and
Michael Richards is a self-pitying, squirming racist. This is how:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DB6qKPU6sps
Fifty years ago he would have had the 'niggers' upside down with forks up their asses. He wanted that nigger thrown out, that nigger, that nigger. Look, he is a nigger. Look at Kramer pointing and showing us the nigger. He won't be arrested for calling the black man a nigger, but the nigger has the audacity to threaten The Man. The
White Man, who gave that nigger what was coming to him and then some.
In the middle of his racial abuse, Richards dubiously says "This shocks you." "What's the matter? Is it too much for you to handle?" - giving some gravity to his alarming performance. He is clearly aware his mind has broken, and very publicly. Yet he still cannot help himself trying to justify his racism before he is finished with the microphone.
His 'apology' on Letterman:-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5eZqtb1hZw
Richards' slippery Seinfeld buddy expresses that the two are "very upset about it" and he is invited to "explain what happened" in "one of those awful, awful things." Kramer is apparently "mystified about what happened".
Here is some clarity: Michael Richards responded to audience disquiet with racial taunts, which is indeed an awful, awful thing for him to resort to. Perhaps now the mystery has been solved.
He goes on to say he made "trash talk" about the 'Afro-Americans', and when asked if they were heckling or just talking replied "That too". Other Seinfeld guy interjects that the audience should "stop laughing" around this point. Richards is then very sorry to the blacks, whites and hispanics who took the brunt of that anger (nope it was pretty much just the niggers Mikey) and "how it came through" (see above link for this). He is concerned about more hate, more rage coming through - not just towards him, but towards a black/white conflict, because there is a great deal of disturbance in America since Hurricane Katrina. Then for him, a comic, to come out and to say this
crap he is deeply sorry for... he can only now get to the
forcefield of this hostility, and discover
why this rage is in any of us, why the
trash takes place, whether or not it's between Kramer and some niggers or
between America and another nation. Richards pushes the envelope, he works in a very uncontrolled manner onstage, with a lot of
free association and
spontaneous going into character. In view of the situation and the act going where it was going, he is not sure if he would have racially abused other creeds or colours, even though
his rage was going all over the place, over
everybody in the room. Michael thinks blacks could feel... what is.... he is not a racist, that is what's
so insane about all this. He doesn't... and yet... it's sad... it comes through,
it fires out of him. Even during the apology, it comes through in the passion as he
confronts himself. Michael agrees that him trying to be so racially outrageous may have somehow
diffused the heckling/talking situation, by
'Ju-Jitsu'-ing it - he had a microphone, he tried. But it doesn't always work out, and you can talk about a bad night. Michael tried to apologise to the niggers involved, but he couldn't talk to all of... everyone because they left. He thinks it's good the niggers have 'gone to the press' because it
shows solidarity in confronting those kinds of remarks like, well, 'nigger' etc. etc., within the nigger community. It's important, he says, that the 'Afro-Americans' ensure this kind of
crap doesn't... does not come about. Michael Richards is "sorry that
it happened".
You know, if those niggers had just gone and been born fat instead, or maybe thrown a water balloon, they probably would have all had a good laugh about it instead of all this bitterness and unease.