That reminds me of watching bad comedy at an open mic night, as if he's a nervous performer who blurts something out in a panic.
My bet is that he's on something. Hello substance abuse.
I didn't watch the video--I can't take watching that sort of thing sometimes--but how depressing. And I do kind of feel bad for Richards: what could he possibly have been thinking?
"I hate black people" seems like a live possibility.
I report the following reaction without comment: for some reason, having read the description the video wasn't as bad as I was expecting. I don't know why-- maybe the same features that prompted the thought about stage fright.
The video made me cringe. That's one messed-up guy who, as ogged says, only too late realizes he's aired too much of his mess in public.
As if he's in the process of realizing that not everyone shares his internal narrative. Whoops!
(Or: in order to achieve hilarity by saying what everyone else thinks but is afraid to say, you have to be right about what they think; else you're just a raving lunatic. Cf Hilzoy's recent post on "politically correct.")
Yeah, we have a phrase for certain cousins who blurt bizarreries: "has a rich internal monologue."
Let the Michael Kramer-Mel Gibson comparisons begin.
10
okay: both of them have the same number of letters in their last names.
And Kramer is taller?
Michael Kramer actually is Christ, while Mel just played him in a movie.
Ogged, is your webmail working? An email just bounced back.
Okay, my comment made no sense. Carry on.
hmm, Michael Richard was invited back to the club the next night while Mel Gibson was put on double-secret show biz probation.
Ogged, is your webmail working?
No, none of the at unfogged addresses are working yet. Try me at unfogged at yahoo or at my personal account.
It's just disgusting, bringing an unlawful video recording device into a private venue like that.
Cosmo Kramer, people. Y'all must suck at Trivial Pursuit Mid-90s Edition.
I'm a Trivial Pursuit Classic Edition player myself, snarkout. Never was a big Seinfeld fan. Humiliation-as-comedy isn't my preferred shtick.
Actually, the first comparison I thought of was that Gibson had managed to malign both women and Jews in his rant, whereas Richards only appears to have it in for blacks. Also, Gibson was drunk, though I suppose it remains to be revealed if he was on something at the time.
Was he really invited back the next day, Neil? Geez.
4: Not necessarily. He could simply have been using a weapon he knew, with almost 100% certainty, would hurt.
In verbal combat people with others they don't know well, people tend to use the weapon that would hurt themselves. If they know something about the other, then they tend to use that information.
But the weapon was also 100% certain to blow up in his face. You would think that a comedian could come up with some sort of insult that was not also a racial slur.
21: Yeah, but there's a lot of that going around lately. Anyone want to take bets on rehab for something or the other being mentioned soon?
I was just surprise he didn't have any of the usual stereotype jokes about it, he was just enjoying saying the word "nigger". which seems to cut against the 'he hates black people" idea (well not completely, but as the primary animating cause for the incident).
I haven't seen the clip but I would like to suggest that Richards attempted a bizarre heckler takedown, then sensed/realized that it was taken as a racial slur, and decided too quickly to go along with it. Didn't work.
I don't think "upside down with a fork up your ass" has anything to do with lynching, in the way that a white performer telling a black guy "fifty years ago we'd have [killed you]" does. But I'm ready to be wrong about that.
Re 24 (yoyo): I don't think you're right. I think he was really angry and just started spewing foul-mouthed garbage. And as for drugs, maybe he was off his meds, but I don't think this was substance abuse. Sad to see a guy throw his career away, but he earned it.
I haven't seen the clip but I would like to suggest that Richards attempted a bizarre heckler takedown...
I would suggest you watch the clip, because this reading is highly, highly implausible.
Face it, the man's a bitter failure and has gone over the edge. He didn't have a career to throw away.
As for having him back the next night: That was more than likely a purely economic decision - nothing draws the mad, slavering hordes like a road accident waiting to happen. How disappointed they must have been.
