A racist tirade by comedian Michael Richards has exposed the segregation in the American entertainment industry, writes Joseph Harker
I'm not sure if there's a guidebook for comedians anywhere, offering advice on how to deal with hecklers. If there is, it almost certainly never made the shelves of Michael Richards, the man who used to be most famous for playing Kramer in the long-running comedy series, Seinfeld. After his appearance at the Laugh Factory in west Hollywood, he will be best remembered for his last (and possibly final) stand-up routine.
Responding to two black hecklers in the mainly white audience, he shouted: "Fifty years ago we would have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass." And he continued: "Throw his ass out. He's a n*****! He's a n*****! He's a n*****! A n*****! Look, there's a n*****!"
When audience members said his remarks were out of order, he sneered: "They're going to arrest me for calling a black man a n*****?"
It's difficult to believe that Richards wasn't under the influence of some drug. But those words and thoughts had to come from somewhere. So his feeble denials of racism, of "not knowing what came over me" - once he realised that his "performance" had been transmitted across the nation - can be treated with the same contempt as his fellow bodysnatched bigots, actor/director Mel Gibson and former football pundit Ron Atkinson.
Richards's comments expose the deep segregation in the US entertainment industry, in which white actors/ comedians perform in white dramas/comedies (Desperate Housewives, Sex and the City, Friends, Frasier) with hardly a black character among them, and which are viewed by a white audience. There are the black equivalents, though we hardly ever see them as
they are rarely bought by the (white) programme-buyers at the main TV channels on this side of the Atlantic. Consequently, the black TV market is also less lucrative.
The situation whereby many of the most successful entertainers in such a racially diverse country barely mix with other ethnic groups is surely the only way to explain how Richards could have kept such vile sentiments under wraps for so long - though, as with the Atkinson outburst, many black people will be wondering whether these views were a genuine out-of-character experience, or were known and tolerated by Richards's colleagues.
The shadow of doubt will be cast over many more of US entertainment's biggest names until its top shows are opened up to strong, integral black characters. In the meantime, at least the persistence of one heckler brought Richards down to earth.
"That's why you're a reject," the man said. "[You] never had no movies. Seinfeld, that's it."
The instantly more sober comic could only reply: "OK, I guess you got me there."