Just more evidence you didn’t even watch the clip. Watch it and come back.
I watched it. They laughed up until “fork up your ass” and after that it pretty much stopped.
[QUOTE=ambushed]
Here’s the explanation:
From this site. So he asked them for a chance to try to redeem himself somewhat and then he blew it. Its all kind of wierd like hes having a mental meltdown or something.
I watched the whole clip and I really think you’re wrong. They laugh at the “fork up your ass” thing I believe because they just thought he was yelling at a heckler. The audience clearly turned when he screamed the word “nigger” and kept hurling profanity. That’s when they started getting up and walking out, or yelling back that he crossed the line. Even more telling is that in his Letterman apology, he never mentioned that it was a joke gone wrong.
First, let me start my saying this guy is a total ass, and I have never found him funny. But…it is very possible to call someone a nigger “off the top of your head”, espcially in that situation. Let me explain: Good comedian onstage gets heckled, will usually have a witty comeback or two to shut the heckler up. Bad comedian, Like Kramer, onstage, bombing as usual, gets heckled, heckler is getting laughs, he isn’t, has no witty comeback, what else can you resort to but insults? In other words, it takes creativity and wit and the general ability to be funny to handle a heckler properly, this schlub is none of these things, and thus did what he did. No excuse, I hated him before, and hate him a bit more now, but at least I can see why he did that. I may also think he thinks that type of thing is a standard thing to say in comedy clubs by comics handling hecklers (vaguely similar to Don Rickles). Or maybe I’m wrong and he’s a total racist.
No way was it a joke gone wrong, but I think I’ll have to agree with the poster that said he was probably just trying to hurt the heckler as much as he could.
‘Nigga, watch out or you get lynched’ will almost always work with a black American.
‘Daddy’s little whore’ will probably almost always work with someone who was sexually molested as a child.
‘Damn shame Hitler missed your family’ will probably work with a Jew.
Of course, Richards could be a racist, but it looks to me more like a deliberate attempt to say something hateful. If it had been a white guy, he probably would have tried to pick on something he could see, like some aspect of his appearance. If he had known the guy, he probably would have used something from that guy’s history.
Still probably a fucking unstable asshole, though.
Pretty fucked up thing he said. Pretty incoherent apology. But past the incoherence of the apology, it sounds sincere, I think, like someone appalled by what they just discovered was in them.
If you were Richards’s moral advisor, what would you tell him to do next?
Daniel
I can see my opinion won’t be popular in this thread, but here goes…
Remember when Lenny Bruce singled out a black man in his audience and yelled, “Nigger, nigger, nigger!” to his face? He was trying to prove a point that it was time to discard knee-jerk reactions and grow up. I would have thought 50 years later, society had, but apparently not.
It was a goddamn comedy club, fer crissakes. Do you list your personal sensibilities at the door? Should you tell the performer what topics to avoid? Should you wear a button with a list of approved subjects?
What gives hecklers the right to use insults but not the performer?
And talk about inappropriate…the Letterman episode was embarassing to watch, and totally inappropriate for that show which I am a big fan of otherwise. There was no clue that this was intended to be serious; the audience was tittering until Seinfeld told them rudely to shut up, then we all were waiting for the punch line. When it didn’t come, it was obvious that Letterman/Seinfeld were in the wrong century and had crossed the line from comedy to apology. Wrong forum for it.
Instead of apologizing, Richards should have told everyone to fuck off and learn to laugh, regardless of color. Remember what Randy Newman did to respond to people who accused him of “racism” for the Short People song? He gave them a big raspberry, the polite version of “fuck off”, then performed the song again. On Letterman, no less.
It would have been funny if it was a joke, or witty, or something like that, even if it was a offensive. Hell, look at Borat, a huge success and makes us laugh even though we cringe.
Sorry, but when the best a comedian does to respond to a heckler is scream repeated racial slurs, it’s not funny. There wasn’t anything funny about Richards’ response. Even if he had screamed something completely non-offensive (like “jackass”), it would have not been funny, it would have been uncomfortable and kind of sad for people in the audience. Because he chose to repeatedly use a racist remark that wasn’t funny, it ratcheted up the uncomfortableness by about a thousand percent.
I also think he thought that calling the heckler nigger would make the audience laugh, when it didn’t, he freaked, couldn’t handle it, and made it worse.
I also think he thought that calling the heckler nigger would make the audience laugh, when it didn’t, he freaked, couldn’t handle it, and made it worse.
Maybe this falls along racial lines. I’m sorry, I refuse to extend the benefit of the doubt to someone who references lynching and repeatedly screams a racial epithet.
The question is, what is your threshold for racist behavior? Does one have to literally chain someone to a truck and drag them to death to see it? Richards didn’t do that. But now I wonder what he would do if he saw a Black person get jumped by a bunch of skinheads because he had the temerity to talk shit to them. Or if he would rent a house, or give a job to a Black person. I didn’t have those thoughts before.
It’s entirely possible, I guess, that Richards has never used the word before, has a Black girlfriend, is a diamond member of the NAACP… and so on. (Not that those attributes necessarily make one not racist.) But why would you extend the benefit of the doubt to him unless you know he’s made comments to the contrary?