But he surely has plenty of money! Maybe he can find some peace and happiness in planting a community garden or, er, something.
also: I was wondering about that stick a fork in his ass bit...but what's the saying "stick a fork in his ass b/c he's done!". I'm reluctant to make inferences, but, especially given Richard's hostile racism after this comment was made, I can't think of any way to make sense of the "fork" bit unless he meant "stick a force in his ass b/c he's done" where done=dead. If someone has a better interpretation, of course, I'd be willing to listen.
Here is the youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvQq0HQ45Q4
After having looked at the video, it looks to me like he got angry, tried to channel Richard Pryor, and blew it completely, having forgotten at least one important factor.
After looking at the video, it looks to me like he got angry, tried to get in touch with his inner Richard Pryor, but forgot at least one critical factor.
And yeah, I really love the new software tweaks.
Ouch. This was painful to watch. But how is this "the true heart of the Seinfeldian universe"? Was that a joke, or were you being serious?
Seinfeld, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, another Larry David show, have had their share of race-related humor, among humor of many other varieties. (The "affirmative action" episode of CYE jumps to mind.) But to say race hatred is at the "heart" of Seinfeld seems wildly off-base.
Ogged just hates Seinfeld and is looking for any justification he can find.
I think some of y'all are trying way too hard to get Richards off the hook. The bottom line is that when a white person says "nigger," they're presumed racist until proven innocent. And when a white person angrily screams it over and over again and invokes the good old days when "we" would have "you" upside down and dead and blames it on interrupting "the white man," he's proven himself a stone-cold racist.
I know it's a bit "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln," but I do wonder what the earlier part of his routine looked like. I'm guessing he was bombing.
How about Mel Gibson and Michael Richards co-hosting Saturday Night Live? Just think of the skit potential. And a major dose of self-mockery would probably be their best shot at rehabilitating their public images.
he's proven himself a stone-cold racist.
Too easy, of no utility, and a good example of slippery slope-ism in pejoratives. If you want "stone-cold racist", look at the people who tuck dynamite in a church and turn little girls into hamburger thrown against a wall, the guy who carefully put a .30-06 bullet in Medgar Evers' back, or the politicians who carefully create systems designed to perpetuate an under-class.
Richards is just a one-trick pony faced with that realization and handling it badly.
okay, I mostly don't comment here anymore, but I may as well pipe up to say, because this is exactly what would have driven me fucking insane in a feminism discussion, I feel like I should point out when it's happening about race, so I'm not just sticking up for my own group.
I didn't watch the clip, but if we can't label MR a racist under these circumstances I do not know what the word means, and it's kind of disturbing to hear using it to describe someone who calls someone "nigger" repeatedly, and talked about lynching someone, is a slippery slope-ism in pejoratives (!). Even if we draw some bullshit distinction between believing that stuff and being willing to use it to hurt someone, being willing to use it to hurt someone is quite sufficient to get the designation "racist."
jayzus.
It's so cute when she gets uppity, isn't it?
You sounded a little more respectful last night, Labs.
Hanging from the ceiling by your scrotum is not FDA approved.
When the word "Madame" is appended, more or less.
The women of the FDA will do anything if you ask nicely.
FDA: Fontana-Danglers of America?
Not that what I'm about to say isn't so blindingly self-evident that saying it is kind of pointlessly redundant, but Tia is absolutely right in 41.
I'm sorry that I mangled nearly every sentence in that comment though. I should learn to preview.
Hey, it's Tia.
The titles to posts have been to short as of late, given the recent comments section of the sidebar a rushed, unpleasant cadence.
I think I'm the usual long-titler -- I've been slack the last few days.
No one's done anything worth cheering?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, I don't think we can be confident that Richards is a racist. There are some acts, like killing Medgar Evars, that couldn't plausibly have any other motivation than racism, but Richard's meltdown seemed more like a guy who lost it reaching for the nastiest thing he could say. It was a racist thing to do, and I hope he never works again, but I'm definitely not confident that he hates black people, or whatever racism is supposed to be.
