Michael richards goes on a racial tirade during stand up act

[MalaCloudy Black]

fat people?

yeah.

[apsham]

Yeah, black people have a real hang up about their former oppressors using a term that represents their former bondage. Crazy, isn't it?

We should hang Richards upside down with a fork in his ass. Or at the very least ensure his career is in fact over.

[MalaCloudy Black]

That was uncalled for, Beatnik.. I thought you a man of honour.

[Guest Ringo Masterson]

It was just so much cooler when Lenny Bruce did it:

Are there any niggers here tonight? Could you turn on the house lights, please, and could the waiters and waitresses just stop serving, just for a second? And turn off this spot. Now what did he say? "Are there any niggers here tonight?" I know there's one nigger, because I see him back there working. Let's see, there's two niggers. And between those two niggers sits a kike. And there's another kike— that's two kikes and three niggers. And there's a spic. Right? Hmm? There's another spic. Ooh, there's a wop; there's a polack; and, oh, a couple of greaseballs. And there's three lace-curtain Irish micks. And there's one, hip, thick, hunky, funky, boogie. Boogie boogie. Mm-hmm. I got three kikes here, do I hear five kikes? I got five kikes, do I hear six spics, I got six spics, do I hear seven niggers? I got seven niggers. Sold American. I pass with seven niggers, six spics, five micks, four kikes, three guineas, and one wop. Well, I was just trying to make a point, and that is that it's the suppression of the word that gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. Dig: if President Kennedy would just go on television, and say, "I would like to introduce you to all the niggers in my cabinet," and if he'd just say "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" to every nigger he saw, "boogie boogie boogie boogie boogie," "nigger nigger nigger nigger nigger" 'til nigger didn't mean anything anymore, then you could never make some six-year-old black kid cry because somebody called him a nigger at school.

[Ananas]

I didn't even know I was racist!

[Trav226]

Me and a couple of friends were talking about this early and my friend said that he's done in show business. Nobody is ever going to hire him now especially of all the negative publicty. Nobody was tryin to hire him before. I hope he saved up his money from Seinfeld because I doubt he could even get a job at McDonalds after that

[Toe]

I wasn't sarcastic enough I guess, but it is harder to convey sarcasm in text.

I don't support what Richards said, and I think it was an awful thing. He should have said he was drunk or high on meth though. Would have made the whole situation even more hilarious yet sad.

Oh, Trav226. He is loaded, the Seinfeld cast made a fortune per episode.

[zero]

I ask of you this: Would there be outrage among the fat people if said black people were fat, and he called them fat fucks, lard-asses, etc.? Would there be civil unrest by the cross-eyed people if he called them cross-eyed bastards?

Fat people don't have to be fat though. Being fat is something you (generally) do to yourself, you can't help being black. Richards is completely in the wrong for this, there's no excuse to do it like that and if you watch the video, you can see he realizes it mid-way through the rant. He tries to back pedal and relate it to the act, but he falls completely on his face and that's why he storms off stage. He could have easily done it in a way to not seem insane.

[Scruffy The Janitor]

I ask of you this: Would there be outrage among the fat people if said black people were fat, and he called them fat fucks, lard-asses, etc.? Would there be civil unrest by the cross-eyed people if he called them cross-eyed bastards?

Fat people don't have to be fat though. Being fat is something you (generally) do to yourself, you can't help being black. Richards is completely in the wrong for this, there's no excuse to do it like that and if you watch the video, you can see he realizes it mid-way through the rant. He tries to back pedal and relate it to the act, but he falls completely on his face and that's why he storms off stage. He could have easily done it in a way to not seem insane.

[oldskool]

I ask of you this: Would there be outrage among the fat people if said black people were fat, and he called them fat fucks, lard-asses, etc.? Would there be civil unrest by the cross-eyed people if he called them cross-eyed bastards?

Fat people don't have to be fat though. Being fat is something you (generally) do to yourself, you can't help being black. Richards is completely in the wrong for this, there's no excuse to do it like that and if you watch the video, you can see he realizes it mid-way through the rant. He tries to back pedal and relate it to the act, but he falls completely on his face and that's why he storms off stage. He could have easily done it in a way to not seem insane.

[Godfatha]

The difference between fat and say nigger is that the word nigger has had hundreds of years meaning one thing: slave. Calling someone that is essentially saying you believe the black person is below or beneath you, that he's no longer a person but property.

[oldskool]

If you treat nigger like it's an unspeakable evil, it stays an unspeakable evil.

