ArtLindsey.com

NEW YORK — Though he’s lost many fans after being captured on video hurling racist epithets at a comedy club audience, Michael Richards has an ally: Mel Gibson.

I swore to myself I wouldn’t talk about this, but yet, here I am. As most of you who know me are aware, I have a general distaste for television. Particularly that of the reality and sitcom varieties. However, this garbage refuses to go away, and it leads me to run around screaming, “Why on Earth do we give a damn?!”

Seriously. Why? I’m not condoning what Michael Richards did, but why does it matter? Why are we so bound up about it? Mr. Richards is a pedestrian talent at best. If anybody really cared about him, why would he be doing stand up comedy at the Laugh Factory? He’s not even a has been. He’s a never was.

There’s a disconnect in the logic though, and here’s what it is:

Mr. Richards probably *is* a racist, but at the same time, he was most likely trying to “push the envelope” as they say, and be funny. However, he doesn’t have the talent to pull that kind of thing off. Don’t get huffy with me either. You know as well as I do, a more season comic could have couched it differently and gotten away with it.

We have two components here.

1. Anger.
2. The word “nigger”

When you put those two things together, that’s a bad thing, and bad things happen. By saying that, am I saying those two things are okay when they stand alone?

Yes. I am.

Do you know why?

Because we made them that way.

Anger is the simpler of the two to digest, because we have now created multi-word “disorders” which can explain everything away, and you can be easily medicated for. Even road rage has a clinical name now. It’s ridiculous.

As for the “N” word, I’m not one who runs around spewing it, but I’ll tell you one thing. I’m sick of everybody pissing and moaning about it. That word doesn’t mean anything anymore. Our culture has taken all the power out of it. It’s nonsensical now. I also have no interest in the debate between the ‘a’ and ‘er’ endings. Take your semantics elsewhere. It’s still the same word at its root, essentially meaning “black person”. I know there are people out there who will argue “No, it’s just a derogatory term.” I *agree* that it’s a derogatory term. But at the same time, never have I heard the “N” word in any of its forms and thought of a guy named Sven.

(whispers): I see black people.

That doesn’t make me racist. That makes me honest. I’m just associating what I’ve picked up on over the course of my lifetime. Call me what you will.

Am I defending Michael Richards? No, of course not.

But…we *have* made the “N” word culturally permissible. Should we have? Probably not. But here’s the big thing about it:
It’s a word.

That’s it. Just a word.

That’s the thing about being offended. Do you know who has control over whether or not you are offended?

You do. No one else. Just you. When you allow someone to make you feel “offended”, you are empowering them. Don’t. I’ll agree that we all become offended at one point or another and from time to time. But we allow it to happen to ourselves as a culture with way too much frequency.

As a side note, I have heard that the “victims” in question have hired attorney/political activist Gloria Allred in an effort to procure a cash settlement from Richards.

Um…how about “No”?

I refuse to believe that a group of young blacks has been offended to such a degree, by a word which blacks themselves have allowed to permeate our culture that they need money to help cope with it.

I wonder if they realize that behavior like this perpetuates the use of this on-again-off-again offensive word? How? Throw the world “lazy” in front of it, and you’ll see what I’m driving at. They aren’t helping themselves here. If they are going to sue somebody for money they don’t deserve, (and they *don’t*) I can pretty much guarantee you that somewhere on this rock of six billion people, there is someone using that phrase in reference to that facet of the story right now.

Phrases like that are never going to go away, no matter how many boycotts or cultural “wars” we proclaim. We won’t allow them to.

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