Has the world gone mad?
 

Kramer is recorded by a cell phone in a comedy club saying Nigger. There I said it, Nigger. Did anyone die? No. Is anyone at home crying right now? No. In fact, it does not matter in the least that I said Nigger.

Which brings me to my point, this guy.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k0FI82DOuxE

On C-SPAN! (It's long, you don't have to watch it if you don't want to, so I'll sum it up for you.) He wants to kill all white people. And he is saying it on C-Span! Where are the riots in the streets? Where are the threats of lawsuits? Why is this guy not on David Letterman with his apology?

Because he is not famous?

Ha, what a cop out.

The double edge sword in this country is blunt on one side.

Its the way Kramer said it more than the word itself. Sure people use that term all the time now, but people were angry, or at least I think they were, because he seemed to mean it in a derogatory fashion. To answer your question, yes.

Nice video. When did all white people decide to kill African Americans? Did I miss another meeting?

Uh did you see the video of him saying it? Right before he said it he basically said that if it weren't for the current times the black guy would be lynched and a fork stuck up his ass (or something to that affect). He was also speaking directly at someone during what was supposed to be entertainment/job. It went a little farther than just saying the n word.

I've been called a cracker before in a derogatory way. I could care less. If I did it would be purely my ego. It's like the old stick and stones will break my bones thing. Whether someone says it or thinks it makes no difference. But it only seems to matter to people when they're a minority.

You probably won't see much of that for two reasons:

1) This was/will be covered up well enough that most people (of all races) will probably never see or hear about it.

2) Most white people seem to be either clueless or spineless when it comes to race relations. Rioting in the streets is usually a bad idea, anyway.

I don't think that's a cop-out. I'm willing to be that there are so many racist things said by so many people (of all races) on a daily basis that requiring each of them to apologize on TV would result in that being the only thing broadcasted.

There is way too much crap - all sorts of crap, not just racism - for the media to cover it all. That's why the crap that's either heinous or done by someone well-known gets all the media coverage. Do you think Mel Gibson is the only person to ever say something bigoted after being pulled over? Do you think that Scott Peterson was the first guy to ever be accused of killing someone?

The racial double-standard in this country won't end until white people start standing up for themselves. It's the standard method for dealing with mistreatment or bullying. There is no reason to believe it will stop as long as there is a willing victim. That doesn't mean that white people should be rioting in the streets or attacking people of other races. I think you took the right approach: You provided an example of an incident and pointed out the apparent hypocrisy in how it was handled by the public.

Here is a guy named John Ridley who agrees with you.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-r...l_b_34664.html

http://i15.photobucket.com/albums/a3...iorPee/1-1.jpg

John Ridley

That is plain idiotic at best. Plese, get over it. Comics need to understand that heckling comes with the territory.

In the Kramer case, the hecklers felt that he had crossed the line with the whole N word thing. Fine, fair enough. Kramer then exacerbated things by escalating the tirade even more.

Obviously this guy has never been to or seen an act at the Apollo Theater, one of the most enduring institutions in American entertainment.

Likewise, being able to withstand criticism such as the American Idol show is part and parcel to the business.

As the old adage goes, if you can't stand the heat, get your "bitch-ass the fuck out of the mother-fuckin' kitchen, bitch".

Kramer couldn't take the heat.

He is now out of the kitchen.

In regards to the so-called double-standard/double-edged sword, the dynamic of race-relations in this country (the USA) is much more complicated than a battle over free speech or the "they're just words" argument.

If you wish to debate race-relations, then we should open up another thread for it.

Neither could the two guys who now want their mother, I mean Gloria Allred, to get them lots of money for their hurt feelings.


Race relations are one of the more useless debates out there. Like abortion debates, everyone ignores the other side and repeats their own beliefs ad nauseum.

My belief is very uncomplicated. It's that no one should be harmed, OR HELPED, by the government on the basis of skin color.

I agree the lawsuit aspect is stupid. But it does not take away from the original issue. Thay are two separate issues.

I disagree that a debate is useless.

But I can agree with your "belief".