The only reason I have to disagree with Tia is that this isn't a 'slice of life' from Michael Richards; he's on stage, doing a bit. Now of course this doesn't mean that parts of his personality can't slip out, and probably did in this case, but I'm quite reluctant to make personal judgments about performers based solely on what they do or say while they're performing. (Sorry, Mel, that means you're not off the hook.)
I think we're veering into P/udge territory now. When was simple, uniform hatred ever a necessary condition for racism?
I'm just saying that we don't have enough evidence about Richard's beliefs (which I take it is what a charge of racism requires) to be confident that he's a racist.
I'm just saying that we don't have enough evidence about Richard's beliefs (which I take it is what a charge of racism requires) to be confident that he's a racist.
This is wildly and perniciously wrong. If the Klansman stringing you up from a tree is just doing it out of peer pressure rather than any actual racial animus -- he'd be doing the same thing to Canadians if that was the group the Klan was after -- it doesn't matter. What is actually within the soul of the person doing or saying something racist is completely, but completely, unimportant. Richards called a black person a nigger as a personal attack on him -- whether he's a racist in his inmost heart, or just someone who uses racism as weapon against black people because it's convenient is not important in the slightest. (Intentions can be important if there's some question about what it is you were actually doing -- using a racial epithet as a punch line, if you honestly believed you weren't attacking or hurting anyone with it, could conceivably be not a racist thing to do. Probably stupid anyway, but there's room for argument. But where the action was unambigiously an attack, motivation doesn't matter.)
This fetishization of 'real racism(sexism, whatever)' annoys the crap out of me. The way it works is "Whatever you did/said isn't the issue, the issue is whether you're really, in your heart of hearts, a racist. And racism is the most terrible thing in the world, so it would be awful to call someone a racist without really knowing that, in their heart of hearts, they were. And no one can really know what's in another person's heart. So hey! looks like you're off the hook. Let's go get a beer."
P/udge. His skepticism knew no bounds.
It's not a fetishization, LB, it's maintaining the distinction between an act and its motivation. I said it was a racist thing to do, and I said that he should never work again (whether he gets a beer while he's unemployed is up to him). Maybe this is just a disagreement about what these words mean; I took it to be generally believed that calling someone racist or sexist implied something about their beliefs. Maybe this is part of the reason we've had all these "are so sexist!" "am not!" arguments.
60 is right.
There's a line I really like from Batman Begins (of all films), said by Katie Holmes (of all people) to the lazy playboy Bruce Wayne, which is directly the opposite of what we're usually taught: "It's not who you are inside; it's what you do that defines you." We'll never truly know the inner workings of another person's mind. We can only judge actions. Richards said some racist shit. We know that for a fact. It doesn't matter if he goes home every night and says a silent prayer to a picture of Martin Luther King.
Ogged:
that Richards is a racist.
that he's a racist.
LB:
What is actually within the soul of the person doing or saying something racist is completely, but completely, unimportant. Richards called a black person a nigger as a personal attack on him -- whether he's a racist in his inmost heart, or just someone who uses racism as weapon against black people because it's convenient is not important in the slightest.
I wonder if I'm in time to head off some conceptual confusion. Ogged takes belief (or some analogous attitude) to be the truthmaker for charges of being a racist (as opposed to performing racist acts); LB says this doesn't matter (though implicitly accepting it). LB's objection seems to be against people who make two moves: (a) being a racist requires such-and-such beliefs, and (b) certain serious kinds of responses are only warranted if the person in question is really a racist-at-heart or whatever. Ogged makes (a) but explicitly disavows (b)-- that's the point of "never work again," I take it.
I don't like 60 because it seems to suggest that somebody who hates black people but knows to keep his mouth shut about it isn't a racist.
Nah come on. The relevant belief is that he believed he could get away with it, and he believed that it was an ok thing to do, ergo he's a racist, "in a very real sense". He had the option of not saying it and he made his choice.
(I will say in passing that the hecklers almost certainly had it coming, and IMO you could tell from their tone of voice saying "that was uncalled for[1]" that they were basically guilty as sin. But the matter at issue is whether he was racist).
