what is offensive is that Jackson is now complaining that political figures who make racist remarks get off too easily. Is he referring to himself? Al Sharpton? Cynthea McKinney? That god forsaken Wal-mart spokesman/ex-civil rights leader who is encouaging African Americans to racially profile Arabs, Koreans, and Jews as being part of a wilted vegetable conspiracy?

What Richards said is repugnant. But so is having a bunch of black guys dancing around at the Academy Awards bemoning how hard it is to be a slave owner (aka pimp) and winning an Oscar over it. The shock value really wears off.....

Richards is not allowed to be fearful or hateful?

Femminists are fearful and hateful, but I never see them being excoriated for it.

WHAT GIVES?!?

or is this more of the typical hypocritical BS?

I posted after seeing the original tirade that no apology or excuse could possibly make up for Richards's racist rant, particularly the fork comment.

Having seen the Letterman footage (all 6 minutes), I still feel that way. But I respect Richards for owning up (for the most part) to the fact that his remarks were wholly unacceptable and out-of-control. This came from a very dark wellspring of pain, hatred and anger -- 'what lies buried' in his words. He was responsible enough to admit that he needs to focus on 'personal work.'

It seems very clear that Richards was not at all in character, but utterly consumed by rage. His own words caught him off-guard. He appears genuinely puzzled by what happened. I don't doubt that Richards isn't an everyday racist, but the mere fact that he chose the lynching analogy (in addition to the n word) speaks to a deeply-rooted racism in my view.

It's the same kind of rage that men sometimes exhibit toward women when they feel somehow threatened or diminished -- everything becomes about the woman's whoring sexuality, even if the argument itself has nothing whatsoever to do with sex. "You c*nt, you f*ing whore," etc. -- the hostility and violence of it is truly astonishing. Often, this is where physical assault occurs as well. The fact that men who would never openly maintain such things in a less heated moment resort to that kind of sexist rhetoric nonetheless reveals deeply held (and hidden) beliefs. Fear and hatred are connected at the core. 'Us and them' comes in many forms.

It's easy to stay cool when everything is hunky-dory and at a safe distance. When rage takes over, the baser instincts kick in and often emerge in very predictable ways. Logic has nothing to do with it.

Sacha Baron Cohen can sing "Throw the Jew in the Well" because he is Jewish, and Silverman can make fun of being raped because she's a woman. Those analogies are not the same as a white man talking about lynchings when you don't listen to 'the man.'

Groovelady, yours is the best case in this comments section (indeed, in much of the web, so far as I've read) for why Richards deserves no defense. Thanks for your considered response.

But I still disagree with you, because I think, for three reasons, that you're skipping too quickly over the premise, which is that Richards was responding to the hecklers as himself, and not in character. First, how do you know he was not in character when you don't know what the character was? Without seeing the earlier part of the routine, before things turned south, we can't (indeed, I can't either) know for sure that he wasn't doing the exact same sort of voice, shouting, etc, that came across in the video for the entire routine. You suggest that he was just being too crazy to be any sort of character, but I think that's a pretty big leap. I've seen comedians just stand up on the stage and scream; sometimes they even get laughs. Second, based on the two and a half minutes of video we do have, there are, to me, a couple of important cues that Richards *was* acting in character. For instance, every time he used the word "motherfucker," he intoned his voice up at the end in a bizarre shout that seemed pitched for comic effect. You call this "all id," but I tend to think that the more likely explanation is that he's a comedian trying to hang on to the stage rather than a man having a major breakdown in front of our eyes. I'd want more evidence before making that sort of career-ending accusation. Third, the mere fact that he was attacked personally, as Michael Richards the person, does not as you suggest necessarily mean that he had to respond as Michael Richards the person, rather than as Michael Richards the on-stage persona. Indeed, to do so would be to drop all authority as the center of attention at the first baiting by a heckler. No, I think he responded not in a personal capacity, but in whatever comedic routine he was channeling.

Your discussion of the difference between Richards's bit and other comedians who explore race more successfully is persuasive. But only to a point. For I can think that Richards acted in bad taste and crossed a line as a comedian without thinking that he's a racist person. I don't need to think he's funny in order to believe that his attempt to be funny was made in good faith.

Finally, you state that Richards's joke about stringing up blacks shows that he yearns for the days when that happened. Now stop and think a minute. Do you really believe that this guy is a neo-fascist? That he hates black people and wants to see them lynched and murdered? That's QUITE an accusation to make of a comedian who arguably made a bad joke that bombed. How could such a joke possibly be funny, you ask? It probably couldn't be. It certainly wasn't coming from Richards. But I'm no comic, and before I heard Sasha Baron Cohen singing about "throw the Jew down the well," I probably wouldn't have thought that that could be anything other than offensive either. Or that an elaborate ruse by Sarah Silverman in The Aristocrats that she was raped could be funny. My point, again, is not that I agree that this material is fair game for a stand-up comedian. It's that, even if I find such material distasteful (as I emphatically do), I would condemn it as a comedian crossing a line rather than as evidence of a bigot suddenly unleashed.