"we" are not amused

i had been hoping to make time for an original piece on former seinfeld star michael richards' now-famous racist rant at the laugh factory, but steve gilliard just stole my main points:

his tone was deeply racial and mean. i've been called nigger before, but never has anyone said i should be lynched. that kind of hate comes from a feeling of racial superiority, that other people are lower than you (e.g borat and the gypsys) and that is the natural order of things. when the two neatly dressed men walked in the group, he said as they did "here comes the blacks and mexicans" they weren't in hoodies, they looked like young professionals. yet they were racially abused. ... i don't think this is a man who handles failure or correction well. even with hecklers, you don't call for them to be murdered. this is an unhappy man, who got rich but never grew up. he lives in a white world, and his outbursts have been ignored for years. you don't see his former cast members running to say "this isn't the guy we know". only seinfeld, who has a financial relationship with richards, jumped in.

steve then zeroes in on the one aspect of richards' tirade that leapt out at me as the most reprehensible:

it's one thing to say "fuck you nigger". which will get you a punch, it's another world to say "50 years ago we would have hung you from a tree with a fork in your ass" we? most people would have said, they or the klan. not we. we is pretty twisted.

bull's-eye.

richards is identifying personally with the worst elements of any society.

kramer the klansman.

time to stick a fork in him. he's done.