"Kramer" Loves White Supremacy"Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass."
Michael Richards
When comedians get lots of laugh they say they "killed" their audience. I thought that was just an expression. Michael Richards takes the word literally and uses it when he isn't making such a good impression.
What is a thinking black person to do? Can we watch tv and movies and enjoy white performers or should we just forget about it? My father has said that he wouldn't have spent his money at Saturday matinees watching so many westerns if he had known that John Wayne was a racist.
I regularly watched the old Seinfeld series for several years and loved the character Kramer, the wacky next door neighbor that no sitcom can do without. Like my dad, I now wish I had known better.
Michael Richards, the actor who portrayed Kramer, was performing a stand up routine at the Laugh Factory comedy club in Los Angeles when he was heckled. The hecklers were black, and that was simply too much for Richards to take.
He not only pined for the days when black people were tortured and murdered on any white person's whim, but he continued using the word nigger over and over. Thankfully it was all caught on
video.
"You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherf**ker. Throw his ass out. He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!"The rules haven't changed very much in the 21st century. White people do not like it when black people challenge them. They feel entitled, to say or do as they wish while we are entitled to nothing, except punishment. If we step out of line, we are immediately reminded that we can and should be killed. Notice that Richards used the first person in his blood lust fantasy. He clearly fantasizes about the good old days for white people and sees himself in the gruesome lynching picture.
I don't know if Richards will flee to rehab or cry and beg forgiveness. His words should not be forgotten and and he shouldn't be hired to perform anywhere ever again.
The only thing positive about this situation is that it will have what I call a smokeout effect. Anyone who expresses sympathy for Richards, or doesn't understand the outrage, or says we are being too PC or overly sensitive is not to be trusted. Some of those people may be black, but the rules don't change. They are not to be trusted either.
Randall Kennedy is such a person. The black Harvard professor makes a very good living defending the use of the word nigger and the white people who use it. He even took the trouble to testify in court on behalf of a white man, Nicholas Minucci, who was on trial for committing a hate crime against a black person. The jurors had better sense than Kennedy and convicted Minucci.
Kennedy has been joined by
John Ridley, the newest kid on the block who beats up on black people for personal gain. Ridley not only says there is nothing wrong with the word nigger but uses it to disparage all black people he says have created their own problems. In Ridley's world every black person on public assistance or in jail or on the unemployment line is responsible for their own problems and is a nigger too.
We will learn a lot more as this story unfolds. The next few days will tell us a lot. We will know who would stick forks up our asses if they got the chance. We shouldn't be surprised if some of those people look like the victims in the lynching photos.
