WTF?: "Seinfeld"'s Michael 'Kramer' Richards in Weird-o-Rama Onstage Meltdown

[Vote]

To be fair, I think Richard's racist tirade should have its own thread (i.e. this one) and not take over the "Favorite Lines From Seinfeld" thread. In the grand scheme of things i guess it doesn't matter much, but it seems a shame to wreck an otherwise humourous thread because one of the former actors of the show is now proving himself to be an asshole.

Posted at 9:02AM on Nov 20th 2006 by Michael Richards

YouTube link, in case the TMZ video player farts out:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UomfLKQr57U

What on earth does this mean?

I'm going to go with 'he is racist'

I mean, plenty of contexts in which you can say, "OK, he has some prejudiced mentality but i wouldn't go so far as to say RACIST" or something like that. But this is pretty much definitive

xpost - Ally, John, et al OTM

richards IS totally pwned here. i do wonder what the guy's original heckles were because this is pretty hard to beat.

"I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true"

I myself when arrested carry on about the sun revolving around the earth.

-- Beth Parker (marthasminion...) (webmail), July 31st, 2006 8:16 AM. (Beth Parker) (link)

i liked him on fridays

I don't know but I'm laughing anyway.

I am also laughing at anyone who thinks there's mitigating context to this nonsense.

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/83-11202006-744776.html

maybe he stuck a fork up his own ass?

Pitts, who was not one of the hecklers, added: ‘He didn’t say sorry to me. He offended everyone in the room that night. He needs to make a public apology.’

Comic Paul Rodriguez, who was also on the bill, added: ‘Once the word nigger comes out of your mouth, you have a whole lot of explaining to do.’

Richards, was back on the Laugh Factory stage on Saturday night.

haha, Rodriguez then realised his mistake and proceeded to do a whole lot of explaining himself.

xpost

-- 2 american 4 u (n...), November 20th, 2006.

I'm gonna go ahead and disagree there. Although I think it was a combo of writing and the entire cast that made the show so successful, I think the Kramer character was near or at the top for ability to make people laugh. Being typecast because you played a certain character so well doesn't mean you are an 'unfunny' comedian.

Asshole racist? Evidently. Not funny outside of that hateful context? No.

no, this is obviously the work of H.E. Pennypacker

I was wondering today what Michael Richards might be up to...any recent news?

http://www.allaahuakbar.net/image/christian_shias.jpg

I love the guy with his hands behind his back. "Ho-hum"...

http://www.pajiba.com/images/richards.jpg

Hangin' around with Swami G.

"That night, when I was insulted and disrupted"

wtf Any middle school vice principal knows that "He Pushed Me First" is a lame-ass excuse. Fuck you, Mr. Richards. Some degreee of penitence is in order here, if not self-flagellation.

whose career nosedived

I guess it's all relative.

it's incredible. HE STILL DOESN'T GET IT.

At this point he should just do a world tour of the act that made him infamous, and use this link for customized material.

whose career nosedived

Uh yes, after Seinfeld.

exactly

hahahahahahaha this thread

http://youtube.com/watch?v=QHcD1yydLgw

Here is the YSI for the (ridiculously out of print) Dick Davy record I mentioned upthread. It's all one file, about 40 minutes/38 minutes.

-- nate p. (natepatrin), Monday, November 20, 2006 10:54 PM (1 year ago) Bookmark Link

repost plz

woooooooow 1622 posts

uh oh

http://media3.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/photo/2008/06/23/PH2008062301824.jpg

you know what's funny? i was all like: where's that long-ass thread about don imus? but it wasn't about don imus at all. i forgot all about kramerface.

i'm white btw

ANNOUNCER: Defensive back Adams "Pacman" Jones, recently signed by the Cowboys, here's a guy suspended all of 2007, following a shooting in a Vegas nightclub.

IMUS: Well, stuff happens. You're in a nightclub, for God's sake. What do you think is gonna happen in a nightclub. People are drinking, and doing drugs. There are women there and people have guns. So there, go ahead.

ANNOUNCER: Also, he's been arrested six times since being drafted by Tennessee in 2005.

IMUS: What color is he?

ANNOUNCER: He's African American.

