A message for Cosmo Kramer

For someone who has seen a fair deal of insincere apologies, I have to say that Cosmo Kramer's rambling on the Late Show with David Letterman was pretty unbelievable.

For those that haven't heard, Michael Richards, the actor that played Kramer in Seinfeld, exploded at an L.A. comedy club and verbally assaulted hecklers with all kinds of racial slurs. The video is pretty prolific on youtube and it's worth watching for the shock value. I've watched it three times and each time was pretty jolting.

So in what I thought was a monumentally tacky move, he appeared via satellite on the Late Show (along with Jerry Seinfeld, who himself is allegedly a giant asshole in real life) to "apologize" to the people he might have offended. Granted, I can't read minds, but everything he said, right down to the unscripted rambling about "getting in touch with his rage" seemed like a big ploy to salvage what's left of his career and the release of season seven of Seinfeld. Everything about the "apology" seemed like a ten year old who had just hit his younger sibling and realized that he needed to seem as sorry as possible in order to be grounded for the shortest period of time.

Respect is earned, and right now Kramer has to get in line behind Mel Gibson and behave while other celebrities screw up. In time, people will forget about it and hopefully in the immortal words of Shaggy, Kramer will be true to his proclamation of "it wasn't me." Until then, I'm happy that people compare me to George Costanza.