November 28, 2006
By Polar Levine

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The other recurring characters (with a few exceptions like Mr. Pederman and Newman) struck me as exaggerated but dead-on portrayals of familiar New York neurotics. But Kramer struck me as no more than a clown, a wind-up pratfall dummy whose physical tics would have been more at home in one of the Three Stooges. Richards is a great clown, but I could never figure out what his schtick was doing in a show that is basically a dialogue-centered psychocomedy that is allegedly about nothing. But actually it was about how nothing's many arcane damands and protocols make for ridiculous conflicts over nothing. Is it cynical to suggest that Kramer's slapstick served as an antidote to some focus-group perception that the show was too conceptual to generate sufficient sales of soda and deodorant? Physical humor doesn't sex me so I'm biased against the Kramer character and, by extension Michael Richards as a performer. So when I first received news of his racist meltdown it came as no surprise that he would lose control of his character.

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When I settled down to a more humane state of mind -- before having seen footage of the verbal assault and the subsequent apology event on Letterman -- I imagined that Richards responded to the heckling during a standup performance by slipping into a caricature of a racist, and that his ability to channel a recognizable version of a human (as evidenced by a decade of Seinfeld appearances) was not up to the task.

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After I finally saw the footage of the tirade the fun stopped. I saw no evidence of slipping into a character. All I saw was a twitching, shrieking, malevolent freak -- an easily conjured image of Kramer as homeless wreck after having been finally blown to the curb by his old pals.

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But a curious thing happened. I was drawn to view the footage of the meltdown repeatedly and it never failed to to horrify me, but his appearance on Letterman introduced me to somebody I felt sad for. I'm not an advocate of the idea that apologies over bigoted comments and other idiocy bring closure. See my view of Mel Gibson's apology-fest. What made Richards' statement compelling was the way he chose to face millions of people after having committed an inexcusable offense and fully realizing that he'd probably incinerated his career. Unlike Gibson and others in similar straits, he didn't spout some tidy bullshit vetted by a PR firm. Winging it, he nakedly presented himself as a guy who appeared to have been run over by a truck driven by his own worst demon. He seemed dazed, confused, and shaken -- groping to see if all his body parts were intact and trying to determine with some certainty whether he was dead or alive. It didn't mitigate the repulsion I felt over his racist bombast, but I really did feel bad for him. His resumˆ© is based on a character who is always skating on the borderline between assholery and benign sociopathy; at worst, a guy who will blithely suck his friends dry but not threaten any sort of malicious attack. What shocked me was the extremely un-benign racism that served as the comedian's verbal pratfall that night at The Laugh Factory. I wonder what that's all about as I'm sure he's wondering as I write this. In the cases of Gibson or ex-senator George Allen, their bigotry seemed very much in character and I enjoyed their public outing.

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Though the possible demise of Richards' career doesn't exactly inspire tears, I do hope he emerges from the debacle with some hard-earned wisdom and a new direction that he can be proud of.

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Polar Levine
For Polarity/1.com

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