No joke
Taki
New York
First it was Mel, as in Gibson, now it’s Michael, as in Richards. I’m sure none of you has ever heard of the latter, but he’s a big shot in America, especially among those with brains smaller than a pea. Richards played a character in Seinfeld, a programme about emptiness which is no longer on the air. I suppose celebrity is harder to give up than heroin because last week Richards used the N-word while doing a stand-up routine in a small Los Angeles club, calling two black guys who were heckling him ‘dirty n——s’.
Well, he sure got back his celebrity in a hurry. Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, two of the most egregious race hustlers, got in on the act immediately, rightly denouncing the comic as a racist, and then blaming the white man for every ill that has befallen the black man throughout history. Richards, in frantic damage-control mode, hit the talk shows. The devil made me do it, was his Mel Gibson defence. That didn’t go down too well, so he switched to the ‘I’m a victim, too’ shelter, proclaiming it was his anger that propelled him to call two African–American gentlemen dirty n——s. Mind you, those two cats were to gentleness what Paris Hilton is to modesty, but neither were they dumb. No sooner had the you-know-what hit the fan than they hired a sleazy ambulance-chaser who announced that they would forgive the comic if he paid them for their loss of dignity.
The problem is a difficult one. How do you measure one’s pain in dollars and cents in the land of the supposedly free where freedom of speech is paramount? More dirt on Richards surfaced almost immediately. Earlier this year Richards spewed anti-Semitic rants during a show, once again after he was heckled by some clubgoer in the audience. In his best Gibson manner, Richards told the heckler, ‘You’re a f—— Jew and your people are the cause of Jesus dying ... ’ Now this was more complicated. As American Jews do not have to wear yellow stars on their coats, how did Richards know the man was Jewish? Michael Richards, of course, is Jewish but that hasn’t helped him where the anti-Semitic remarks are concerned. Rabbi Marvin Hier, founder and dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles, was anything but tolerant. ‘He should know the history of how much we have suffered throughout history,’ said the good rabbi. He then suggested Richards should pay the offended party.
I suppose it all comes down to money in the Land of the Free, as long as one offends a minority, that is. Richards, desperate to save his career, then went on to meet Jesse Jackson, a meeting which all the networks covered ad nauseam. Jesse was at his bullsh—er best. He will think about it, will pray for Richards, will meet him again, and then might forgive him after Richards seeks help and has racesensibility training.
Personally, I find Richards a sleazeball bully, a slob, and ugly as sin to boot. But had he said to two white men that they were dirty Micks, or filthy wops, or greasy Greeks, or cheapskate dirty Limeys, people would have laughed it off. And if they had sued, they’d be laughed out of court. African–Americans, gays, women can no longer be made fun of on stage or off, as once upon a time they were. And we are the poorer for it. The prevalence in any free society of jokes about a particular ethnic group is not an indicator of feeling towards that group. Let’s face it. People will always make jokes about ethnicity, sexual orientation, and so on. Soon we won’t be allowed to say anything about a person’s height or lack thereof, a person’s nationality, anything that might offend. We might as well hang up our jocks and go home.
Mel Gibson used alcohol as a defence, but Hollywood will make sure he never has lunch in that town again. Richards, I predict, will get away with it. Black comedians use the N-word non-stop, as do young blacks themselves when they trash-talk each other. Being Jewish will ensure that his anti-Semitic rant was a one-off. Anyway, much more important things are now occupying the great American public’s mind. Shopping. The shopping season went off with a bang the day after Thanksgiving, with millions of crazed shoppers storming retail outlets across the great land. There were fisticuffs, ransacking of stores by marauding youths, fainting housewives overcome with anxiety a dime a dozen, while flat-screen TVs were selling like hot cakes used to in Coney Island when the poor lived there. And speaking of the poor, most of those I noticed shopping with gusto looked like minorities to me, but I’d better hold my tongue before I’m dragged to a race-sensibility training session.
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