, I found out that Micheal Richards, better known as Kramer on the hit show Seinfeld, went in to a racist rant directed at African-Americans in the audience who were heckling him. You’d think a seasoned professional life Richards would be able to handle a little criticism right? Wrong. He went off, saying “Fifty years ago we’d have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass (excellent Thanksgiving reference, Micheal)” and “You can talk, you can talk, you’re brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! He’s a nigger! A nigger, look, there’s a nigger!” Needless to say, the audience was not amused. The video of the incident can be seen here. Richards quickly apologized to civil rights leaders and the media, saying he was really “busted up”. But the damage was done. His image has changed from a lovable comedian to a hateful bigot.

The Laugh Factory, the place where he had his infamous incident, has banned him from their stage. As for his career, let’s say he’ll be lucky if he has one left, because from the looks of it, not even a sex tape starring himself and Paris Hilton could save him now. Some people are saying that it should be ok for him to call a black person “nigger”. After all, we call them “cracker,” “honky” and other names. To them I say it’s not the same. The word nigger was used to label blacks as inferior to whites, subhuman even. Words like “cracker” and “honky” were probably used as a form of defense by the black man. Use of the word “nigger” by someone who is not black only conjures up images of 300 years worth of suffering and mistreatment. The man has no excuse. Mel Gibson was drunk, but there wasn’t a bottle anywhere near Richards when it happened. “Busted up” isn’t a good enough reason, and whatever you were going through doesn’t excuse it. There have been a lot of has-beens that have been in worse situations than you. You don’t see Mark Hamill spewing racist remarks do you? You could roll out all the excuses you can think of. Blame the Seinfeld curse. Or better yet, blame Bush. That’s the in thing nowadays. Doesn’t matter. That bigotry was in your heart all along. It just took some heckling to trigger all that pent-up hatred.

As for me, I’ll never watch Seinfeld again. True, Seinfeld is second only to Friends in its whiteness, and you may ask what business does a black man have watching it. Still I liked the show. But seeing Kramer will only remind me of this. It just makes you wonder what kind of bigotry lurks in the hearts of the people closest to you. What does your neighbour really feel about you living in the same community as him? How does your smiling assistant really feel about someone of your ethnicity being in a higher position than her? How does you girlfriend’s dad feel about you dating his daughter? I posted this silly picture because his goose his cooked. Rather appropriate for Thanksgiving, don’t you think?

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