The Contrite and Humbled Kramer

Richards and Offended Club Guests to Meet
1 Dec

Michael "Kramer" Richards will apologize in person to the four black men he targeted in a tirade of racial slurs during a recent comedy club performance. A retired judge will mediate the meeting and determine whether he should take any other action to resolve the matter, Richards' spokesman and an attorney for the men said Friday.

A cash settlement could be part of the resolution, said Howard J. Rubenstein, who represents Richards. "My client Michael hopes to put it behind him," Rubenstein said.

Yeah, Kramer, it's kind of a career-killer to be viewed worldwide as a raging bigot, especially for something as relatively minor and harmless as being heckled at a comedy club.

A time and place for the meeting has not been set. Rubenstein complimented attorney Gloria Allred, who is representing the four comedy club patrons, for recommending the meeting.

Of course he did, since she is in complete control of the issue, and has been since the beginning. She's an opportunisitic legal remora, sure, and she'll make out very nicely in this instance, sure again, but she's not stupid.

Allred said Richards should meet with her clients "to hear the pain that he inflicted on them and to apologize to them." She and the four men were scheduled to hold a press conference later Friday.

Richards, who played the wacky neighbor Kramer on "Seinfeld," has been on a campaign of contrition since videotaped footage of his 17 Nov outburst at the Laugh Factory nightclub surfaced on the Web site TMZ.com. He has apologized on the Rev. Jesse Jackson's nationally syndicated radio program "Keep Hope Alive" and the "Late Show with David Letterman." He also apologized to civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton.

So Kramer actually apologized TO Al Sharpton? Why to Al Sharpton? Sure, Kramer slung all kinds of racial-bigot vocabulary, and that does include Al Sharpton, but Kramer's got an awful long row to hoe if he's going to apologize to everyone who's black. I know Al wants to think he represents all of Black Amercia--in his ongoing death struggle with Jesse--but I would think an honorable Sharpton also would politely decline a personal apology to him from Kramer, and urge Kramer to keep it broadly focused to all blacks, and also more specifically focused upon the direct victims of the comedy club tirade. That's what is most appropriate in this case. But then again, this kind of propriety would take attention away from himself (Sharpton), which no self-respecting politician--or grandstanding Christian preacher--can really do.

Richards has said the tirade was fueled by anger at being heckled and not bigotry.

Yeah, right. I'm surprised Kramer hasn't entered rehab as an alcoholic or other substance abuser. I'm surprised he hasn't announced that he's been bipolar since he was 12, or that he was abused by a Greek Orthodox priest when he was a teen. To that end I'll give Kramer just a little bit of credit for kind-of standing up and taking the blame.

I've written this a lot in the last few weeks, and now I add Kramer to the list. Just like Borat's dumbass frat boys, Mel Gibson's anti-Jew tirade, and Michael Vick's finger-flipping crowd response on Sunday, this is who and what you are, Kramer. Sorry, Kramer, but all of that racial enmity didn't just come to you right then and there on stage because you were being heckled by guys who just happened to be black. I've seen the video, and the language came quickly and apparently easy, more than enough indication to me that it's been down in there, inside you for much longer than the 20 seconds or five minutes of gestation that would have come from a heckling. Nope, just like Mel's previously hidden anti-Semitism, your true nature and thoughts have come through. Your words and actions are who you are. It's true of all of you, as much as you so, so humbly attempt to tell us that it's not really the way you are. You thought it, and you put it into words and actions. It IS who you are.

Sure, it's okay to be pissed off at being heckled, and I can agree completely with going on a profanity-laden rant against the insults of drunken (who knows if these Kramer targets were drunk) hecklers, using all kinds of generic, non-racial, non-slur names and put-downs to put them right back in their dumbass place. Calling them loud dumbasses or jerks or pussies or cocksuckers, or cum-sucking maggot-fuckers, now there's really nohting wrong--apart from the profanity--of that kind of comeback. In fact, a comedy club crowd, hardly representative of the Moral Majority, might just find that kind of raw, vulgar response funny (given the success of truly awesomely vulgar "The Aristocrats"), which returns control of the crowd and the show as a whole to the performer, and takes the wind out of a heckler's sails, putting their cowed and embarrassed asses right back in their seats, where they belong.

I mean, c'mon, Kramer. If I'm on a comedy club stage, one of the first things I'd need would be some killer heckler comebacks, and if you weren't prepared for this, Kramer, then it's your own damn fault. Also, if your material isn't any good, then expect to be heckled, and have your comebacks lined up and ready to go. Then you're doubly protected. But I get no sense that you did this, Kramer. You let them get to you, and now you're really stuck.