Kangatopia

This is something I’ve been puzzling over the last week or so since the news broke that Michael Richards is a soul angry racist after yelling profane epithets at hecklers during his stand up act at a comedy club. Parablemania has a pretty palatable take on the whole to-do. The irony of all this is that Michael Richards received his Bachelor’s degree from one of the most progressive, end racism, save the environment, all people have a right to fair play sort of colleges around, The Evergreen State College. (It’s where I graduated from too, so I’m not knocking it - and if I had a little more time to write this post I would attempt to write a more eloquent blurb. I would like to note that in the process of linking to them I found they have recently done wonderful things to the website. Yay Evergreen! God, I miss Evergreen.) Anyway, during his military years according to Wikipedia, he produced shows dealing with race relations and drug abuse. He also spent a couple of years in a California commune post-military career “finding himself”. The dude was so hippyfied back in the seventies that it confuses me a little he is automatically being labeled a racist by people such as Jesse Jackson. I can completely understand why Michael Richards is so mortified and ashamed. I don’t think this has a whole lot to do with the way his career might end up on the DOA list, as much as it goes against his core values to behave so badly. I heard someone say that he was responding to the room, and what happened in that room was for the room only.* It just reinforces my belief that the media perpetuates band wagon jumping and mindlessness in the public. Whether Michael Richards is truly a racist that ought to be burned on a cross is less at issue as the Salem witchhunt mentality still prevalent in the public’s consciousness today. Are we so hungry for sensationalist news that we devour bad behaviour and faulty judgment and turn it into a dialogue about how racism prevails still in America? Maybe we are, and yes, that dialogue is healthy and we are overdue for this particular gut check, but at what expense?

I’m not sure Michael Richards is really a racist who deserves the unhealthy and negative publicity he’s receiving at the moment, but he should get a pat on the back for re-introducing discussions of hatred and racism into the media. The media is what it is - a reflection of attitudes even while it creates them - but if it can manipulate for harm, then now is the time for Jesse Jackson and everyone else to use its power to not villify Michael Richards specifically, but impress upon the purveyors of pop culture to erase the lines of race that make Michael Richards, but not - oh, say - Chris Rock, a shocking example of American bigotry.

* Tom Green:

“Unlike Mel Gibson, who probably does hold racist attitudes, I don’t think Michael Richards doesn’t like black people. I think he was just trying to say the craziest and most vile thing in that room he could possibly muster. And I think he dug deep, into the darkest corners of his mind, to say those evil things to those men.”He added, “But he did it in a small room, in an exchange, during a performance, and it wasn’t meant for us. It was just meant for that room. So why don’t we just let them settle it? Let’s leave Michael Richards alone.”