Michael Richards

[Binky]

They showed the clip on the local news here. I had avoided watching it because I didn't really need to see it.

He sounded like he was at a Klan rally. That kind of flip out doesn't come from being provoked at a club - it comes from deep, racist hate.

[Yossarian]

From Perez:

David Letterman: "Why don't you explain exactly what happened for the folks who may not know."

Michael Richards: "I lost my temper on stage. I was at a comedy club trying to do my act and I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage and said some pretty nasty things to some Afro-Americans, a lot of trash talk, and uh..."

Letterman: "And you were actually being heckled or were they just talking and disturbing the act?"

Richards: "That was going on too."

________

Richards: "...You know, I'm really busted up over this and I'm very, very sorry to those people in the audience, the blacks, the Hispanics, whites - everyone that was there that took the brunt of that anger and hate and rage and how it came through, and I'm concerned about more hate and more rage and more anger coming through, not just towards me but towards a black/white conflict. There's a great deal of disturbance in this country and how black feel about what happened in Katrina, and, you know, many of the comics, many of performers are in Las Vegas and New Orleans trying to raise money for what happened there, and for this to happen, for me to be in a comedy club and flip out and say this crap, you know, I'm deeply, deeply sorry. And I'll get to the force field of this hostility, why it's there, why the rage is in any of us, why the trash takes place, whether or not it's between me and a couple of hecklers in the audience or between this country and another nation, the rage - "

Letterman: "But Michael, let me interrupt here for a second and ask a question about had the people doing the heckling or the people who were not paying attention, had they been white or Caucasian or any other race, what would have been the nature of your response then?"

Richards: "It may have happened. It may have happened. You know, I'm a performer. I push the envelope, I work in a very uncontrolled manner onstage. I do a lot of free association, it's spontaneous, I go into character.  I don't know, in view of the situation and the act going where it was going, I don't know, the rage did go all over the place. It went to everybody in the room. But you can't - you know it's, I don't - I know people could, blacks could feel - I'm not a racist, that's what so insane about this, and yet it's said, it comes through, it fires out of me and even now in the passion that's here as I confront myself."

Yeah. I believe you. You're not a racist but you just happen to use racist terms when confronted by someone of another race. And confronted in a really minor manner at that. Yep, I can see that.

*expands logic to own life*

I'm not left wing. I just vote left wing, espouse left wing thoughts, and support left agendas. But really, I'm a conservative.

Or, I'm not really a female. I just happen to have a vagina. But really, I'm a man, baby!

Lame. Lame. Lame.

[ladymadonna]

What a complete little prick. That's all I have to say.

Dude, even my racist grandma who routinely calls people "colored", "fags", "ragheads", etc., and is deathly afraid of "the lesbians" who will apparently randomly accost her if she gets on MSN messenger, knows better than to drop the n-word.

He is wrong. Period. Fucker needs to go away. Now.

[margojata]

Well, he came off as completely crazy on Letterman. Jerry had to tell the audience to stop laughing, because I have a feeling most of them hadn't seen the tape, and thought this was all a gag. I thought he was odd, rambling, didn't make sense ... certainly didn't HELP the situation.

[Binky]

Well, he came off as completely crazy on Letterman. Jerry had to tell the audience to stop laughing, because I have a feeling most of them hadn't seen the tape, and thought this was all a gag. I thought he was odd, rambling, didn't make sense ... certainly didn't HELP the situation.

Yeah. Totally and completely crazy. I don't think Seinfeld was expecting him to be that weird.

[margojata]

What the hell was he rambling about Katrina? If you didn't know any better and hadn't seen the video - you'd swear he was outraged about someone ELSE being racist.

[gibby]

mutagen said:

gibby said:

Isn't he Jewish? I don't think the Klan likes Jews any more than they like black people or Catholics.

If I'm not mistaken, Richards was the only non-Jewish member of the Seinfeld main cast.

I was watching some program about his hissyfit and they mentioned something about him being Jewish.

[JDub]

I don't think Julia Louis-Dreyfus is Jewish either.

She has French Jewish ancestry. From Wikipedia:

Her paternal grandparents were Dolores Neubauer and Pierre Louis-Dreyfus, a French Jew who fought in the French Resistance during World War II.

Michael Richards is not Jewish, he is Catholic.

ETA---According to vibe.com, Laugh Factory now states he is banned.

The next day, Richards asked if he could return to the comedy club to publicly apologize to the audience, and even requested some of the prior day's patrons be invited, but instead he did his normal routine and did not apologize.

[snip]

"The Laugh Factory’s official statement on it is that we don’t support what Mr. Richards did up there. He’s no longer welcomed at the club."

Link

[karin]

Margojta said:

What the hell was he rambling about Katrina? If you didn't know any better and hadn't seen the video - you'd swear he was outraged about someone ELSE being racist.

I agree - the studio audience probably had no idea what had happened or seen the video, so it fell flat when some of the audience started laughing, and Jerry Seinfeld had to tell them not to laugh.

MR seemed very sorry for what he said, but the real question is why he he felt it was okay to say it during his "act"...it wasn't a mistake, he meant to say those things, and now he has to deal with the reaction.

How bizarre was the "fork up the (butt) comment?? - Is that a formof torture I've just never heard before?!

IMO, he's at the lowest point of his career, seeing that's how he reacts to hecklers. sad, sad, sad. Racist jerk.

[Deleted]

I don't think he sounded sorry at all. Crazy? Perhaps. But, sorry? No. I was especially annoyed that he didn't ever seem to actually apologize for what he said. He just went on and on about rage, and the dangers of rage, and why do we do it. Um, no. This isn't a question of why "we" have rage. This is a question of why YOU, Michael Richards, went on a racist tirade. Don't try to make this something about the state of the world at war...etc.