Posted 1:59 AM by Alfred

After digesting it over the course of the day, and now seeing seinfeld’s appearance on letterman, in conjunction with the painful and just flat out uncomfortable mike Richards apology, one thing I take away from this is just an immense feeling of justification in my respect and awe and admiration for Jerry Seinfeld. What a class fucking act. Yes, part of it is that mike Richards is in many respects an investment for him and he has to protect that investment, but this is a man that has so much money, fuck it, how much does it matter, the line that just got me was “Thanks, Dave, for helping out my friend.” Isn’t that what life is all about. Helping out your friends. Even when they fuck up to the nth degree. Making no bones about how horrible he thought what “Kramer” did on that stage, but never abandoning him, calling him his friend, saying that he “loved” him. I mean, that shit is deep. Here is a moment where a man is shattered in the public eye, possibly never to regain the footing on the pop culture consciousness that he once enjoyed. And the one person that could just as easily let him hang out to dry, his de facto employer, the person who “made” him, and could just as easily disassociate, comes to his aid and gives him a conduit to talk to the public and apologize, as agonizing as that apology was to watch.

Something else that I just can’t ignore from this Monday & this weekend’s aftermath is the fact that we’re not getting the OJ TV special and “if I did it” book. Of course, I mean, you have to say this is a good thing, despite the sickening fact that OJ already got his money (I’m assuming), and the sad state of America fact that 99% of you mofos would have watched this thing and felt like shit guilty in the morning. But, what does it say about race relations, the discomfort that still exists between black and white, these two possibly yet probably not so diametrically opposed independent phenomonens, of mike Richards tossing out n-bombs (emphatically) like the paperboy on his route down main street, and OJ getting his mea culpa (with a twist) blocked from the voracious eyes of the jaded and emotionally unattached public, a public that has seen so many fake murders and fake atrocities and real horrors made to appear as digital copy that we absorb it like a sponge takes on water while you do your evening dishes. Not sure if that’s a question or a statement, but I know it has some kind of bite to it. Fuck it, good night.

update: I don't know, though, the more I think about it, I mean, part of it I think is that Jerry's a good guy and wants to pull kramer out of the gutter, but it is right before Christmas, right before the biggest shopping day of the year, and he's trying to pimp a new DVD that happens to have a guy on the cover of it that dropped about 80 consecutive n-bombs in a nightclub over the weekend, so, yeah, jerry does have quite a big chunk of change tied up in cleaning up Michael Richards' image, so, uh, I guess scratch his man of the year parade, at least for the time being. I still thought it was a nice gesture though, for all the good that it did, and I think it did a little. but Kramer's got more splainin and damage control to do and, frankly, there's just no way the world's ever gonna see him the same way again. I mean, lower & higher echelon public figures have been almost permanently castigated for much, much, less, some deservedly so and some not so deservedly so. this one is pretty deservedly, at least for a while and until some real and semi-intelligent contrition has been displayed, contrition that doesn't try to muddle up the issue with katrina references and antiquated use of terms like afro-american. shit like that makes him look evasive and ignorant. and if he's ever gonna at least semi-repair this disgrace, he's gotta come across on-point and aware. anyway, took some serious balls to show his face on live tv so soon after the shit-storm though. but point-blank, kramer, that was some fucked up shit, so get used to your pariah suit for a nice long spell. salud.

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