IMUS: Ha ha, well there you go, now we know.

jokes bruv

this is the thread that sent us into the sandbox wilderness

I hate Imus, but totally think that he was aiming for "African-Americans get targeted by the police more often than whites" line.

it's more confusing than anything else

I hate Imus, but totally think that he was aiming for "African-Americans get targeted by the police more often than whites" line.

I think he probably was too, but he should have actually gotten around to saying so. Like, on the air.

yeah thats the crux of it - i think he was, but i also think he was aware that this was gonna be controversial

I'm surprised people can stay awake long enough to hear anything Imus says.

It was a bit too ambiguous, especially coming from a guy who's made racially stupid comments before.

Ha ha, well there you go, now we know.

Saw Michael Richards at Bergamot Station today. When a friend asked me what he was like, or how strangers act around him, I said it's like bumping into Cain from the Bible. It's very odd.

wow major lols at the nude spock idiocy "omg cracker=just as offensive". can't believe i missed this the first time

(ok tying into weird white paranoia ade or nabisco - i get em confused - were mentioning above) there's this one highway exit near auburn alabama that pretty much from what i can tell all ga bulldogs fans are gonna hit anytime the auburn-ga game is there (context), one of the last exits before you're back in ga. i'm driving back thru alabama late one night and i stop at this exit for gas and to use the john and inside the restroom is just an insane amount of lengthy detailed like unabomber manifesto level stuff from different people or pens at least about how 1) blacks run alabama (different term than 'blacks' used obv) 2) blacks have it so easy in alabama and get away with stuff that liberals won't let whites get away 3) and this is why alabama isn't better off. it was damn near a detailed position paper on pro-segregation, anti-affirmative action, o if only whites had the same rights that blacks take for granted, and how come they get to use the n word btw. literally four walls covered with the stuff. and then, the saving grace that saved me from being merely repulsed/terrified by it and amplified how happy i was gonna be to be back in ga (where of course we don't have racism lol), written above this mess above the toilet oblivious of the surrounding white rage: "GO DAWGS!!!"

― j blount (papa la bas), Tuesday, November 21, 2006 1:27 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

haha

cankles [.]

Gays are discriminated against the most as of 2007, obviously. Racism will more than likely cease to exist in 50 years. Anyone who morphs the issues around their own personal agendas should blow their own brains out.

― billstevejim, Friday, April 13, 2007 1:57 PM bookmarkflaglink

this hasn't aged particularly well

I can understand why YouTube comments threads would have people arguing about this, since YouTube comments threads seem to be populated exclusively by repulsive morons; I'm having a little bit of trouble figuring out why ILX would have to argue anything out about this.

P.S. I am really sick of people who are all like "black people call each other nigger all the time" -- this is a severely fucked-up perception based on people getting their information on What Black People Do All the Time pretty much solely from hip-hop videos and The Wire and shit, and I seriously wonder if people who say that honestly believe that the middle-aged woman in the next cubicle at work seriously goes home to her kids and says "what's up, my niggas, we're having Applebee's tonight!"

― nabisco (nabisco), Monday, November 20, 2006 4:09 PM bookmarkflaglink

conversely, this has aged like fine wine

Quite the time capsule, this.

I sometimes think about this incident as something of a watershed moment, since it took place in 2006, right between the launches of YouTube and the iPhone. Only a few years earlier, and the video wouldn't have made its way to the Internet so quickly and been watched so easily.

I also remember my reaction on this thread, which I'm not proud of now. I was very bothered by the fact that people were so quick to call Richards a racist based entirely on the video. In my mind, it was an argument against essentialism (is he "really" a racist, or did he just do a racist thing?) -- but it ultimately amounted to a defense of Richards that I shouldn't have been so invested in, with the privilege of viewing such incidents from a purely academic perspective.

i know no one knew what racism was in 2006 or whatever but fucking hell

Is your experience so limited that you've never seen non-racist people behave this way? I know a guy from Texas...he will say some of the most racial shit you ever heard right to a black man's face...He's a blues musician...that doesn't stop him from making chicken jokes...

yeah, that was called out in 2006 and isn't really in the spirit of the revive