"My belief is very uncomplicated. It's that no one should be harmed, OR HELPED, by the government on the basis of skin color."


*Bolding mine*

I don't know, but I viewed the whole video the OP posted, and it deeply disturbed me. Here was a socially conscious, errudite black man advocating the extermination of caucasians. That's me. He wants to kill me.

It made me feel a bit better that that were only about seven people in his audience, but still, HE WANTS TO KILL WHITE PEOPLE.

That's a bit more than what Michael Richards did - he used a racial term that is absolutely taboo (but only for white people, mind you.) I didn't hear Michael Richards say anything about killing anyone, he just made an ass of himself.

Race relations in this country are not just about black and white - it's got to do with hispanics as well. Look at Rueben Narvarrette's column about the situation. http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/o...29navarre.html

Do you honestly think we need two separate threads about this Kramer fiasco? As insane as the guy in the video was there's no denying the fact that he made a number of points that'd lead to rather interesting discussion - whether they're valid points or not is obviously questionable.

Is he a racist-extremist-whacko? Surely, but how this relates to the Kramer situation is beyond me.

Of course it doesn't but if you can't see the difference between hurling racial slurs at someone who payed to see your perform simply because they heckled you (which to your chagrin or not, is a rather common-place act) and rather calmly stating some (obviously ridiculous) opinions to a seemingly like-minded crowd then you're either looking to make something from nothing or incapable or rathional thought and thus unfit to post.

It' s a shame that in world in which there's so much that should be done, it's the topics like race relations that really get people going.

To answer simply the question in the title of this thread, you cannot travel to a place you already occupy.

but..but...but....don't we have a constitutional right to NOT BE OFFENDED????

the horrors.

I don't know - I'm just finding this whole thing difficult to get worked up about. Kramer flips out and goes into some sort of racial tirade. That gets attention because he's that sort of famous guy on that show. Sort of like Britney's vagina. I actually found this video interesting, and if you take out the genocide part, Kambon reminds me of a bunch of my friends who live in the mountains and grow their own food, etc. They see the same conspiracies, only based on economics not race.

Exactly. While the guy is obviously a little out there, there's no denying the fact that he raises some interesting points - especially about nutrition, the justice system and the toxic mental environment.

...

I don't want to get into a black/white debate on here I think that would be futile and pointless. As to the thread topic? Oh yes, most defiantly, the world has gone mad. I'm surprised you hadn't previously noticed. I understand that's just another sign of the madness though!
Me? I'm not racist. I hate everyone equally. Just call me an equal opportunity hater.

Well, I found that to be pretty funny.

It's the old "Let's blame the white man for our problems!" argument. I love it.

Oh, and to address the first author, this kind of thing happens all the time, but no one really cares until a celebrity says it.

kramer is as racist as n.w.a. are artists.imo it's just the way you see things,nobody's better because of color,but people will beat the drum for their cause on both sides.

Sort of off topic but did anyone notice what is says below the guys name. He owns a store called Blacknificent Books, that just cracked me up. I wonder if he'd sell a book to a white person.

yeah, I saw that. I want to go there and try to buy a book.

Has the World Gone Mad?--- Yes.

You know what's racist? Believing something someone says about niggers matters more because they look black. :)

Also, people love to blame other people for their own problems and failings. Denigrating a different race is a great way to do this. Then you can blame immigrants or people that look different than yourself for things in your life or society you are uncomfortable about or wish were different.

He was probably pointint out that not all minorities feel the way some jackass hecklers feel. More likely most of them probably agree with that man. Because as with every single different type of person on the planet, some are worthless and most are at least semi intelligable.


Kinda like these organizations that "Claim" to be for black equality, or for minority equality of any type. Then blame everything on whites, and then expect more priveledges than whites? It's not my problem that whites killed your indian ancestors, or black, or what ever.

There is a sentence in this thread I whole-heartedly agree with.


My belief is very uncomplicated. It's that no one should be harmed, OR HELPED, by the government on the basis of skin color.

