Michael Richards (and others) Shows True Colors

After watching the Michael Richards tirade laden with racial epithets , I was of course shocked and appalled at the unbridled rage with which "Kramer" attacked some heckler, and found it simply despicable. This is a career-ender (for whatever career he had left) and is completely indefensible. I'm not sure if his apology on Letterman (which did not sound all that sincere) helped him or hurt him, though I think the veracity of his onslaught makes any attempt at apology moot. Nobody comes out with that kind of language spontaneously, no matter what the rationale. I believe Michael Richards showed his true, racist colors on that stage that night.

Which brings me to my next point. After watching the video, I read some of the discussion boards, and as much as I thought this to be a universally reprehensible act, I was amazed to see almost a third of the posts on TMZ were completely sidestepping the act and the fact that Richards didn't merely use the "N'-word repeatedly (I feel uncomfortable even writing it) and said things like "that's what happens when you interrupt the white man" and "50 years ago we'd have you upside down with a f-ing fork up your ass" (a very clumsy reference to lynching). Instead, those posters decided to focus on the tired "there's a double standard out there" argument, which, by the way, comes off as a defense of what Richards did.

I happen to agree that a double standard exists in that a black man can say the "N"-word and a white man can't. No, let me rephrase that. Anyone can say whatever they want; what we're talking about here are comfort levels in doing so (in fact there are plenty of white people who are perfectly comfortable saying it, just look at footage from any KKK rally). How this changes what Richards did I don't know, and I think that those people out there who use this as an opportunity to complain about reverse racism or whatever ask themselves what really is the issue here. Richards was using these words and phrases in anger, not in jest.

This should not be an argument of what's fair or just, it should be a condemnation of what someone who used to be a comic icon did in a comedy club last Friday night.