Near the beginning of last night's satellite interview with Michael Richards, Jerry Seinfeld, who was the studio guest of David Letterman, asks the Ed Sullivan theater audience to stop laughing. Normally when you're at a taping of a late night comedy/variety program and two members of the "Seinfeld" cast are on, you'd understandably assume hilarity is in the works but, this is nervous laughter and the audience has every right to be nervous. In the wake of his racially charged tirade at the Laugh Factory on Friday, Michael Richards looks into a camera, tries to keep his Krameresque tics in check, and appears as if he is going to explode. For what it's worth, the crew in Studio City could have set up a plant or a painting or something to soften Richard's background and make it look less like a surveillance one-shot from inside a jailhouse debriefing room. Regardless, it all made for a perfectly awful "Late Show" appearance for the artist formerly known as Kramer. "I'm not a racist, that's what's so insane about this," Richards pleads blood pressure rising and tries to partially pin his diatribe on "free association." And what was that about the victims of Hurricane Katrina? Letterman turns to Seinfeld after the satellite feed is finally euthanized and summarizes succinctly: "How 'bout that? Whoa Wow." Oh yeah, "Seinfeld," season 7, is on sale now.
For the full, excruciating six minutes, go here.
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