By Staff
Michael Richards, relegated to comedy clubs (by the "Seinfeld curse?") lashed out and invoked lynching images in a racist rant aimed at hecklers, reducing to rubble what's left of his post-Cosmo Kramer career.
As celebrities writhing with self-inflicted wounds go, Richards has a lot of company as fodder for the fifth estate, whether they carry phone cameras for their blogs or "E" microphones as they shred real lives for our entertainment, from bigots to "Fed-Ex."
There's Mel Gibson's anti-Jewish tirade during a drunk-driving arrest.
There's Isaiah Washington mixing it up with McDreamy, Patrick Dempsey, on the set of "Grey's Anatomy" after his heartless cardiologist, Preston Burke, dismissed gay castmate George O'Malley (T.R. Knight) as a "faggot."
As if race scabs from 1995 need more picking, along comes Rupert Murdoch, resurrecting the 1995 O.J. murder trial for a book and Fox TV deal where Simpson could continue to snub the judgment the Goldman family won some more with hypotheticals about how he would have butchered Nicole and her friend Ron.
All this on the heels of an election where Virginia Sen. George Allen forfeited his seat for his "macaca" comment and Rush Limbaugh mocked Michael J. Fox's Parkinson's because the actor made an ad for embryonic-stem-cell research.
Limbaugh's ploy backfired in his home state. A pro-stem-cell law passed in Missouri, where Democrat Claire McCaskill won a Senate seat.
I've never been a fan of political correctness because it just papers over deep-seated hatreds that continue to fester.
I'm also past tired of the going-through-the-motions scandal management drill.
Commit an offense, for which the media reflexively demand an apology.
Act contrite, especially if you're Richards on "Letterman" with the season seven DVD hanging in the balance.
Then hit the comeback trail.
Even O.J. is free to continue combing golf courses for real killers.
Every little meaningless morsel is amplified out of all proportion for the complacent masses, equating the war in Iraq and the Anheuser-Bush twin's "Girls Gone Wild" Argentina antics or Britney's new best gal pal Paris Hilton by sharing the same airwaves.
Does the content of our entertainers' characters matter?
Is "Seinfeld" sullied by slurs slung by the comedian who portrayed Jerry's wacky neighbor?
The Cyclops media searchlight even swung again on the real Kenny Kramer to wonder if a character's hate speech would hurt a real man's tour business.
Even before it ended in 1998, minorities mocked "Seinfeld" as too white to be New York and stereotypical portrayals, from the Johnnie Cochran-esque lawyer to Babu the Pakistani restaurant owner.
Ironically, as we drown drinking from the fire hydrant torrent of titillating raw information swamping our living rooms, we know less than ever.
Why do we tolerate that, but not each other?
Bobbin along: Sewing is enjoying an unlikely renaissance.
The popularity of making your own clothes ought to spur sales of pin cushions, pinking shears and patterns.
Shows like "Project Runway" help interest young people.
The Home Sewing Association estimates an increase in U.S. sewing hobbyists from 30 million in 2000 to 35 million.
Since moms were too busy working, the new generation of sewers is learning outside the home.
Sewing clubs on high school and college campuses are flourishing. Others join virtual sewing circles on the Internet.
For those of us more interested in learning guitar than sewing: Australian scientist Richard Helmer developed an air-guitar T-shirt with built-in motion sensors that detect arm movements and turn them into audible riffs.
Or, for those of us sorry we missed Jack Black's 2003 "School of Rock", there's Rock 'n' Roll Fantasy Camp, which Dowagiac visitor Sarah Vowell experienced in Miami with Nils Lofgren of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, Rick Derringer and Lou Gramm of Foreigner.
A February session features Paul Stanley of Kiss.
Subpoena power: That's what U.S. Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., will wield in January as chairman of the House Government Reform Committee.
Oversight? He likes to point out that the House took 140 hours of sworn testimony to learn whether President Clinton misused the White House Christmas card list for political purposes compared to 12 hours on Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse.
He's already intent on sinking his teeth into something meaty – Halliburton's $16 billion contract to provide services to our troops in Iraq.
Quips, quotes and qulunkers: "The United States has lost the war in Iraq."
– Joe Klein in the Dec. 4 Time magazine
M*A*S*H, "The Martinis and Medicine Collection," satirized Vietnam through a Korean police action lens for 11 seasons – three times longer than the conflict itself.
Few TV dramedies approach the quality of its writing, but seriously, who has the time or will to wade through a 36-disc set?
Jumping the shark: Shawn Carter (Jay-Z), 37 today, ends his three-year retirement with perhaps rap's first grown-up album, but Beyonce's boyfriend can expect the same thug credibility problems as Eminem when, despite production by Dr. Dre and Kanye West, Time says lyrically he's "telling rap's new kids to get off his lawn" and compares "Kingdom Come" with "Herb Alpert-era smooth jazz."
Ouch, although he's not quite Tony Bennett, whose 20-city U.S. tour is sponsored by the AARP.