I have serious doubts if anyone will come forward to defend this outburst - it is indefensible, and not the least bit funny, and you can hear in Richards' voice that he said what he said to be as hurtful as he could be - but if a hypothetical person came forward to defend Richards, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the name of Lenny Bruce was invoked.
In case you never heard about it, part of the Bruce legend is a bit of standup called
'Are There Any Niggers Here Tonight?,' a long monologue that featured repeated, gratuitous use of the N-word. He pretty much beats the word to death - and that's exactly the point. A rough transcript follows after the flip.
"The reason I don't get hung up with, well, say, integration, is that by the time Bob Newhart is integrated, I'm bigoted. And anyway, Martin Luther King, Bayard Rustin are geniuses, the battle's won. By the way, are there any niggers here tonight?
(Outraged whisper) "What did he say? ďAre there any niggers here tonight?' Jesus Christ! Does he have to get that low for laughs? Wow! Have I ever talked about the schwarzes when the schwarzes had gone home? Or spoken about the Moulonjohns when they'd left? Or placated some Southerner by absence of voice when he ranted and raved about nigger nigger nigger?"
Are there any niggers here tonight? I know that one nigger who works here, I see him back there. Oh, there's two niggers, customers, and, ah, aha! Between those two niggers sits one kike-- man, thank God for the kike! Uh, two kikes. That's two kikes, and three niggers, and one spic. One spic-- two, three spics. One mick. One mick, one spic, one hick, thick, funcky, spunky boogey. And there's another kike. Three kikes. Three kikes, one guinea, one greaseball. Three greaseballs, two guineas. Two guineas, one hunky funky lace-curtain Irish mick. That mick spic hunky funky boogey. Two guineas plus three greaseballs and four boogies makes usually three spics. Minus two Yid spic Polack funky spunky Polacks.
AUCTIONEER: Five more niggers! Five more niggers!
GAMBLER: I pass with six niggers and eight micks and four spics.
The point? That the word's suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness. If President Kennedy got on television and said, "Tonight I'd like to introduce the niggers in my cabinet,: and he yelled "nig- gerniggerniggerniggerniggerniggergigger" at every nigger he saw, "boogeyboogeyboogeyboogeyboogey,nig-gerniggerniggernigger" till nigger didn't mean anything any more, till nigger lost its meaning-- you'd never make any four-year-old "nigger" cry when he came home from school.
There don't seem to be any recordings of Bruce performing this monologue, but it was immortalized on film by Dustin Hoffman in the 1974 film
Lenny.
It was shocking when Bruce did it, but he did it precisely to disarm the power of the word - his intent was to shock, but not to insult.
And among many differences between a giant like Bruce and a... TV character like Richards, that is the greatest difference. Bruce used the word to educate in a time when it was used to hurt, Richards used the word to try to hurt in a time when anyone using it to hurt should know better.
Monday, November 20 2006 @ 06:27 EST
Contributed by:
Stranger