[1] lame or what by the way[2]? What kind of a ponce heckles in a comedy club, gets called the n-word and responds "ooh that was uncalled-for!"? Talk about trying to do a fifty dollar walk with ten cent feet.
[2] if there is a sense of "lame" which isn't offensive to the disabled, I meant it that way, although there probably isn't.
But why on earth should anyone give a damn whether someone else is racist or sexist by that standard? Saying and doing racist and sexist things is important; what's going on in the recesses of your psyche is of interest to your loved ones, and your god, if any, but not really to anyone else.
The idea that determining who's racist by that sort of standard is either possible or even remotely interesting seems insane to me.
If you think you hate black people, but you consistently act in non-hateful ways towards them, we might say that you're confused about what "hate" means, or what "black" means.
60: Of course "Whatever you did/said" matters. However, from the evidence to date, Richards is to racism as Melissa Rivers is to talent. Having moved from NYC to Birmingham, Alabama in the mid-sixties, I object to "stone-cold racist", my racistometer is calibrated differently. In this case, what he did/said matters little.
Pegging the needles in the red on any input is the easy way out, thinking about the quantity and quality of damage, real or potential, and dealing with bad in an effective way is much more difficult.
Given the the abilty to terminate with extreme prejudice, I'd pick David Irving before Mel G. and anyone in the Aryan Brotherhood before Michael. All of which is does *not* mean I'd bother with CPR if Richards fell over in front of me.
It's both possible and interesting, LB. For example, many people like to muse about whether GWB personally hates gay people or merely takes political advantage of others' bigotry. That's an interesting question that hinges on what he believes rather than what he does. The race case will have parallel examples.
#65: if we're getting all philosophy department here, the analogy would be to someone who put on his ice-skates, shouted "let's go skating" and whizzed off over the lake. Sure, we might say "in his heart of hearts, none of us can ever really know whether he thinks the ice is thick or thin", but in actual fact, making the choice to do what he did is constitutive of having the relevant belief. Thank you, my name is Gilbert Ryle, now goodnight.
69: and, as a follow up, I emphasize that no one's really made a case that attributions of genuine racism (as opposed to racist actions) have practical importance. I think they do, but that's an argument that hasn't been made yet.
I'm not sure whether to point out that 73 is a terrible argument or to take it as a joke.
73: But what if he's suicidally depressed and off his meds? Your argument is on thin ice.
it's not a terrible argument at all. "Being a racist" is "having a disposition to do and say racist things". Although I do think that good old-fashioned Rylean behaviourism has a lot more to be said for it than is fashionable to say, one doesn't have to take the whole bill of goods in order to be a Rylean about concepts like "racist". Unless you believe that to be a racist is to have the proposition "white people are best" stored away in your brain with a flag "true" on it somewhere I suppose, but I think that this really is a retreat to the inner sanctum.
#73: easily dealt with by the same powers of stipulation that get used in every other philosophy department example.
Eh, I shouldn't be arguing today; I'm not really up for making sense.
My Dad has said some variation on 60 and 63 as long as I can remember. He attributes it -- some aphorism whose formulation I can't currently remember about actions mattering more than thoughts -- to Dickens.
I figure intentions count, but I'm of the mind that if when heckled, your first reaction is to make lynching jokes, chances are that says something about your intentions. I mean, aren't there other ways to deal with hecklers, more choice insults about their partners or sexual proclivities?
No, it's a terrible argument because, even granting arguendo that commitment to some fairly small set of actual and possible behaviors is constitutive of belief, the ice-skating case and the Richards case are still too impoverished to distinguish between genuine belief and acts-as-if, as any behavioristic account would have to do in order to be convincing.
I figure intentions count, but I'm of the mind that if when heckled, your first reaction is to make lynching jokes, chances are that says something about your intentions.
more strongly - if it's in you to do that at all, as first, second or ninth reaction, then it's in you.