If someone makes a joke about “jewing someone down” or indiscriminately refers to women as bitches I assume they hold some pretty prejudicial views about people of that group. Yes, it could be an innocent slip of the tongue, but that person needs to demonstrate to me that it’s a bizarre reaction rather than the norm. For some reasons this society has a hair trigger on some issues (try “joking” that you have a bomb or are sympathetic to al-Qaeda, or that you fiddle with kiddies’ private parts) but screaming vile epithets in a public setting can be rationalized as not being racist.
And I’m someone who assumes the best out of people. I don’t think Richards is beyond rehabilitation, that he can’t improve his views. I think he looked somewhat sincere, if not befuddled and completely incoherent last night.
Axl Rose, is that you? This is the same defense Rose came up with when the song One In A Million was released, and it still doesn’t work.
Oh for pete’s sake, stop the madness.
Richards was not making any goddamn social commentary about the power of words, so I have no idea why people keep bringing up other comedians who have used race in provocative ways. His remarks came out of left field and were clearly intended to hurt someone. Was Bruce intentionally trying to humiliate and hurt the man’s feelings by calling him nigger? Of course not. But Richards was. Despite his rather lame-ass attempt to CYA by spinning his behavior as some grand experiment, it was so obvious that he wasn’t trying to prove a point, because this was not a part of his act at all. He was lashing out at someone for being rude, and in the process took the lid off his some rather racist sentiments that he’d been harboring in his head.
And this means what, exactly? That performers can say and do whatever they want without reprecusions because “it’s just art, man”?
Do you know what a professional is? No one has a right to insult anyone, but when you’re performing in a public venue, you are held to a different standard that Joe Blow off the street. I’ve seen no indication that the heckler started first with the personal invectives, but even if he did, that does not give Richards license to start calling folks nigger all up in the joint. Because at that point, he’s not just insulting the heckler. He’s insulting all those people who might be subject to being called nigger if they step out of line. That’s why the lynching reference was especially offensive to me. At that point it was clear he wasn’t trying to just call someone a mean name. He was bringing the history of power and race into it, as if to encourage the blacks in the audience to remember their place.
How’s this for an unpopular opinion: if the heckler had been Jewish and a comedian–black or white–had launched into a tirade that went sort of like “50 years ago we would have had you in an oven puffing on Zyklon with a grenade up your ass…He’s a KIKE, he’s a KIKE, he’s a KIKE!”, who would be trying defend that shit? Anyone?
::taps microphone::
Anyone?
Without having read all the responses to this OP, I agree. I heard a number of people say that Michael Richards is an actor, not a stand-up comedian, and his response to the hecklers makes this quite apparent. A professional comedian will make hecklers work for them. They will turn the tables with wit and sarcasm and shut them down and get the room on its feet in the process. A professional would never have handed the stage to the “bad guys.” He didn’t know what he was doing.
I tried to put myself in Richards’ shoes…tried to think of any situation where I would use a racial slur in a moment of anger (during a physical attack, a robbery, anything violent or threatening). Under the worst scenario, all I could come up with was “asshole” and “motherfucker.” I don’t see how a person could use the epithets he used, particularly in an innocuous situation like being heckled, if they didn’t believe it somewhere inside.
I partially blame the wrong-headed, free use of “niggah” in today’s society. Sinbad was on CNN and said that as far as he’s concerned, it’s not OK to use the word, there is no “friendly” use of a historically offensive term, and I agree with him. Maybe if the rule hadn’t relaxed the way it has, Richards might still feel it but wouldn’t have even entertained the possibility that it could be used outside the confines of his own mind.
Sorry if this has been linked to already but let’s see how a great comedian deals with a situation like this. Hicks loses it here and is very offensive indeed. He still remains funny and comes out on top.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=yZ1fXTx0-uk <- USE EARPHONES IF IN WORK AS THE SWEARING IS VERY STRONG
Bruce’s bit involved quite a bit more than that. Here’s the transcript of it:
He wasn’t singling one person out, he was controlled and he had clearly scripted what he was going to say and he had a point. Richards himself admitted on Letterman that his rant was just a rage-attack. Kramer ain’t no Lenny Bruce.
Here is the whole Letterman interview. He seems absolutely devastated by what he did. To me, his “incoherence” is a function of his inability to comprehend how he could have done such a horrible thing.
He neither makes excuses nor asks forgiveness. He apologizes profusely and accepts that his behavior *was *unexcusable.
There is no defense for the indefensible.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3886837296111594087&q=letterman+seinfeld
I don’t see incomprehension in what he did, I see a (much) less articulate Mel Gibson trying to smoothe things over to save his “career”. Unfortunately, he had several days to come up with, or have someone write for him, a believable heartfelt apology, and he still screwed it up. Obviously live settings aren’t his forte, maybe he should have tape recorded something.
The use of nigga by David Chappelle and a bunch of overpaid rappers on BET bears no resemblence to Richards’ usage of nigger. You might as well consider the terms homophones along the lines of hare and hair. I could appreciate what you’re saying if Richards was taking flak for saying something like “Barak Obama is a badass nigga.” But that wasn’t what happened. What he actually said was akin to saying “Barak Obama is a nigger.”
The intent is what made it offensive, not the word itself.