Telling a long-standing comedian that he sucks and he isn't funny is about as insulting and degrading a thing as you can say without personally knowing them and having something else to say. (Long standing comedian: A guy in his first appearance at a club, no. A guy like Richards who has what, 20 years of comedy experience behind him, yes)

Nigger to a black person is as insulting as you can get. Eye for an eye, I say. If they'd kept their mouths shut and not heckled him, it wouldn't have happened. You jump the barricade at a WWE event, anything that happens to you is your own fault and your own problem. I see this as the same situation under different circumstances.

[Ananas]

Oh please, they're paying him, he can take some fucking heckling. If he doesn't like it, get the fuck out of the entertainment industry. It doesn't even remotely justify racist tirades like this idiot went off on. It's not the hecklers' fault he's a hack comedian, and it's certainly not the fault of black people all around the world.

[Pepsi Punk]

Watching the video...that was barely racist. Hell, I found it funny. After reading all this shit I assumed he was going on a big rant about how the guy should be picking cotton and is worthless. All he called him is a nigger. In this day and age there's barely anything wrong with that. And besides, the black guy turns around and says a racial slur right back at Richards and somehow he gets off because he's black. A person who isn't white can say any racial slur he wants about a white man and not get in trouble. Ofcourse Richards is in the wrong, but that's barely anything to scream about. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I found that funny. If I was Richards I wouldn't apologize for that, both of them were in the wrong just as much as eachother.

[zero]

Fat people choose to have to buy larger clothes, get stared at everywhere they go and have to think "Can I fit into the seats?" any time they want to go out to, say, a theater, or an amusement park. rolleyes.gif Ask any fat person "If you had a feasible way to lose weight and keep it off permanently, and you could be a normal size, would you stay fat?"

Here's a feasible way - don't eat so fucking much. Look, I know some people have gland issues and the like, but being fat is far more of a choice than being black. Spare me the fat-ist rhetoric. Calling someone fat is way more acceptable than calling someone a nigger. Unless you call them a fat nigger.

Oh please, they're paying him, he can take some fucking heckling.

And on the flip side, no one should ever heckle anyone. That's incredibly uncalled for and incredibly low-class. Unfortunately, Richards took himself below that person by his tirade when he could have easily embarrassed the guy and had him thrown out without resorting to calling him a nigger.

[oldskool]

Fat people choose to have to buy larger clothes, get stared at everywhere they go and have to think "Can I fit into the seats?" any time they want to go out to, say, a theater, or an amusement park. rolleyes.gif Ask any fat person "If you had a feasible way to lose weight and keep it off permanently, and you could be a normal size, would you stay fat?"

Here's a feasible way - don't eat so fucking much. Look, I know some people have gland issues and the like, but being fat is far more of a choice than being black. Spare me the fat-ist rhetoric. Calling someone fat is way more acceptable than calling someone a nigger. Unless you call them a fat nigger.

[Godfatha]

Yeah, because it's so easy to lose weight everybody does it and fat people are just lazy and eat all day. You certainly are a shining example of tolerance and understanding and clearly all should stand in awe of your judgment on the usage of nigger. You're an idiot, first of all, because if going from 400 pounds to a normal size was as easy as "Eat less food" as you seem to think it is, would there BE any 400-pound people?

[oldskool]

In the United States, the word nigger was not originally considered derogatory, but merely denotative of black, as it was in much of the world. In nineteenth-century literature, there are many uses of the word nigger with no intended negative connotation. Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, and Joseph Conrad (who published The Nigger of the 'Narcissus' in 1897) used the word without racist intent.

Edited November 22, 2006 by oldskool

[Godfatha]

The word nigger was used to describe black people in that era. Black people were also slaves....in that era. It's not that much of a leap to assume that nigger means slaves.

Secondly, these "stats" are not accurate by any means simply because there are way too many variables to account for. IIRC these same stats showed Latino's as having lower IQ's as well. The study concedes that this does not take into account about socioeconomic status where both blacks and Latino's were lower off than the white folk. It's too hard to say it's due to intelligence.

As far crimes go, the same argument can be made.

For every stat that can be used to argue one point, it can be used to argue a different point.

If you ignore stats and just go by pure logic, the term is a derogatory word.

But hey, let's bring back phrenology while we're at it.

The fact is, using the little leap of logic that I made above, you can't change being black while you can change being fat. The comparison doesn't exist. You're reaching at straws at this point.

Keep reaching though who knows what else you might find.

[lari]

- Nigger!

- Hey, that's totally uncalled for!

- That's what you get when you interrupt the white man.

I thought that was hilarious. Probably funnier than the rest of the show.