Been Fooled Before...

When the story about Michael Richards shouting racist remarks to audience members broke, something seemed strange about it. So, I surfed and watched a video of the outburst. When I saw the video, I immediately thought of Andy Kaufmann and some of the rants he did, and it was like Michael was "channeling" Andy. He was doing this at a time when Season Seven of Seinfeld was coming out (a year since the last volume came out, the longest time since they started releasing the show on DVD). He was doing this at a time when Celebrity rants and biases were a regular topic with tabloid shows. And afterwards, he appeared on David Letterman, the same guy who gave Kaufmann air time for some of his 'shenanigans'. I couldn't tell for sure, of course, but I certainly suspected that he could have been pulling a Kaufmann.

Since then, he's done nothing but made appropriate apologies. Some people might not call them enough, but I think that's over-reacting, like a lot of people have done about this. By appropriate, I mean that they are level headed and at least seemingly (if not outright) genuine. That's not very Kaufmannesque. Kaufmann would have started an apology, but done it in such a way to egg things on even further. Richards did not. For all I know, he may have started to pull a Kaufmann, didn't like the way it was going, and backed out.

While it may (or may not) make for an interesting theory, but odds are, he probably just lost it. If I had so many idiots and wags (people who are obsessed with celebrities, but don't have any talent to get even close to getting on TV themselves) calling me a 'washup' and a 'loser' simply because I haven't been on a hit show since something like Seinfeld, I may very well have lost it too. I just hope he can find his peace.

Speaking of being fooled, it seems like it's harder to tell nowadays. With the prevailing belief that 'there is no such thing as bad publicity', who knows how many celebrity 'goofs' are simply a way to keep their name in print (like paparazzi somehow getting 'compromising' pictures of a celebrity, when you know the celebrity KNOWS that the paparazzi are there)?

I've been fooled before. Back when we sent armed troops into Somalia to keep the peace, the media was already there. Ahead of the main body of our force, the Navy sent in some advance Seal teams. I watched on TV as news crews were on the beach, in the middle of the night, cameras and lights at the ready. When a seal team landed in their rubber boat, they were immediately surrounded by bright lights and jabbering reporters. Instead of taking out the lights and getting away from them, they just stood there, slowly looking around the area. I was confused. With those bright lights, there was no way they were able to see anything, so why just stand there? It bugged me for some time, until it dawned on me. They were decoys, DUH! They were the first on the beach, landed right where the reporters were waiting, and drew everyone's attention. They probably landed the real advance teams a mile up the beach. Heck, they could have landed a company of Marines on that beach behind the reporters, and they would never have noticed.

---jps