KKKramer Screws Up: Michael Richards Spews Racist Slurs at a Comedy Club

Hear that sound? That was the non-comedian Michael Richards hitting the pavement.

Michael who?

Y'know, that crazy Cosmo Kramer guy on "Seinfeld".

Don't worry, most people already know who he is now. And whoever said, "There's no such thing as bad publicity" doesn't know what he's talking about. Just ask Mel.

No, he wasn't pushed. This was a suicide leap.

By now, everybody who's read a newspaper, watched TV, or Googled the shocking footage on YouTube has seen how Mr. Richards turned himself into street pizza and threw away what was left of his career. For the rest of you allergic to the news, here's what happened: While doing a monologue at the Laugh Factory, a comedy club in Hollywood, he was so bad that two African-American men in the audience heckling Richards were funnier than he was.

Humiliated and enraged, Richards suddenly exploded in a racist tirade. "Fifty years ago they'd have you hanging upside down with a [expletive] fork up your [expletive]." he shouted. Throw his [expletive] ass out!" Richards also used the word "nigger" repeatedly, like he was getting paid fifty bucks a word by the Ku Klux Klan. Yadda yadda yadda.

Oddly enough, this wasn't funny either.

Richards really screwed himself, and I don't think his off-key, rambling and fraudulent apology on David Letterman is going to help. This wasn't just a joke that went bad. He wasn't Lenny Bruce dissecting a racial stereotype with humor, intelligence and chutzpah. This was a bigot caught with his mask off, specifically targeting two men because they were black. It was an ugly side of Richards' that people haven't seen before and they don't like being lied to. Eventually, after this controversy quiets down, he's going to slowly fade away like the latest victim on a "Without A Trace" episode.

Not that's there's anything wrong with that.

Maybe I'm cold-blooded, but this couldn't have happened to a nicer jerk.

I remember how arrogant and condescending Richards was during the few interviews he did when Seinfeld was the most popular show on TV. Richards clearly thought of himself as a comedic genius equal to Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd. OK, to be fair, when Richards has a well-written script to work from, I think he's a better-than-average comic actor.

But there's a big difference between being a TV comic rehearsing on the same set every day and knowing he can do it again if it's wrong, and being a stand-up comedian walking into a room he's never been in before, full of loud angry drunks who don't like him and make them laugh.

And any comedian who can't disembowel a heckler faster than Wolverine had better find another job. Right now, Richards couldn't get hired as a whoopee cushion.

Too bad, huh?

Still, being a part-time cynic, I think there was a silver lining in the dark clouds Richards belched out that night at the Laugh Factory. Seeing how outraged people got by his crude racial slurs cheered me up because it reinforced my belief that we're living in a civilized society. This isn't the barbaric days of Jim Crow and "White Only" signs posted at bathrooms, water fountains and restaurants. (Yeah, the "good old days" that get neo-Nazis and other white supremacist jerks all teary-eyed and nostalgic.) No, it's 2006, and a white man contemptuously yelling "nigger" at two African-American men in public isn't funny.

It's crazy.

As the old quote goes, "We ain't where we should be, but thank God we ain't where we've been."

Sure, what Michael Richards did at that comedy club was bad, but do you know what would have been worse?

If all those people in the audience had cheered instead of reacting in horror.

And applauded.

And laughed.