You mean Richards’ initial rant? Yeah, but I think he more saw he lost his audience and surrendered. They were initially laughing nervously, but near the end the laughter was drowned out by not only enraged screaming (I think that was the original heckler that set him off) but by people all around the audience making shocked noises.
There’s always Carlin…
Anybody here besides me ever been exposed to his stand-up? Holy shit, it’s harsh to say, but that rant was actually an improvement over his act. At least it wasn’t boring like his usual material.
He’s a physical comedian, and that’s it. Well, that and an anti-dentite.
No, no, no. Seinfeld’s the anti-dentite.
Richards is the Assman.
I don’t think there’s been an epidsode of Seinfeld I didn’t like.
It’s a shame that they’ve rerun them so much, though, that it’s become just as overplayed as Friends.
…But it’s still a great show.
Unfortunately, I don’t think I can watch “Kramer” anymore without seeing a little of this stage preformance.
Have we all blocked out the last episode? Did that just never happen?
I guess I did block it out.
Jesus, that Letterman apology is one of the most cringe-worthy things I’ve ever seen.
We both know that’s a bullshit explanation.
Actually it’s not, but I think you probably understand the explanation a bit better now.
I do. Thanks for the feedback!
I’m glad you two could have this talk.
My fiance agrees with Lum about Richards being a closet racist. I still hold out the possibility that he was on prescription medication and that a family member just died and he had some kind of fever and was going through withdrawal and that a dying orphan was watching his performance and made him promise to racebait any heckler, like the promise Babe Ruth made, only morally repugnant.
All I had to do was real the title. What a fucking moron.
I read that article and thought it was very insightful.
Oh fuck, I can’t lie. You’re absolutely right. But what a great trolling opportunity I’ve just blown.
Yeah, let’s face… wait a minute, what? This only makes sense if the crowd thinks a nigger is as dangerous as a fire.
Well,what do you expect from someone who admits she is still not sure OJ did it?
Wow, no joke, every paragraph has a new nugget of stupid.
Seriously.
I’m not sure how a comic dealing with a heckler equates to someone being acquitted of murder against all common sense.
Let’s even assume that the case against O.J. wasn’t good. That consensus was “I don’t know. Maybe he didn’t do it.” That still means that after all this time, he’s willing to take big coin to (ghost) write a book and go on TV during sweeps and tell the world “Here’s how I could have done it.”
What innocent man would ever consider doing that? Jesus, look at how many people thought the Ramseys were involved in Jon Benet’s death and then consider how likely it is that Dad ever says “Well, here’s how I could have killed my daughter.”
It doesn’t excuse him at all, but Richards might have come up in a comedy culture where the “no holds barred” approach to hecklers was more acceptable. I mean, Hicks in '89 in Chicago? I don’t know if Richards is a racist or not. But if you’ve got the mindset of “I’m doing my set, and if someone heckles me I can do whatever I want to shut him up and get back to my bit”, you don’t need to be racist to say that stuff. You can just pull the things from society and culture that are the most shocking/hurtful to the person you want to shut up.
I could go to the director of the National Center for Institutional Diversity (I’m their IT guy. Maybe it’s like “First National Bank” and there are more than one, but there’s one here at UM.) and ask him to write town two or three sentences of the most shocking/insulting things he could think of to say to a black man, and it wouldn’t make him racist to do it.
Comparing him to Mel Gibson is flimsy, too (but convenient). Gibson was in a completely different setting, and spouting his crap unprovoked (at least, in comparison). Stand-ups say things to hecklers all the time that don’t mean anything more than “Shut up, jerk. You’re not part of the show”. If a comic says “I’m amazed you’re able to go this long without a dick in your mouth” to a male heckler, he’s not making some homophobic comment.
Again, I don’t know if Richards is a racist (considering a majority of our “evidence” is acting roles and the 2nd half of an outburst at a heckler, I doubt any of us do). His attempt at shutting down a heckler don’t prove it, at least. It was a stupid thing to do, for sure.
Well, the column was REALLY poorly written (I don’t think anyone feared a race riot at a comedy club, for example), but I think she was less trying to equate murder with racist diatribes than point out that white stupid people get an easier free pass than black stupid people.
Ironically, it’s hard to find an exact black analogue to Richards’ stupidity. Maybe Farrakhan? He’s still not allowed on Oprah, I don’t think. I know Rev. Al Sharpton has said some hideously rancid stuff earlier in his career, and the media’s OK with him now.