Cosmo Goes Loco

It looks like Cosmo Kramer really is the "Assman."

"LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Michael Richards said Monday he spewed racial epithets during a stand-up comedy routine because he lost his cool while being heckled and not because he's a bigot . . . A video posted on TMZ.com shows Richards launching into the tirade after two black audience members started shouting at him that he wasn't funny."

"Richards retorts: 'Shut up! Fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a f------ fork up your a--.'"

Okay, that's pretty funny . . . unless it was your fork.

"He then paces across the stage taunting the men for interrupting his show, peppering his speech with racial slurs and profanities. 'You can talk, you can talk, you're brave now mother------. Throw his a-- out. He's a n-----!' Richards shouts before repeating the racial epithet over and over again." (H/T - CNN.com)

Look, Richards' tirade was idiotic, but I'm not ready to condemn the man as a racist. (Of course, I'm not ruling it out, either.) The fact of the matter is that some a-holes in the audience were heckling him, and he really lost it. What I can't figure is why everyone calls the man a racist because he used the dreaded N-word, but when other blacks use it, it's acceptable. No one cried a whit when Dave Chappelle peppered it into his show, but when some honkey from Seinfeld throws it out there, he should be drawn and quartered.

The common accepted norm is that African-Americans use the word to "lessen the meaning." Unfortunately, when the same people throw a hissy fit when a non-black uses the N-word, that theory goes out the window. My $0.02: either stop saying the word altogether, or stop your bitching when someone else uses it.

I mean, Jeebus, get over it already.

Let the hate mail commence.