So we have a spectrum of positions here: LB and SB (when they're not boiling babies) deny the interior life of humans , and claim that doing racist things makes one a racist; Labs, who is right now petitioning the Church to take mercy on Ted Bundy's soul, thinks that our interior life not only exists, but matters in determining how we react to someone's actions. I take the moderate position that our interior life exists and is worth examining, but ought not matter in calibrating our reactions to acts we deem reprehensible.
I'm with dsquared on the Rylean behaviourism thing as well.* There may or may not be a fact of the matter about whether one is a racist qua inner-sanctum but it's racist qua words and deeds that matters.
* I have sympathies with lots of unfashionably early/mid-20th century philosophical views, though.
Hey, I'm boiling babies too over here!
d2, continuing this beyond its natural life, my point is that any Rylean account is going to have to be much more complicated than this: "making the choice to do what he did is constitutive of having the relevant belief." You say, aha, we can stipulate, but that means moving away from the actual world since we don't know if actual-Richards conforms to these stipulations.
He appears to be some sort of racist or possibly insanely insensitive douchebag. I confess that I'm surprised.
Oh, this is just great. Not only is the OJ special cancelled, but my blog is where Gilbert Ryle comes to die.
I don't think that the acts-as-if distinction is relevant here. It is racist to act like a racist, so to "act as if" a racist is to act racist.
The state of willingness to say, in evident anger, that back in the day you would have lynched someone, and the state of willingness to call someone a nigger repeatedly, are interior states that indicate someone is racist. "I should use these methods to hurt this person and whomever else I might be hurting is not important" is a belief. Not all beliefs are perfectly verbally articulated.
Thank you, FL, for reminding me why I do not have an AoC in ethics.
d2, we'd been maintaining that there are racist acts that are racist acts regardless of whether the person who performed them is an ogged-style racist-in-the-heart. (And you can certainly imagine someone who acts as a racist would act for all sorts of reasons short of having the attitudes that, I'm halfheartedly suggesting, make someone a genuine racist.)
furthermore, I'm not (at this specific moment) defending any general Rylean program, even about ice skaters. What I'm saying is that the question "is this man a racist" means (at least partly, blah blah) "in the right set of circumstances, would this man intentionally launch into a tirade of racist abuse". Which is a question we can now, expost, answer about Richards.
I think that homosexuality in its ordinary-language meaning has a similar constitutive sense to it; if you willingly have sex with a man, then you are at least a little bit gay.
It is racist to act like a racist, so to "act as if" a racist is to act racist.
Now now, some people who act like racists are in fact insanely insensitive douchebags. They justify their behavior on the basis that because they are never offended by anything, neither should anyone else be, so the possible humor value of a racist remark outweighs all possible reasons for not making a racist remark. They generally drastically overstate the possible humor value of these remarks, though.
So, trying to be serious for a moment, I'm not sure it's possible to resolve this dispute, since we're arguing about what it means to say that someone "is racist" and I'm not sure how we'd adjudicate between competing definitions.
I'm sympathetic to 55, but as with some others here, it appears to me that the likliehood Richards could have said those things but not actually hold racist beliefs is extremely low. I agree that some actions can be racist, but lightly racist, and may not indicate racist belief. But Richards comments were rather heavily and violently racist, not the sort of slip-up anyone without racist beliefs would make.
(similarly, if it turns out that Richards has actually been carrying out an Andy Kaufman-style conceptual art project for some underground film, then the reaction would be "nope, no pass, it is still racist to choose to do an underground art project that involves a tirade of racist abuse".)
To follow up on 96...However, an actual comedian is not given to grotesquely misestimating the humor value of things he is about to say, so I think the arrow is pointing to "actual racist who was probably high on something or otherwise he could have kept his thoughts to himself".
Having moved from NYC to Birmingham, Alabama in the mid-sixties, I object to "stone-cold racist", my racistometer is calibrated differently.
this is the "we're not as bad as Saddam" argument. You're using the wrong scale.
Now now, some people who act like racists are in fact insanely insensitive douchebags. They justify their behavior on the basis that because they are never offended by anything, neither should anyone else be, so the possible humor value of a racist remark outweighs all possible reasons for not making a racist remark.
