Reid About It

By now, everybody has seen the footage of Michael Richards losing it on stage, and repeatedly using racist terms to strike back at a heckler.

Bearing in mind that I am a fiction writer and a big fan of grand conspiracy theories, let me be the first to say that I don't believe this at all. I think it's a work.

Once upon a time, long long ago, Michael Richards was on a show called Fridays. It was a rip-off of Saturday Night Live that had a few good moments before going away for good. On one episode of Fridays, the guest host was Andy Kaufman, who broke character during a skit and was a complete jackass to Richards. The joke was that it was a planned break, but only Richards and Kaufman knew about it, and they fooled everybody including the other actors, studio crew, and audience.

Kaufman, of course, was famous for a bizarre brand of comedy that shocked, offended, and pissed off almost everybody who ever saw him perform. He filmed part of his TV special out of focus just to mess with viewers. He claimed to have become born-again and have married a Christian singer. He wrestled women, and on a famous episode of David Letterman's show, he got slapped around by wrestler Jerry "The King" Lawler, in an angle that no one ever knew was real until long after Kaufman's death.

Everything that Kaufman did was designed to provoke a reaction from people. He'd scream at people, or take a whole audience out for milk and cookies simply because that's what people weren't expecting. That's why people still remember him, and not other comedians who were more famous at the time (such as Freddie Prinze).

Back in the present, Michael Richards has no career at all other than picking up checks for "Seinfeld". He goes on stage to do stand-up comedy, something he hasn't done successfully in years. He's harassed by an extremely literate heckler, slams him with racial slurs, and then gets into an argument with him while the heckler eloquently points out all sorts of things about Richards that a drunken heckler probably wouldn't. Someone is filming the show with a handheld camera for some reason, and that makes the rounds of media.

And all of this takes place on the eve of the Seinfeld Season 7 DVD release. And also the day before Jerry Seinfeld is scheduled to make a rare public appearance.

On Letterman.

That's some fearful symmetry, folks.

I'm saying the whole thing was a work. Why is Richards doing stand up? Why would somebody tape it? How well-prepared was that heckler? Richards tries to defuse the situation by talking about how shocking it was, but loses his nerve. What would he have to lose?

Notoriety can be much more important to some people than respectability.