I was once socially chastised by a young social group because, one night, I had the hide to announce, "I think the whole Pauline Hanson fiasco is good, ultimately; I'm glad she's on the television saying what so many Australians have never really stopped thinking". They couldn't understand what I was saying; and while I initially tried to explain that they had simply misunderstood (and that whilst I strongly disagreed with her ideas, it was good to finally have them in the public discourse, to disagree with them and acknowledge that such racism exists), eventually I realised they truly believed the PC delusion, and thought that Hanson was the case of an obscure ideology somehow usurping public attention. She wasn't! And so, whilst I am no less appalled by a lot of what we see than the next person, I'm not exactly shocked.

 

You may recall how shocked I wasn't when the Mel Gibson scandal broke, recently; and without a doubt, anti-Semitism has been given a great disservice by the belief that it doesn't really exist anymore, and that because a handful of Jews are running Hollywood, this must mean that Jews have made it clear of oppression and discrimination. And how about Mel Gibson being sexist? Who would have thought?!

This instance was an alcohol-induced (I say "induced" and not "created") release of repressed hatred - a hatred buried so deep in the core of this man, it had festered away, waiting for a moment to be known, and coming out every bit as volatile and unbecoming as you'd expect such hatred to be. The racist and sexist schema, the thought, pre-existed. That Gibson had such thoughts may have been news to many, but all that was really introduced to us was the behaviour, and not the thought. The thought was already there - running so deep in his psyche, the connections to his father were impossible to miss. No doubt the recent global climate would have contributed to this schema, and it was perhaps no surprise that this outburst came during the Israel/Lebanon war, and featured such revelations from Gibson as, "The Jews are responsible for all the wars in the world." But still, these recent events gave meaning to what was already there, and perhaps simply heightened it to a point where, unable to push the hatred from his mind, after a few sips too many, out they came in one vile expulsion.

Are these celebrities any different to everyday people? How many people are reaching this type of boiling point, as fear, hatred, uncertainty and anger finally create an outwardly hateful human being?

I'm going to leave that as a rhetorical question for you; but before I do, let's bring today's media scandal into the picture - the fall of Kramer. Yesterday, Seinfeld's beloved Michael Richards became the latest celebrity to be caught in the throws of such a boiling point; and so very "now" is this incident, it first broke news by being uploaded on Youtube. At a stand up comedy gig, Richards spotted two black men talking and responding negatively to his performance (it has since been reported that the offending line where Richards snapped was "My friend thinks you're not funny"). Something that clearly had to do with much more than simply the moment at hand consumed Richards, who broke out in a frantic, hateful berating of the hecklers, all centering around intensely racist sentiment towards African Americans. Here' s a sample...

"Fifty years ago, we'd have you hanging upside down with a fucking fork stuck up your ass. You can talk, you can talk! You're brave, now, motherfucker! Throw his ass out - he's a nigger! He's a nigger! He's a nigger!" And when one of the men began challenging him, he told him, "That's what happens when you interupt the white man, don't you know?"

 

Now, here's the thing. It has been reported that members of the audience walked out - the quote most widely being used being someone who yelled back, "That was uncalled for!" Now, as it is, for the media to be able to create nothing more than a single voice stating something so underwhelming as "That was uncalled for!" suggests a lot - but watch the infamous Youtube footage, and something the media seems to have missed is the laughter Richards elicits. In fact, there is even cheering. What they fail to report is that the line, "That was uncalled for", comes from the very man Richards is chastising, and when people start to visibly leave, it's only after the two start verbally sparring, leaving us to ponder if the walk-out was more a matter of safety than of offence (why do they only start to walk out once the man stands up to respond to Richards, and not when Richards hurled his racial abuse?). When the man repeatedly tells him it was "uncalled for", and that he is a "loser" and "cracker-boy" (ironically when the African American uses a derogatory term for caucasians, in return), a few people people leave - the most notable exit (and we're talking no more than three people, here) is when Richards announces, "Are you threatening me?" (a black man is threatening a white man? Shit, maybe we better get out of here!). But most stay put and keep laughing ("They're going to arrest me for calling a man a nigger" gets quite a big laugh), and by the end of the video, most of the audience are clearly still there - some finally start to leave because the act is over, and Richards has left the stage. During the tirade, not a single other member of that audience (apart from the men, themselves) can be heard sticking up for them, alongside them, as they protest the racism. It is widely reported that there are boos, but there are not - there are a couple of collective chorus' of "wooo", but these are actually joining in via the stand-up comedy etiquette and are not protesting the dialogue, but enjoying and inflating it. The fact is that apart from the black man, nobody utters a sound of dissaproval. The best we get is one woman who gasps, "Oh my God". But before this, people in that audience are laughing; it's right there on the tape, along with his vile attack (you can see it at the end of this article).

