Michael Richards lost his temper due to being heckled. He admitted as much on Letterman last nite.
According to Gourmet Dan's logic, Kramer valued the opinion of the Black man, more than he valued himself.
Something that nobody talks about is how when the guy shouted out that Richards only had success on Seinfeld, that really seemed to wound him. "Ohhh, you got me there!" Richards said. That's the only thing about this sorry situation that gives me a modicum of sympathy to him, because IMHO, it shows that all that "Seinfeld Curse" schtuff had gotten to him.
Richards had a career before Seinfeld, but Kramer made him a sitcom icon. There aren't too many actors that could pull that trick more than once: Lucille Ball, Bob Newhart, Ron Howard, Dick Van Dyke, Ted Knight, Bea Arthur, Ted Danson, Don Knotts, Michael J. Fox, and now Julia Louis-Dreyfus spring to mind, with other famous faces like Jason Alexander, Tim Conway, Don Adams, Bob Denver and Richards among those whose follow-up acts flopped time after time.
I never assume that people who were once household names are unhappy because they no longer are. Some are still in show business as producers or directors (Henry Winkler, Ron Howard), some have left it behind for other ventures (for instance, Wayne Rogers of M*A*S*H is a real estate tycoon; Adam-12's Martin Milner is an avocado farmer down near San Diego). So it made me sad when I saw Good Times' Esther Rolle, Star Trek's Nichelle Nichols, and Leave It To Beaver's Jerry Mathers doing commercials for a phone psychic service.
Exactly!
I knew you'd get there eventually.
Congrats.