I don’t know if you’ve heard about this yet, but Michael Richards, a/k/a Kramer from Seinfeld, totally flipped out on a heckler and went on a racist tirade at a comedy club last Friday. It’s pretty freaking insane. The saddest part is that I can sense him trying to do this for shock value, in that way that funny comics are allowed to be racist because really, they’re poking fun at racists. Unfortunately, he forgot the cardinal rule of shocking humor: it should have an element of humor to it.

This reminds me of a really hilarious episode of This American Life from ‘97 that they recently repeated. It was called Fiasco! and it examined experiences that went beyond the level of mistake or screw-up into a very special realm from whence there was no return. The first story, about a college production of Peter Pan, should be listened to immediately.

I heard some people talking about the Michael Richards incident on the radio yesterday, and some guy said it was a real tragedy, because as a jew, Richards should be able to identify with other minorities. I swear to God, that was this guy’s reasoning. In this guy’s world, the only people who have any prejudices in America are white, Anglo-Saxon, heterosexual Christian males. Everyone else gets along.

(Thanks, Cass!)