Say one man in a crowd of people tries to shoot me as I walk down the street. So, I whip out my machine gun and mow down the entire crowd. I should be arrested, of course — but only for killing the innocent people in the crowd.
No one should feel sorry I hurt the guy who had it coming.
It’s the same with hecklers who get racial slurs hurled at them — if you’ve ever been on a stage, you know how uncalled-for it is to throw a performer off on purpose. Michael Richards deserves every criticism that comes his way (including mine), but it’s ridiculous to act like the specific men who provoked him deserve personal apologies. Richards is set to meet with the men, and a cash settlement isn’t off the table.
The problem with Richards’s tirade isn’t that he discriminated against the four men who interrupted his act intentionally, it’s that he didn’t discriminate enough, just as in the situation above I didn’t discriminate enough between gun-wielding and innocent folks in the crowd. Phrasing his insults in the form of racial epithets targeted the entire black community, not just the no-life losers who apparently saw a comic they didn’t like just to give him hell.
It’s other blacks, the ones who didn’t have it coming, who deserve personal apologies. Calling someone a “n—-r” is arguably a little out of proportion for “you’re not funny” or whatever, even on an individual level, but they went of their ways to provoke a reaction, and a reaction they got.
Robert VerBruggen blogs at http://robertsrationale.blogspot.com.
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