I have never understood this version of the "just joking" defence. People say "I'm an equal opportunity asshole, I make nasty remarks about all sorts of people", as if it were in some way conceptually impossible for them to be bigoted in lots of different ways. I think I would have to believe that someone actually had Asperger's Syndrome or something similar before I took this seriously, and I'd take the defence seriously precisely because I didn't think that person was capable of having the same sorts of beliefs about things as me.
if you willingly have sex with a man, then you are at least a little bit gay.
Man, leave it to d2 to turn to personal attacks.
Halfway seriously, d, we can agree that "it is still racist" to do the concept-art thing, since we seem to agree that racist *acts* require this special beetle-in-the-box that Ogged and I are hung up about, though we differ w.r.t this beetle being required for being a racist.
also, money says Richards was on coke.
People say "I'm an equal opportunity asshole, I make nasty remarks about all sorts of people", as if it were in some way conceptually impossible for them to be bigoted in lots of different ways.
It does happen, though. Generally among people who have no memory of ever observing an act of bigotry between ages 0 and 30, as a result of living in a homogeneous environment. He grows to feel that actual bigotry is so implausible that anyone who actually takes it seriously is a throwback, and therefore he think it's ridiculous that he could actually be considered a bigot for saying bigoted things. "Have you ever met a bigot? I sure haven't. Let's not start making stuff up. I bet if I ever met a bigot he would say way worse stuff than me."
That's why I said that he is aware of the theoretical reasons why he shouldn't say racist things, but considers it so implausible that anyone he cares about would be offended that any tiny scrap of humor value outweighs those concerns.
A lot of this goes on on the "Howard Stern" show, which I find very funny.
98: lightly racist
"Now with 50% less racism and no transfats!"
Well, ogged was just telling us the other day how normal people can be provoked into murder, so it's not a stretch to say he believes that normal people can also be provoked into saying racist things. It's problematic to say that everybody who can be provoked into saying racist things is a racist, since we all know that racial slurs hurt. It also lets off the hook the people who do racist things because they don't like people of other races, who I believe are genuinely a societal problem, in a way that people who know how to push buttons are not.
It's not OK to yell racial slurs at somebody in a crowded theatre, for whatever reason, just to get back on the same page with the baby-boilers.
I will now ban myself for writing two consecutive paragraphs containing the sequence of words "so implausible that anyone".
It's not OK to yell racial slurs at somebody in a crowded theatre, for whatever reason
I think we all agree with that.
I object to this baby-boiler slander. I have an intention to boil babies, but have boiled no actual babies.
99: an Andy Kaufman-style conceptual art project
Byron de la Beckwith wasn't a racist, he was just a performance artist whose act -- some cretins might argue -- went a little too far.
Also, the crowds screaming for the blood of the Little Rock 9 were supposed to be part of an early Christo project, but the federal troops dispersed them before they could be wrapped in a giant roll of smiley face paper.
Oops. 106 and 111 were me: Sir Kraab, nice to meetcha.
Later, I will make a brilliant distinction between intentions (which, I've argued on this very blog, don't exist) and motivations (which really isn't the word I should have used).
107. Sure, I wouldn't be suprised if, when white and black guy about to fight, the white dude spat out some racial attacks. Such a person surely need not be ordinarily racist (although he certainly wouldn't be full of anti-racist values, which some might perceive as a deficiency). But Richards wasn't about to fight this dude, and, even taking into account his unusual anger, and his probably-altered state, I still think it unlikely that a basically-not-racist person would go half as far as he did.
110: I do hope this is because you're taking the appropriate time to brine them first. It's important to do things right. I suggest a mix of pineapple and orange juice, 2 T of peppercorns, some crystallized ginger, brown sugar, and soy sauce. Salt too, of course, but you knew that.
101: You're using the wrong scale.
If stone-cold haters of the twentieth century flavor no longer existed, I'd re-calibrate. As it is, they're still around and multiplying rapidly.
