Entertainment and Life

Seinfeld's Kramer, the real life Michael Richards, exploded in a racist tirade at African American audience members who heckled him during a comedy routine. Pointing, Richards screamed "He's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger! A nigger, look, there's a nigger!" and, looking up above the stage, he declared "Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f***ing fork up your ass."

Kramer was wrong. The "we" he referred to, like minded people who would lynch and mutilate black men for offending them, did not stop 50 years ago. Without Sanctuary, Lynching Photography in America, described one such event as follows:

Early one morning in the 1960s, two young boys bicycling to a favorite fishing hole happened upon this scene: a [black inmate's] dead weight hanging by the neck in a thorny bramble of Georgia hardwoods. After they reported it to the local authroities, the Georgia Bureau of Investigainons' chief looked briefly at the scene and declared, "Suicide." He snapped a photograph, and the investigation was closed.

More recently, on June 7, 1998, a member of Richards' "we" chained James Byrd behind his pick up truck and dragged him for miles until he was dead.

Without Sanctuary chronicles an American lynching tradition captured in photos. The photographs show page after page of gruesome, mutilated, even charred corpes, surrounded by happy people, pointing and smiling for the camera. Richards should read it. Then he might understand why he is so wrong.

Update: Richards appeared on the Letterman Show to explain his actions. Seemingly in denial, he blamed his outburst on rage, Katrina and the war and "looked and acted confused."

The Office on NBC last night showed Michael, the boss, callously outing Oscar as gay. Corporate launched an investigation for insensitivity. Michael called a meeting to prove he was okay with gay. An incredibly tense meeting ends with Michael kissing Oscar on the mouth. The show ends with Oscar counting the money corporate paid him not to sue.

The show merits mention here because:

Entertainment imitates life.

Michael's response to being caught as a homophobe was absurdly realistic. Once caught and left to their own devices, discriminators do absurd things. A real life example, Senator Allen's decison to hold "Ethnic Rallies " when caught mocking Macaca, comes to mind.

Corporate paid Oscar too much.

Employers have no obligation to provide employees with a workplace free from sexual preference harassment. Gays are fair game. While Michael's kiss might amount to a battery (unwelcomed and offensive physical contact) and he may have committed a false imprisonment when he blocked the door to keep Oscar from leaving the meeting, the episode was written with Oscar (sort of) consenting to the kiss and deciding to stay in the meeting.

The concern about being insensitive to gays was, however, ironically refreshing.

In real life bad boss behavior does not play out with such comedy. Here is a question and answer about office harassment and defamation. There, a boss took a new female employee to lunch, returned hours later with them both drunk and later threatened to fire the employee who leaked word of it. In Arizona it seems the employee will have little legal recourse if fired.