Just When I Thought There was No Justice: Comedians Redeem Richards

Just When I Thought There was No Justice: Comedians Redeem Richards by Roxanne McDonald

Michael Richards and comedians the world over may get the last laugh on the hecklers and put the ridiculous fiasco to bed once and for all.

So Richards (brilliant) used the “n” word [and I have gotten a lot of bitching out over that one. So Andy Dick (hilarious) tried to do a play on plays by doing the very same thing on the very same stage—sixteen times (for which he was fined $320). So Damon Wayans (yummy and funny) has resuscitated the word in honor.

But post-modernism meets the absurd, finally, as (according to the awesome Levine Breaking News, LBN)

comics band together in Los Angeles to “address the issue” at Comedy Union. The club, reports LBN, “will host an ‘all-black comedian’ ‘N-Athon’…with a lineup including Chris Rock’s brother, Tony Rock, and host Rodney Perry.

Now the funnies will fly, the emotions will roll, and the tears will maybe even flow. But I bet you something: I bet that one, the hecklers to Michael Richards set that night at Laugh Factory won’t show up, and two, if they did have the nuts to show, will surely NOT be heckling. They woudn’t dare. Or would they?

Who Wears the Dunce Cap in the Case of Hecklers vs Richards?

Who Wears the Dunce Cap in the Case of Hecklers vs Richards? by Roxanne McDonald

Now allegedly being called the “angriest”, “craziest”, “worst” [acting] star in Hollywood, Michael Richards is on the crit-chop block…again. But what does the criticism really say about our most brilliant of sit-com character actors—and more, about us?

“When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign: that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”

While Jonathan Swift’s astute commentary is best known as the line that informs the book, A Confederacy of Dunces, by John Kennedy Toole, it may be applicable in cases like that of Michael Richards—who responded to incessant heckling by hurling extreme language out and up into the “cheap seats” where the pests, who were black, now linger in memory, relentless in their refusal to accept an apology ( I question they deserve) and “possibly” expecting compensation that will take them out of those cheap seats and into the front rows.

According to staff writers at TMZ.com, apologies were not enough; the hecklers have pushed their envelopes of obnoxiousness and have determined a public (Late Show with David Letterman) apology is not enough. They paid their few bucks to heckle a star, they were shut up in a most politically unacceptable way, and now they want exponential rewards. Maybe. TMZ writes, “They want a personal apology and possibly money.” What for? To reinforce their unacceptable behavior to begin with? To perpetuate the litigious mentality in this country that is sucking up time, energy, and hard-earned money (of those other than the undeserving haf-wits), and that worse, usurps the rights of the creative genius over the common?

I don’t recall that it was Samuel L. Jackson, James Earl Jones, Whoopie Goldberg, and Maya Angelou stooping so low as to interrupt a professional at work…. That is, it wasn’t class and culture behind the black skin that incited the great performer’s rage to begin with, now was it? Why would hecklers of any color be allowed the right to sue/be rewarded for 1) engaging in the understood protocol of the heckler/comedian dynamic, or 2) acting on invasive behaviors that interrupt one’s art?

Worse, the single incident has incited other tales of Richards’ mental instability: also according to TMZ reports, “Sam Simon, longtime producer on ‘The Simpsons’ and numerous other shows, told Howard Stern this morning that Richards’ racist rant at an L.A. comedy club, brought to you by TMZ, was a public manifestation of what TV insiders have known for years — namely, that Richards is prone to bizarre, temperamental behaviors that leave everyone shaking their heads.”

Reportedly, Richards once “threatened the life of Spike Feresten, creator of ‘The Michael Richards Show,’ saying, ‘I have a gun…. I’m going to kill you, and I’ll do the time;’” another time “quit the show in the middle of production… with a full studio audience in attendance”—refusing to return, until the network president “coaxed” him back; at a different occasion “stood on his head in the middle of a shot, inexplicably;” and yet another time was “found in a corner of a soundstage, weeping uncontrollably.”

Given how reports can of course vary and exaggerate and distort, but given how the genius that is Michael Richards made for one of the best characters of all time (on Seinfeld, as Kramer), maybe emphasis ought to be placed on something other than four moments in a long, stellar career.

And hey, consider the common understanding of the fine line between genius and madness.

Van Gogh was slurping turpentine as if it were tonic at one point in his career.

(read more…)

“Kramer” Gone Coo-Coo, but How about if the Hecklers Take Some Responsibility? … Uhhhohh, Yeah!

“Kramer” Gone Coo-Coo, but How about if the Hecklers Take Some Responsibility? … Uhhhohh, Yeah!

What the hell got into Richards to make him lose his nut that way?Was it his doppelganger? And who would that evil twin be, really, Kramer or Richards?

I’ll tell you what got into or to him to make him start hurling invectives…including the “n” word. Hecklers. The insidious, insipid, intrepid absurd ass—-s whom teachers and comics alike find part of the job but painfully so: the big mouthed buffoon who thinks he is class clown, or competing comic, or bigger authority, that’s who.

According to TMZ, LBN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and probably CNN any minute now, Michael Richards, aka Cosmo Kramer of the best TV show to ever come and go, Seinfeld, was performing onstage at West Hollywood’s Laugh Factory.

“Kyle Doss, an African-American, told TMZ he and some friends were in the cheap seats and he was playfully [my italics] heckling Richards when suddenly, the comedian lost it.”

Hecklers suck.

And what the hell are hecklers good for, anyway? Who in their right minds pays money to see a celebrity comic (one much bigger and better at comedy than the hecklers to begin with), and then spends that time doing all the talking/interrupting?
This isn’t the Shakespearean era, where you go with your flagon of ale and your pile of chestnuts and interact with the performers as you drop your nut shells, swill your beer, and piss right where you are standing.

The hecklers claim they were tossing out some “innocent” remarks. But I can only imagine that for a seasoned and much-adored performer like Richards (for many of us our favorite show is Seinfeld and our favorite character is and always will be Kramer) had to have been more than burdened by the heckling. The heckling must have gone on and on and on–intrusively, invasively, distractingly….

And what about respect for the other patrons? You do realize, you pains in the ass, that they paid to see and hear Richards, not Kyle Doss. Kyle Doss. Who in the hell is that?

Oh, he is the new Rodney King, apparently, for once the news hit that Richards lost it and starting hurling that most controversial of racial epithets—one which many are allowed to use and many others are not, by the way—the Black/African American newscasters, pundits, social scientists, politicians, and others had to start discussing the consequences and contradictions and complications of being black, being a heckler, being called a n—, etc., etc., etc., blah, blah, blah…. (read more…)