Hate Speech in Shades of Grey

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last two weeks, you’ve heard the story. If you haven’t, the basic premise is simple: Michael Richards (Seinfeld’s Kramer) got up in the middle of the LA’s Laugh Factory to do a set that wasn’t appreciated by certain members of the audience. In response to these hecklers, he unleashed a shocking racial tirade that would be best not repeated anywhere. Seriously, it’s not a pretty sight.

Almost immediately, Richards found himself raked across the coals (rightfully so) by members of the black community. In response, he went out and immediately began a round of apologies, most of which were deemed “insincere” in light of the new Seinfeld DVD hitting stores this week. Website after website called for the boycott of the DVD set, and it’s pretty much a certainty at this point that Richards is not going to “work in this town again” for a very, very long time.

Being that this is the third high-profile, hate-speech incident involving a member of the Hollywood community, the suggestion has been made that it would probably be better if we eliminated certain words from our lexicon entirely, namely the word that Richards used (starts with an “n” ends with outrage). While this is certainly an interesting option, and I firmly believe that hate-speech does not belong in my household, the fact of the matter is that part of the beauty of the Constitution is the right to express an opinion, no matter how incendiary. In other words, fundamentally, I must agree with Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We’ve lost too many of our freedoms in the last five years, for us not to embrace any example of free speech, no matter how disgusting we may find it personally. If you’re offended by someone else’s speech, leave or use your rights to make your own point. If we start censoring each other, we, as a society, are no better than the individuals who swore to uphold and defend the Constitution and then walked all over it in the interest of Homeland Security. And, by the way, parents, it is totally a good idea to use the idiots of the world to teach your children that “sugar-tits,” while certainly creative, is not a term that should be used on the playground or anywhere else in polite society.

What I find interesting, however, is that there seems to be an inconsistent message in Hollywood regarding what is and is not acceptable hate-speech. No, I’m not talking about the use of the n-word being “ok” when Richard Pryor features it as a part of his act, but “completely racist” when it’s Larry the Cable Guy employing the term. Sure, that’s definitely confusing, but I think the unspoken agreement is that if you’re a member of the group, you can use otherwise offensive terms as terms of endearment; if you’re not, prepare to see backlash if it comes flying out of your mouth.

Instead, what I’m trying to get my head around is the idea that Michael Richards is desperately trying to salvage his career while Isaiah Washington is still gainfully employed on TV’s hottest show and has not been labeled by TMZ.com as a “prejudiced celebrity” (they’ve got a slideshow, go check it out).

Scarcely a month ago, a message was sent by ABC that while “outing” someone as an African American is not ok, outing someone as a homosexual clearly is. In the midst of much hyped on-set brawl between himself and Patrick Dempsey, while using words that were of such an “extreme nature,” that the National Enquirer refused to publish his name (and when the bat-boy people refuse to tell the “full story,” you KNOW it’s got to be bad) and physical violence, Washington yanked costar T. R. Knight out of the closet and dumped his sex life in the laps of the American public. This wasn’t an In and Out/Tom Hanks Oscar speech situation here either. It was Washington, shoving Dempsey and screaming that he wasn’t his “little f**got” like Knight. Washington later issued a pat apology and the ABC spin machine released statements saying that the issue was “over.” Shortly thereafter, he cancelled his appearance on Ellen Degeneres’ show and headed to Oprah where he “explained” the incident away by claiming it was a “combination of fatigue, pride, and passion.” Knight, Dempsey, and the rest of the cast went along with it, and Oprah didn’t push the issue. When members of the online community suggested that Washington be fired (and possibly replaced by ER’s Eriq La Salle), Shonda Rhimes leapt to Washington’s defense and suggested that the people calling for Washington’s exit were themselves “racist” as they saw two black men as interchangeable. Really, I don’t think that was the intent of the original post, but then since I wasn’t the original poster, I can’t speak for them. However, neither can Rhimes – and she should have sought to clarify the intention instead of shooting her mouth off. After all, it’s quite possible that the poster simply wanted to make the point that on the Thursday night doctor show, La Salle is far superior to Washington as the overworked, stressed-out, brilliant surgeon – no matter what his skin color is.

The fact, however, remains that the double standard employed by ABC (surprising because most of my gay friends came into my life thanks to an internship with the Walt Disney Company) and the MSM simply must be addressed. Washington should be required to make the same efforts as were required from both Richards and Gibson after their incidents. Washington should appear on talk show after talk show begging for his continued success as an actor like society is demanding Richards do now. He should voluntarily remove himself from the cast for the time being and meet with members of the gay community like Gibson is doing with the Jewish community. He should issue an apology that sounds like less of an excuse and more of a sincere effort to make amends. ABC, Rhimes, and the cast of Grey’s Anatomy should stop trying to sweep the incident back into the closet and send the message that Washington’s speech was just as offensive and hurtful as that of the other actors who were stupid enough to open their mouths this year in “fatigue, pride, passion, and/or inebriation” (pick an excuse). I’m not saying that Washington be censored entirely, I’m just saying that what’s good for the goose should be good for the gander in the eyes of Washington’s employers and the show’s corporate sponsors and fans. Erase the grey zone and show the world that hate-speech, no matter who speaks it or who its victim is, has no place in our workplace, our living rooms, or our lives.