Culture Complex: The Kramer in All of Us

As Hollywood goes nuts, maybe the audience needs to examine itself too

Look to the cookie!" If only Michael Richards had remembered the advice of Jerry Seinfeld, rhapsodizing on his sitcom about the racial-harmony message of the black-and-white cookie. When Richards (Seinfeld's Kramer) called African-American hecklers in a comedy club "niggers" and joked about lynching them, it capped a season of celebrity lunacy. Mel Gibson had his anti-Jewish tirade during a drunk-driving arrest; actor Isaiah Washington reportedly called a fellow Grey's Anatomy cast member a "faggot" during an argument on set. News Corp. chairman Rupert Murdoch, meanwhile, apologized last week not for bigotry per se but for cynically ripping off the race-and-gender scab...

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