Posted on 11/20/2006 7:03:27 AM PST by torchthemummy
Michael Richards exploded in anger as he performed at a famous L.A. comedy club last Friday, hurling racial epithets that left the crowd gasping, and TMZ has obtained exclusive video of the ugly incident.
(Excerpt) Read more at tmz.com ...
If you're going to comment on an event, and it's easy to see it for yourself, I would think that you'd want to argue from an informed position. That's not a new standard. "Common sense" won't help you understand what Richards said or the tone in which he said it. And whatever witness and media accounts you're reading aren't getting the nature of the tirade across.
I realize that some folks, you among them, are offended by foul language, and that to you trumps anything else comedians have to say. That's fine; de gustibus non est disputandum. I find Rock and Pryor not only funny but insightful; comics can attack serious subjects in a blunt manner that a serious commentator cannot. Myrphy and Foxx are pretty shallow, but I still think they're funny.
But if you watched the Richards clip with the profanity bleeped -- for that matter, with the sound muted altogether -- there is no mistaking it for the comics you mention, aside from a few words in common. It was not a comedy act. It was verbal abuse. When he opened (at least the part caught on video) by harkening back to the lynch mob days, that was an early warning sign.
And I guess the Rap groups get a pass..I don't call them artist they are not at all..Just some hatefilled racist black people getting away with exactly what Michael Richards is being downed about
NOT THE SAME THING. That's the point you keep missing. Rap lyrics are (at least supposed to be) entertainment. If these rap stars got in a white person's face outside of that context -- say, if they stopped a concert and heaped racial abuse on a white fan in the audience, or lit into someone on the sidewalk -- there would be at least as much of a public and media reaction.
You're so hung up on the words themselves that you're missing the context. I can type "nigger" here; it's not the same as shouting it from my car to someone on the sidewalk.
What "leaves people gasping" in the U.S. as a racist comment wouldn't even make a blip on the screen practically anywhere else in the non-Western world. No one raised in the present-day U.S. knows what racism is until he travels abroad. U.S. xenophobia and racism are but the mildest vanilla compared to everything else. It is only those with no experience who think it's so bad here. They're the equivalent of a 4-year-old gasping when he hears the word "crap" thinking that he's heard some truly dirty language.
What you neglected to mention is that those are the lyrics in their entirety. The song is 17 seconds long. I've heard the song, and it's pretty clearly a parody of gangsta rappers who count on record sales to white kids. I believe the song debuted on Saturday Night Live.
Did you hear what the black men that were heckeling Richard said to him?I doubt it..You know we have a point that things build up and then we let all our guards down..things come out that we never meant to say...I for one am sick and tired of all the race stuff..I still think Richard is a very funny man..
I have read most of the replies to this thread and posted a few of my own:
This might be a useful exercise: let's just imagine if it was a BLACK comedian up there and two loud obnoxious white guys are starting to heckle him......(oh, OK, we really can't strain our imaginations to get that far, can we....well, in that case, let's examine THAT, if we are going to proceed....and wonder why two white guys heckling a black is even rarer than vice versa)---but anyway...what would have been the result of a black comic turning on the white hecklers with basically the equivalent terminologies and rhetoric used by Richards? Well, you know it would likely be, from a mostly white audience, as they all are at comedy clubs, a lot of nervous laughter, turning into appreciative laughter as it went on, then probably a smattering of applause at the righteousness of putting the white hecklers in their place. And the black comedian might not have walked off stage as Richards did, not quite aware of what his tirade had or was about to get him into.
Well, the problem is that Richard descended to the level of the 2 who were heckling him and became the very thing they were, racists.
Unfortunately, Richard has a lot more to lose than the 2 racists who were heckling him.
That's the only difference.
"....if it were Lawrence or Chris Rock onstage, there would have been an outcry...." Maybe now, for Rock at the height of his "fame" or Lawrence, a few years ago....but some up and coming rough around the edges comic...I don't know.....as I said in another post, it is hard even to IMAGINE two whites heckling a black comic in this day and age, even in the formerly "racist" South/ so the comparison probably falls apart and ends right there.There are too many really unfunny comics ,both black and white, and I have seen too many comedy shows where white audiences gladly goad THEMSELVES into laughing at unfunny black comedians, apparently in an attempt to make them BOTH feel good.
I am still wondering who had the cell phone with the camera..could it have been a set up for Richard?
Reign,
[[Richards isn't in trouble for merely using the n-word, any more than Mel Gibson got in trouble for merely calling someone a Jew. They both got in trouble for going off on a hate-filled racist tirade.]]
BS. There is still a double standard in this country when it comes to race and blacks get away with it day in and day out. Then how do then explain the vile racist "Ice Cube" getting away with all of his hate filled rap songs wanting to kill white people? What if one of your relatives was one of his victims? How would you fill then?
If Ice Cube killed people, I would want a needle in his arm ASAP. Relative or not. Way to shift the goal posts.
What Richadrs said was not a performance. It was not part of his routine. It was not a song lyric. He was not an actr playing a character or a copic adopting a persona. It was an angry rant at one specific person, and as I said to Beth528, if a black comic or rap star had stopped the show to deliver a similar tirade to a white fan, you bet it would make the news.
************
How did you determine the culture of the other poster?
Do you know his family, his neighborhood, his education?
No. And if they were being abusive, they should have been ushered out of the theater. But if a stand-up comic with 20+ years' experience can't handle a heckler better than that, I have to wonder how he's made it this long.
So he can use vile language, but he's "still a funny man", but you made sure to mention comedians you hold with disdain because of their own vile language. You see no inconsistency there?
Show me when Chris Rock singled out a white member out of the audience and yelled "Look! He's a cracker! He's a cracker! He's a cracker! Get him out of here! I hope a Brother busts a cap in your ass when you get outside! Get this honky out of here!"
It's too bad Richards didn't use the opportunity to indignantly ask the hecklers if they were picking on him because he's white.
Black comedians use racist "humor" all the time and get a pass, but if whitey uses it, it's the end of the world. Black racism toward whites is growing exponentially in this country because the race merchants make a lot of money off it. It's a growing industry and they need to keep the natives on the plantation.
As long as blacks continue to use the "N" word and scream about discrimination and slavery and how they're owed this and that all in the same sentence, I don't take their complaints seriously and I don't have that big of a problem with what Richards said. I just think he could have used the opportunity to make a rational statement about black racism towards whites rather than coming off as a rude, racist lunatic.
I'm not much for picking on grammar, and I let the first one slide, but it's Mac. Not MAC. It's short for Macintosh -- doesn't stand for anything.
Racist dialogue comes in a variety of forms. Does it have to match Kramer's to be offensive? Slurs against CAucasians in general are as obnoxious as slurs against blacks in general. To me it doesn't matter if Chris Rock and his ilk never singled out a white person. Their overall tone and message about "Caucis" has the same effect to me.
You know how there are seven stages of grief? Here are the seven stages of defending the indefensible:
- There's no proof
- The proof is faked
- It was a setup
- If a black/liberal did it, no one would care
- Other people do worse
- He said he was sorry and is going into rehab
- Everyone deserves forgiveness
I think the sequence was the same for Mark Foley.
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