by David Miller, Publisher
Seinfeld's, Michael Richards (Kramer) played an ugly, unruly and disrespectful character for many years just to get laughs. But last week, the ugly mask fell away to reveal a truly horrifying side of a man when he went into a profanity filled racial triad at the Laugh Factory in West Hollywood. (See video)
This week, Richards gets a taste of his own medicine in the “Lost Seinfeld Episode” at NationalLampoon.com.
Jon Barker who now lives in Mainville, Ohio, was my former pastor when he was leading the Loveland United Methodist Church and he once taught me how to differentiate between true comedians and impostors when he asked me to consider the role of NAZI prison guard Sgt. Schultz in the television situation comedy Hogan's Heroes. The Schultz character was portrayed as, bumbling, funny, incompetent, and even a benevolent NAZI, but Barker said there was in fact nothing ever to be construed as funny about NAZI prison guards.
Sgt Schultz was heard often on the show saying, "I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing." Now after viewing the “Lost Seinfeld Episode” I can see with fresh eyes that there was never a good enough excuse to “see nothing” in the crude, amoral, self center, characters in any of the Seinfeld episodes.
On stage at the Laugh Factory, was Richards just continuing the Seinfeld sitcom having never left the Kramer role of anything goes – for a laugh? We're now not laughing with you Michael, but at you.
Or, as Joni Mitchel sings, “Laughing or crying, it's all the same release.”
