Kramer not master of racially harmonious domain

By Jon Juliano
Collegian Staff
December 6, 2006

What can a white person like myself say about the n-word and the Michael Richards fiasco? I can’t relate to it, because there is not one word white people can be called that holds such power and hate as the n-word. I could not really get that offended by Richards, mainly because I am not African- American. All I could do was watch, disturbed and ashamed for humanity.

I feel ashamed for many reasons, the obvious being that Richards (Seinfeld’s Kramer) definitely should not have said what he said. But, I also was ashamed as an aspiring journalist. Is this the world I’m getting into? The way the media covered the issue was pathetic.

I take that back. I didn’t think it would be the biggest story in CNN’s Situation Room. I thought something more important needed to be discussed, like, I don’t know, a civil war in Iraq or global warming, but apparently not in the “Axis of Evil” that is the media universe. News channels only care about ratings, and the best way to get ratings is shock value.

Of course Richards going on a racist rampage upset his audience. But why did CNN, Fox News, MSNBC and every minor soft news program decide to play the offensive material repeatedly? Weren’t they concerned with offending their audience? Apparently not.

My favorite part was when some low-level reporter from CNN was interviewing Richards’ hecklers and kept repeatedly playing the video footage of Richards.

The reporter continually egged on the two African-American men with his poor questions, trying to enrage them because this is his big story. He obviously wanted to gain fame from the interview he conducted with the people Richards made fun of. I really think the coverage of the incident has been nearly as sad as the ordeal itself.

Now all the news organizations are praying that they get to interview Richards so they can ask him questions to egg him on and try and get him to say that he is racist or at least say something that would make him look even more racist.

I guess it was a smart move for Richards to make his apology on The Late Show with David Letterman and not a real news program. Richards looked like a shell of a man while uttering the phrase, “I’m not a racist.”

No one was laughing at what Richards said. He used hateful language to verbally attack his black audience members, and that is completely different than telling a joke.

Richards was wrong and tried to apologize; that is all he can do. If he tries to give money to African-American charities as further proof that he’s not racist, like BlackNews.com has suggested, the money will be tainted and shouldn’t be accepted by them.

On Letterman, Richards was at a loss for words. You could see in his eyes he knew his life was ruined.

I beg the media to talk about more important things. Just let Richards crawl back into a hole of watching Seinfeld reruns and living off the residual checks, because the media needs to stop blowing it out of proportion like it has been.

Let Richards live his life and make amends with who he offended in private.

julianoj3@lasalle.edu