Cheers to that :thumbsup:

Yay! Affirmative action is a mean-spirited and misdirected "policy". If those who never did the oppression/ownership/abuse are now affected negatively by rules trying to redirect our focus (not necessarily a bad thing) doesn't that create a new class of "victims"?
IOW, why should the (younger) white males in our society have to pay through the nose for what our (idiot) forbears did or did not do? We can only go from where we are, and I don't believe in victims except in cases much more isolated than get reported. LYA.

I've debated affirmative action many times (I'm against it, for the record); both in real life and on internet forums. Some of the arguments I've seen people use to defend it are downright ridiculous.

My favorite part of these debates was the blatant hypocrisy displayed by some of my opponents. Many of the people who support this form of racial/gender discrimination are the sort that consider themselves "anti-racist". They are also the sort that tends to oppose "racial profiling" as a means to fight crime. I guess it never occurred to them that profiling is exactly how affirmative action works. All white males are presumed to be either oppressors or beneficiaries of oppression and all women and minorities are presumed to be directly or indirectly oppressed.

Oh, I don't know, perhaps one thing that makes it different is that black people have never risen up in mobs and killed lots of white people. While white folks most certainly have formed into murderous bands and gone on rampages against blacks. Think that might have something to do with the sensitivity around this issue? The wounds simply have not healed and it has nothing to do with affirmative action. Affirmative action came to be because at one point in time, in our recent history, people remembered these things. You talk about slavery like it ended there once the slaves were freed. Ignoring the century of shame that passed between the emancipation proclamation and the civil rights movement. I don't think a little respect and the accordance of a little more attention to how black people feel when a white person calls them a nigger or makes fun of the way they act is too much to ask.

A lot of those who feel like victims are probably victims of their own misdirected thinking. Anybody who has an anti-defamation league probably needs one. I'm still stubbornly thinking that it's just us here, and pretending otherwise produces nothing except ill will between "us".
Sure, we don't understand each other's quirks and motives. Is that a GOOD reason for the world to have gone mad? Is a lack of understanding a good excuse for anything? I say "I don't know" a lot!
Then I go look it up.
It's just us here. Words are only words. When emotions come into play, though, look out. Those so-called "loaded" words can be dynamite.
I guess I do think the world has gone mad, damn it.

Of course it matters whether he's famous.

In the Michael Richards incident, nobody is asking for the guy's neck. The information was spread widely because people needed to be able to view the incident, judge it for themselves, and decide whether it was cause enough for them to personally avoid supporting Richards in the future. In that case, debate over whether Michael Richards is a 'racist' ultimately served the purpose of helping to shape individual consumer choices. Again, this is directly connected to the fact that Richards is a quasi-public figure.

In this case, you've just given us a video of a random nutjob. He is a kook. There is no disagreement or significant controversy. You're upset because we're not all up-in-arms over it, but the whole world cannot be up in arms over every random nutjob in the world; it's a simple function of the limited amount of time in a given day.

In what way is this a "cop out", exactly?

Yeah, people care about what Richards said because he's famous. That's how it works. The video gets talked about a lot more than the man on C-Span because it's someone far more people are familiar with. That Richards had a meltdown and revealed himself to be a bigot gives consumers of entertainment media information on which to base their purchasing decisions.

And I'll echo the statement above that race relations in the US are about far more than black and white. There are Pacific Islanders, Asians, Native Americans, Jews, and Hispanics, all with a variety of ethnicities within the broader racial group, just as with white people. Pretending that there are no differences and pretending that ethnicity is deterministic are both mistakes, just as with dealing with the sexes.

Personally, I find the comparison to Mel Gibson very apt. We now know that they're both bigots, and can base future buying decisions based on that. The particular circumstances in which their bigotry was revealed matters less than that it was revealed.

is this an affirmative action thread now? or a thread about celebrities getting heightened attention, for both positive, neutral, and negative statements and actions?

Sir! It went every direction you mention and then some. All prejudicially philosophical. I think we're trying to discuss prejudice. I don't understand why Kramer's tirade became a thing that people would even talk about, as hiredgun alluded to.
I wish I was a nigger so I could understand more or less fully this nonsense.
All I can manage is white, male, and queer(meaning strange, yes?)