I know I'm a bit late in on this one, and almost everyone's already commented on it. Obviously Richards' gratuitous use of the N-word was about as funny as a crutch, but Trey Ellis tells us why as he addresses Richards:
If you had just said the n word you might have one day been forgiven but you went for a lynch joke. Yes, a lynch joke. Is that being cheeky and irreverent? Is that like that wigger shit Tarentino tries to pull, crowbarring the n word into every script because he thinks he's that bad of a white boy?
I don't think so.
Suggesting that your obnoxious hecklers should be lynched for disrupting your set is about as funny as having suggested, had they been Jews, that for their rudeness they be gassed.
Indeed.
Sadly, too, as Ellis points out, the race hucksters are moving in to capitalize on Richards' idiocy. What Richards needs to do is to lay low for a while and let the famously forgiving American public forget about this incident, so that he can later make the expected comeback.
Unless one is in jail and unfamous, that is. In that case forgiveness and rehabilitation goes out the window.
Comeback nothing.
His act is not that funny to start with and he is obviously disturbed as a bonus. No comeback for him.
We'll see him on Dancing with the Stars or the Surreal Life before we see him back on stage.
Reasons to be Cheerful. Part ?
The change in casting that gave the role of Monk to Tony Shaloub. The part was originally planned for Richards -- and, ironically, Sharona was originally going to be black. Had it worked out that way, the show wouldn't have made it past the first few eps.
A Richards comeback? What does he have to come back TO? He's one of many actors that got one great supporting role in a long-running series and that's it. Has anyone seen Gabrielle, or Data (except on THRESHOLD which bombed despite his better than usual performance), or Xander, or Will Riker, or many others, lately?
And I'm afraid that the comments that this seems to have been, not an aberration, but his basic feelings seem likely. Hmm, maybe there will be a joint Mel Gibson-Richards production.
"If you had just said the n word you might have one day been forgiven but you went for a lynch joke. Yes, a lynch joke."
I find that odd, since the crowd laughed at the lynching joke. In an LA club no less. Nobody was angry(except for maybe the guys he directed it at) until he used the dreaded N word. In fact, this never would have made it into the media so strongly if he hadn't used the word. It's not lynching jokes that got banned from the club. Paul Mooney didn't say he'll never do another lynching joke. It's absolutely, all about The Word.
The change in casting that gave the role of Monk to Tony Shaloub. The part was originally planned for Richards...
That would have been a disaster. Though a little color wouldn't hurt the show, either.
It's absolutely, all about The Word.
Well, no; it's about the fact that he shouted it repeatedly as an insult, in an enraged tone of voice, while being caught on tape. I very much doubt that he would have done any better if he had used any other racial epithet. Likewise, with regard to the lynch joke, listening to the video, it sounds very much as if the laughter at the lynching joke was a nervous laughter, as if they weren't quite sure where it was going -- in comedy club acts it's fairly common to have a set-up joke, sometimes shocking on its own (especially when race is the subject), leading by a twist into the real kicker, and I suspect most people thought he was just setting up with a racial shock joke of this sort. A skilled comedian could have gotten away with it by some sort of inversion or compensation. Instead, he started shouting racial insults. It's hard to say without actually being there.
I think a comedian of Michael Richards' experience in the industry would have taught him how to deal with that persistent species: the heckler. It would have also taught him how to handle the situation when you are bombing before a paying crowd.
And that would have called for funnier ways of coping with the situation.