It also lets off the hook the people who do racist things because they don't like people of other races, who I believe are genuinely a societal problem, in a way that people who know how to push buttons are not.
yeah they are, surely? And furthermore, the specific societal problem which they are part of is one that has a name beginning with "r".
116. bio, which part are you objecting to, "racist" or the "stone-cold" modifier?
To jackmormon's earlier query:
I didn't see what transpired before the video. But I have it on good authority that he was awful, and when the hecklers started in with the "You're not funny"s, he first played the class card--"I'm rich and can have you arrested just like that!" against his tormentors. And when that didn't silence 'em, he went "nuclear" and blew up everything.-- a commenter at Steve Gilliard's
Also, Louis C.K., another standup, writes on his message board: 'i saw him do almost this same exact thing at the improv once (actually i had to follow it which was a drag) That time it was about "The fucking jews" It was a bit. He was tryign to be funny in a "daring" way. It didn't work then either. My dad, who is an orthodox jew, was in the audience and he found it pretty upsetting. But he didn't take it seriously.'
What's the point here? It seems like people are convinced that labeling someone a racist has the magic effect of removing that person's pernicious influence from the country's culture. But Richards is already a has-been, and whatever the ultimate decision on racist/not-a-racist, his actions will continue to be a significant bar to his regaining any import in the culture for the rest of his life. So...what? Are we trying to show that we are judicious in our application of the word racist and so can be trusted to use it (and its magic effects) in the future, or to show that we too love black people, just as they love us (implied link)?
118: I'm mostly objecting to the "stone-cold" intensifier. I knew Stone Cold, and M.R. isn't (on what we know so far) even close.
I'm also objecting to what appears to be the reflexive equating of single, rare, or insignificant events with a characteristic. I think there's a difference between, say, leaving the dishes on occasion undone vs being a slob, or getting drunk at a party vs being an alcoholic. That reflexive equation is precisely what racists often do when justifying their prejudices.
Has someone already linked to the apology?
(similarly, if it turns out that Richards has actually been carrying out an Andy Kaufman-style conceptual art project for some underground film, then the reaction would be "nope, no pass, it is still racist to choose to do an underground art project that involves a tirade of racist abuse".)
So what you're saying is that Sacha Baron Cohen really hates Jews?
123: I don't think I've ever seen a classier reaction to one's own appalling behavior. Good for him.
124: Isn't there a useful difference between making a racist attack on an unwitting person as an art project, and encouraging an unwitting person to express their racist opinions as an art project? In the one case (Richards as Andy Kaufman) the innocent dupe is being attacked, in the other case (Borat) the guilty dupe is being tricked into attacking. Borat still makes me uncomfortable, but not in the same way he would if the "Throw the Jew down the well" bit included terrorizing an actual Jewish person who happened to be in the bar (and didn't know it was satire). (I haven't seen the movie, but have a sense of what happens. I'm hoping Pamela Anderson was a confederate; if she wasn't I'm not sure how to characterize that bit, other than as battery.)
I think people are so insistant and saying that those who do racist things are racists because they are sure that being racist is worse, and thus a great social punishment. I'm not sure its the worst thing, and i also think misusing words makes it easier for others to defend themselves and not take what shoudl be the easier to pin charge of 'saying osmething racist".
126: SBC doesn't just get other people to sing anti-Semitic songs; Borat makes anti-Semitic comments himself and even, at one point in the movie, stays at a B&B run by a Jewish couple who he thinks are trying to poison him. (Apparently the couple twigged to SBC's act when they heard him speaking Hebrew gibberish.)
More or less, yeh, although note that my point here is that "is racist" is an objective fact which is not the same thing as "subjectively hates people of a particular race". He's funny, but it is specifically racist humour and you only have to look at the logical pretzels people tie in order to pretend that he isn't.
Intentions don't even exist as theoretical entities part of our best explanations of others' behavior?
