Richards was terrific on Seinfeld, and like almost all actors from hit shows his career was pretty much over once the series ended. Obviously saying that stuff is wrong, but the worst that happens to him is that he goes off and plays golf and counts his money.

He's done some over the years. This is severely depressing.

Oh, and I think the fight on "Fridays" was staged by Richards and Kaufman. I heard that somewhere..

Anyway, is this really a surprise? Someone in Hollywood secretly harbors racial stereotypes? *gasp* No! I don't necessarily think you can judge someone by single words. In heated moments, people fall back into colloquial speech patterns that might not relfect their actual views. He shouldn't do it, but it's a bit different than saying that the Jews start all the wars.

[edit] - I've heard more details on exactly what he said, and it IS a bit beyond the pale, as it were. I'll take back my comments. Melvin Gibstein's got nothin' on this rant.

He obviously took lessons from the John Kerry School of Joke Burninating.

Same as the fight with Jerry Lawler.

Funny thing is, people still weren't sure that it was staged. Once Lawler came on the set to play himself on Man on the Moon, though, should pretty much answer that question.

I think I remember at one point that I heard Michael Richards and Ed Begley, Jr. were a standup team in the distant past. What a yuk fest that must have been. I think Richards is one of those very intense performers who can PLAY funny because of his acting abilities (remember Fridays?), but isn't a quick wit and jovial soul. I'm trying to think of a comparison but all I'm coming up with is Janeane Garofolo. When she was well and truly pissed, not very funny. When she was just doing material, VERY funny. If it ever became conversational, she'd get pissed about whatever social issue she was talking about, and goodbye, the funny.
So Richards going off like that, seems pretty in character. Going the shock route (which seems to be what he was trying to do, and then when everyone turned against him, couldn't retreat from), seems like exceedingly poor judgement.

I just watched it on YouTube and my g/f and I were shocked! I've watched some live comedy shows here locally and sometimes the funniest part is the hecklers, and seeing how the performer copes. I figured that was one of those things you learn how to deal with when you're starting out. You know one of the tricks of the trades, or you don't get very far especially if your stand up stinks.

To be fair the clip I saw seems to start once words had already been exchanged, and I would've liked to have seen the whole fiasco. Just to see what set him off, cause he really went nutso.

I hear he apologized on Letterman... no youtube of that yet.

I may just stay up and watch Letterman just to see this, nevermind the fact that I'm loaded with Jack Daniel's right now. And yes, there's an apostrophe in the name; I can see it on my drinking glass.

YouTube link.

The worst part of all the coverage is how comfortable people have become with the phrase "the N word." I've always thought the phrase should be used with a certain amount of irony. Now people don't even emphasize it, or give it a little stumble in the cadence of their speech. Ah well.

What surprises me, oddly, isn't the the content of his tirade per se, but just that he flew that far off the handle. Was "F**k you" somehow insufficient?

It's very interesting watching the video of the show- alternately blanked and beeped words, and you look at the crawl on the bottom, and it says the actual words. Why was this guy funny, again?

All the reports basically say the same thing. What he recieved was, at worst, mild heckling. The reports i've read all say that nothing more hurtful than "You're not funny" was said. Que Kramer losing his sh*t in an absolute Supernova of crazy. I mean, you listen to the guy, and when he reacts, he's not joking. He's angry, he means it. Later on in the video I think it dawns on him what happened, and he tries to make it sound like it was just a shock routine, but he's lost already at that point.

Moreover, this video's on YouTube now. It's all over the internet. It will spawn a plethora of YTMND pages and probably become a minor meme. He will not live this down anytime soon, if ever. He didn't shoot himself in the foot, he blew his whole face off, and over one tame heckler.

:ike I said, I just can't believe he went that far.

I agree. He really lost any chance of recovering from this, and I believe that's why he just walked off stage. I think what it came down to is, he got frustrated, it got the better of him, and he just couldn't think of any way to combat the heckler than dropping to the one thing he definitely knew about him... his race. Very poor choice, and I believe in the end he'll suffer much more over the incident than the person(s) it was directed at, and much more so than all the protesters who decided to jump on the victim bandwagon.

"I was seizing the opportunity to point out the inherent racism in society"

From the news stories I've seen I would call it white guilt. Half of the blacks I've seen interviewed don't know who Richards is, and almost none are surprised that some rich Hollywood type is a racist.

At best this should invoke the response, "Oh look, Kramer is a monumental racist, interesting. Page 2"