The only reference to this I could find was a piece written by the comedian who followed Richards on stage that night, Mike Marino, who, when referring to the initial reference to the hanging black men and women of the 50's, at least admits that "this insult gets a laugh". Even so, this comes armed with a disclaimer, excusing the audience reaction, that "Perhaps audience members didn’t take the time to think through the joke’s lynching implications". I'm sorry? A comedian suddenly screams at a heckler by announcing, "Fifty years ago, we'd have you hanging upside down with a fucking fork stuck up your ass", and the (predominantly white) audience laugh, for no other reason than that they had not yet had the time to consider the meaning of what they were laughing at? What were they laughing at, then? How could you respond to that statement in any way, without in some way engaging with the fact that it is hateful and discriminatory in nature? What else is it, after all?

What Marino refers to here is the concept that there is some sort of acceptable division between our innate natural ideology and what we "know" is right and wrong ("political correctness", in other words). It's as if you're allowed to be naturally racist or have oppression and discrimination running through your veins - so deep, you respond with it unconsciously, before you've had time to "think" about it - but only when you then stop to compare it to the social ideology, and have realised it is "wrong" to hold such a belief or emotion, do you become "racist", if you choose not to concede that the belief or emotion is "wrong". The irony is that this is the very thing that leads to such outbursts: the denial and repression caused by an ultimately superficial (or "token", as I call it) ideology that does not represent the reality of the individual's true beliefs and feelings. I don't particularly think that "snap" has anything to do with the hatred itself, necessarily - perhaps Richards is a man under intense stress, or depressed; perhaps, it was simply a moment of intense crisis that led to something uncontrolled and unconscious. But what happens when we are unconscious? Our reality comes out - and when that crisis results in a moment of anger, that reality will attach itself to the moment at hand (almost metaphorically and opportunistically), and we will see the true poison that runs through so many men. In a world where they are consciously repressed, in a single moment - whether induced by stress or intoxication - those mechanisms of repression fail, and perhaps are even rebelled against by some part of the mind that will be silent no more. Richards' problems of late may not have any real connection to African Americans, but anxiety has a way of getting displaced, or mixed up within, and the emotion no longer reasons with direct cause and effect. Any repressed hatred will simply attach itself to anything it finds in the external world to connect to. The modern world is eliciting hatred - politicians are using it to win elections, after all - but it does so, because there is already hatred there to be elicited. It successfully lures our anxieties, because our anxiety wants something or someone to blame. If the schemas are already in place, buried within, then they will far too easily become a kind of exploitable outlet. Perhaps Richards is feeling exploited by his managers, perhaps his girlfriend just dumped him - who knows what his problems are. Perhaps those two guys just happened to be perceived as attacking a man who is already feeling attacked in some way by his world, and perhaps in a moment of crisis, the darker part of Michael Richards avenged not a specific cause and effect (being heckled by the two African Americans) but simply an emotion - and the underlying hatred and discrimination of this particular issue (African American racism) simply pinpointed a target and set upon it.

But it was already there. It has to be. The attack can be displaced anxiety - but it's still a thought pattern that, whilst not targeting the real source of the individual's anxiety, must pre-exist, in order to be drawn out in the unconscious moment of the boiling point. Mel tried to tell us that he was just "sick" - that it was just the alcohol, and that we were to forgive him because he was in fact the victim! Have you ever heard of anything so pathetic? Not only does he attempt to disclaim the very meaning of his words (the entire existence of his behaviour conveniently erased); he then expects us, faced with the hatred towards an oppressed social group, to somehow feel sorry for him! Well, I don't.

And I don't feel sorry for Michael Richards, either, who has already started setting up his defense on David Lettermen (supported by none other than Seinfeld, himself, as he promotes the Seinfeld DVD box set that just happens to be released today, making Jerry an even richer man). I'll at least give Richards the credit over Gibson, in so much as that he is honest about the nature of the incident, and manages to hit the nail pretty much on the head as far as it being "anger and hate and rage". Of course, Mel was just the drunken victim of an illness! Poor Mel.

But he went on to not only hit the nail on the head again (in acknowledging that the racism is "said, it comes through, it fires out of me and even now in the passion that’s here as I confront myself"), but also to completely deny the connection to his true self; "’Im not a racist, that’s what so insane about this!"

No, Mr Richards, you are.