Doesn’t work for me in either. Is it failing coz I’m not in the US?
Well, in Richards’s defense…
om…
he…
uh…
didn’t shoot anybody.
Damn. I wouldn’t defend him with F. Lee Bailey’s 10 foot pole. That was bonafide psych ward worthy; when I first heard of it I assumed he at least did it with some type of shock-value tongue-in-cheek humor but nope… that was some flat out Aryan Nations shit. I wonder how long before Jerry Seinfeld and others are asked to comment and if they’ll defend him.
I can only assume he was stoned or having a genuine psycho episode. With the money he made from Seinfeld (wasn’t he making close to a millon per episode towards the end?) and his follow-up series and residuals he can’t possibly need the coin, so I wonder why he even works if heckling (which you’d think somebody who’s been in stand-up as long as he has would be used to) drives him that batshit crazy.
I mean I thought I could have a meltdown, but goddam… That spiel would get you fired from any job, booted out of the army, or banned for life from any talk-show or agency I’d think. I guess when you’re a single rich has-been and you don’t have a wife to kill this is the next best thing to get big headlines again.
OTOH maybe a Mel Brooks produced dinner theater tour of The Odd Couple with Isaac Washington will get raves.
‘Seinfeld Curse’ indeed.
hmm that is strange.
It looks to me like he tried to come up with a witty comback(the fork in the ass thing) but while really pissed off, and it bombed. Then he tried to go into a Kaufman-Lenny Bruce"I was only trying to shock you save" which didn’t go over well.
But as he keeps on going, and going, getting more and more pissed. It’s like a total meltdown of repressed racism exploding, and the wierdest part was how he seems to assume the crowd is with him.
From Wiki:
Hmm seems kind of surprising he would be performing the next night. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that Richards was probably trying to be funny and then just crashed and burned. After the first comment it seemed like the whole audience laughed at the joke and after that it just spun out of control. I doubt he is truly racist rather just extremely frustrated at the heckling and just went off without thinking.
But remember: Jerry’s friends always tend to even out (one goes up, one goes down).
Based on this, Jason Alexander is due an Academy Award sometime soon…
First he refused to put on the AIDS ribbon, and now this. Perhaps it was that kick to the head by Crazy Joe Davola. It’s such a shame, especially after all the work he did in support of little people and dentists.
I only bring up the Seinfeld references because that’s the only way I know Michael Richards. So I can’t even say that I’m surprised.
He’s Even Steven.
Well if we’re throwing out the Seinfeld references I must say that Jackie Chiles must be crying himself to sleep every night. 
Seems possible. I guess it’s really hard to be cutting edge these days and he was trying to make a point about the power of words. And boy did he ever make a point about the power of words.
It’s too bad the audience came back with “crakah muthah-fuckah” so quickly, but maybe that was part of the point.
It’s a good thing the heckler wasn’t a little green army man…
Just sayin’.
waiting…
It’s certainly not impossible, but I’ve seen a little bit of Michael Richards’ stand up routine, and that strikes me as entirely too subtle for him. It’s been several years, so I’m sure he’s changed it somewhat, but the act I saw was basically third-rate Seinfeld-style observational humor accompanied by Kramer’s signature spastic body movement. Nothing at all original or daring about it. Nor very funny, for that matter.
Yeah, I think the stuf about “…these words we have…” was just a half-assed CYA attempt after he realized he just might be committing career suicide. He didn’t sound like he was trying to be funny or like he was in control at all for a few seconds there. He just sounded pissed off. He might not really be a racist. It might have just been an easy card to go to in a rage. Regardless of his intent, it sounded pretty bad. Even if he really did think he was making some kind of Lenny Bruce-like observation about language. it failed miserably. When Bruce did it, it sounded deliberate, controlled and careful. You could tell he was going somewhere with it. Kramer (I’m sure it must drive him crazy when people only call him by his Seinfeld name) just sounded stupid and hostile and unhinged.
And he was just starting to get over Johnnie Cochran’s death when this heartbreak happened.
He’s Jewish, right? What does he think it would have been like for him fifty years ago?
Did you watch the clip or read any of the accounts of the incident? It was NOT part of his act up until the point where he was getting mildly heckled and had no skills as a stand-up comedian to defuse it. He lost his temper and said something that there is no taking back. And said it repeatedly and emphatically. It wasn’t just calling the audience members “niggers” over and over again, although that would be bad enough. He made a clear reference to lynching right off the bat. Like I said in my first post, he only went to the half-hearted ‘social commentary’ bullshit when he realized that the majority of the audience was getting up and walking out on him.
I really don’t think that what the audience members called him in response comes anywhere close to where he went in insult or hate. They were leaving the building and he was continuing to harass and insult them, after all they said was a dignified “That was uncalled for.” They didn’t threaten to kick his ass, which I certainly would have understood.
can’t argue w/that assessment.
Channel 7 News, here in NY, reporting that the owners of the comedy club refunded the ticket price to all in the audience. They never did that before.
I would not have thought it possible for me to dislike the man more. I was wrong.
Before this, I just disliked his schtick. I found him to be the opposite of amusing.
Now I dislike him as a person too.