Not everything is merely an excuse to do philosophy. The point is not whether Michael Richards has intentions. The question is, why should we care about the intentions of Michael Richards, of all people. We don't have access to anything other than his public words and actions, so that's what we evaluate. And those are racist. Does that mean he "is" a racist? Who gives a shit?
It was ogged who said that there are no such things as intentions.
I don't care about Michael Richards, but your comment suggests that our only having access to his public words and actions makes him unlike other people. If that were true, I would get laid ten times more often.
The "lets pretend noone has internal states" seems prfoundly illiberal.
re: 133
I take it that the quasi-Rylean point isn't to pretend that no-one has internal states but rather to identify racism with a disposition to behave in certain ways rather than with what Ryle calls "occult episodes of which their overt acts and utterances are effects".
There's nothing illiberal about it.
Some sort of Quinean methodological behaviourism still seems warranted to me in this and other cases.
I don't care about Michael Richards, but your comment suggests that our only having access to his public words and actions makes him unlike other people.
Not at all. Someone brought up George Bush. I don't care about whether he hates gays in his heart of hearts either. I care that his party has outlawed gay marriage in a bunch of states. And it's not true that you only have access to people's public words and actions in the sense that I mean; for people you actually know, you know what they think in private, or have some idea. For those people, maybe this kind of discussion has some value. To pretend you can do this with public figures is a pernicious and dangerous aspect of modern American culture.
More or less, yeh, although note that my point here is that "is racist" is an objective fact which is not the same thing as "subjectively hates people of a particular race".
That's your point? That's something I've never heard before. I will now go back and look at your comments again.
He's funny, but it is specifically racist humour and you only have to look at the logical pretzels people tie in order to pretend that he isn't.
But "racist" doesn't imply any prejudice against other races??
my point here is that "is racist" is an objective fact which is not the same thing as "subjectively hates people of a particular race".
Or that when it "racist" is applied to a person, it suggests that racism is an essential quality of that person, rather than a quality of that person's acts or (possibly transient) thoughts?
It probably matters little for public figures who you don't interact with except in an artificial sort of way, with that person not as the intended audience. But if someone in your social circle did something like Kramer (or if you were personal friends with george) then the way to you treat "racist things done b/c of internal jackassism" vs "racist things done b/c of internal racism" would probably be different.
And i wish i hadn't skipped quine and i had read ryle so i knew wtf 134 is about.
skipped Quine? This does not compute ...
[If I get a chance I'll explain later, I'm sure googling 'quine behaviourism methodological' will give you what you need though ...]
Everyone is racist. It's part of the human condition. There are different degrees and wildly varying manifestations, but all are racists, though Western popular culture demands denial of that easily demonstrated fact.
Most of this discussion is meaningless because it pretends that labeling someone a racist separates them in some meaningful way.
A more telling question is, does Michaal Richards hate/dislike/discriminate against dark-brown-skinned people?
Eddy Murphy, to use one of many examples, became a multi-millionaire making fun of black people. He, like myself and everyone else, is undboutedly a racist and his jokes merely underscore it. Though I seriously doubt he hates white people or the black people he so mercilessly, stereotypically makes fun of.
The race card is quite a joker in our culture, and mostly a big waste of time...
Sure, everyone is a racist to some extent.
And sure, what really ultimately matters is not someone's inner racism (because everyone is racist after all) but what effect their racism has on the world.
But it's actually quite difficult to measure the impact that individuals have on society as a whole. As a practical matter, it seems more effective to simply check some beliefs: for example, do you believe that "racism is wrong"? Now what "racism" is exactly is up to some debate, so maybe I'll rephrase: "was lynching wrong? was slavery wrong?"
When you "joke" that fifty years ago, "we" could have lynched "you," you fail the test. The best that could be said about you is that you haven't really thought about it too much.
So yes, everybody is racist to some extent. No, pop culture does not demand denial of this, which is why you can trot out so many examples of successful comedians who make racial jokes. What the culture does demand is believing that lynching is wrong, slavery is wrong, and justifying mistreatment with appeals to innate inferiority is wrong.
Is that so bad?