Wow, it's been almost a month since my last post. Things have been real busy lately but I'm slowing getting back into blogging more often. But that's not what this post is about.
By now everyone has heard of the Michael Richards tirade at the Laugh Factory a couple weeks back so no need to recap what went on. Richards has gone on an "Apology Tour" trying to repair is reputation. The question is will the Seinfeld star be able to clean up his image?
I don't care what anyone else says, but Michael Richards is through. There is nothing he can do to restore his reputation. He can apologize all he wants, he can seek support from Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, he can hire the best PR professional in the world, he can donate a gajillion dollars to the NAACP, and nothing will fix his image.
He made the first mistake of hiring PR guru Howard Rubenstein, the best in the business. Rubenstein has over 450 clients and is the official spokesperson for Yankees owner, George Steinbrenner. Richards knows his booboo is so big that he needs the best PR guy to fix it. That should tell you something. His next mistake was trying to get support from Sharpton and Jackson, as if they forgave him the entire black community would forgive him too. That's just plain nonsense. Then Richards went on Letterman and gave the most pathetic attempt at an apology that I've ever heard, all this to clean up his image. But Richards forgot to do the most important thing yet...confront the two men he verbally abused. That is the FIRST thing he should have done instead of getting the media involved. He should have apologized to the two men in person and then move on from there.
Is Kramer a racist? Absolutely, but not so much because he called them niggers. If all Richards did was call the men niggers I think this would have been fixed a lot easily. There still would have been some explaining to do, but I think he could have worked it out. It's funny that the media is only focusing on his use of the word "nigger." I don't have a problem with the word itself, but the context of how it's used. It's used to freely these days that it's been re-associated, redefined, which was why guys like Richard Pryor used it so much. But why focus on Richards' calling them niggers? He did something even worse by saying "fifty years ago you'd be hanging from a tree with a fucking fork up your ass" and "that's what happens when you mess with a white man."
Do you mean to tell me that calling a black guy a nigger is a lot worse than making a reference to lynching? Nigger is just a word, lynching is death by hanging! He told those two men that fifty years ago they would be DEAD! But I'm almost disgusted that no one is even talking about that, they focusing on the use of "nigger." The "nigger" debate will last for years, that's not being solved anytime soon, but telling someone that they would be lynched fifty years ago...anyone who makes that kind of remark is CLEARLY a racist, there is no fixing that my boy.
If you watch the video you can clearly see that Richards meant what he said. He made a conscious decision to say what he did. You can't mistakenly say what Richards said, there is no taking that back. You can feel the rage and hatred in his voice as if he's been holding that in since he was a boy. So I say to Michael Richards, you can apologize until the cows come home but an apology won't fix this. You can pay all the money you want but there is no buying your way out. Sharpton and Jackson can forgive you but they have nothing to do with this. You can even apologize to the two men you offended, give them money, and even put their kids and grandkids through college, but you, sir, are through. The damage has been done so go hide under a rock because there is no coming back from that.
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