Very interesting questions.

PC is like bad medicine. It stinks of hypocrisy but it's therapeutic. It kills humor but it makes the world a better place.

The comedian can claim an exemption, methinks, but only if it is heroic. Humor meant to expose racism (say, Borat) is a morality play which has the unfortunate effect of putting the comedian on the good side. The worse Borat is, the better Sacha Baron Cohen looks. It takes guts to do what he does but it's not heroic. A heroic comedian should never be made to be the hero.
Since he is an orthodox Jew (whose political views I know nothing about), heroism in his case perhaps would be to go to a West Bank settlement and make Borat into an American redneck who's had it with those "damn Ayrabs."

Humor that cuts must be able to cut the cutter. Else it's just self-righteous tormenting with laughs.

There is this sort of personality (or mental state), such that when a person feels offended and humiliated (thinking about some exchanges with my ex-wife now) he or she would just lash out at the perceived offender with everything he has, anything that may hurt. I suspect something like that might've happened in the Richards' incident. So, IMHO, he isn't necessarily a racist. Certainly an asshole, though.

Humor meant to expose racism (say, Borat) is a morality play which has the unfortunate effect of putting the comedian on the good side. The worse Borat is, the better Sacha Baron Cohen looks. It takes guts to do what he does but it's not heroic. A heroic comedian should never be made to be the hero. Since he is an orthodox Jew (whose political views I know nothing about), heroism in his case perhaps would be to go to a West Bank settlement and make Borat into an American redneck who's had it with those "damn Ayrabs."

This business about being a member of the ethnic class and exposing the racism or anti-Semitism is opportunistic.

As soon as racism or antisemitism may start to wane, it's good to bring it to the fore so that we can be reminded of how heinous it is or else the Holocaust museum will lose its lease on the Mall.

Being reminded by a devout and orthodox Jew is self-serving and not as socially significant as when it's pointed out by the actual events on the ground. Likewise David Mammet; good plays, but jeez-louise man, can you tell the difference between antisemitism and political objections to Zionism? Do Cohen and Mammet serve an educational function? Frankly, I doubt it.

Has this pronounced and ubiquitous antisemitism, rampant and highlighted in 2006, precluded Cohen from opportunities for education, stifled his creativity or his ability to earn a living? I don't think so, but it is a lucrative shtick.

I'd want to see a sequel in Sadr City where he pretends to be an Al-Jazeera reporter embed with the US troops manning a checkpoint. Now that could be funny.

There is this sort of personality (or mental state), such that when a person feels offended and humiliated (thinking about some exchanges with my ex-wife now) he or she would just lash out at the perceived offender with everything he has, anything that may hurt. I suspect something like that might've happened in the Richards' incident. So, IMHO, he isn't necessarily a racist. Certainly an asshole, though.

I dunno, abb1. I've heard that defense elsewhere, and it doesn't sit right with me. Becuase for (I would hope) the majority of us, and certainly for me, when I was angry with someone what Richards said wouldn't even enter my mind. It would not be on the list of things to say that I would mentally pull up. The fact that it was, and that that's where he first went... that tells me he's thought about it before, and he is a racist.

"There is this sort of personality (or mental state), such that when a person feels offended and humiliated (thinking about some exchanges with my ex-wife now) he or she would just lash out at the perceived offender with everything he has, anything that may hurt. I suspect something like that might've happened in the Richards' incident. So, IMHO, he isn't necessarily a racist. Certainly an asshole, though."

I don't buy this either-- mainly because he was offered an opportunity to go back to the club the following night and apologize, and while he did go back the following night, he chose not to apologize. That, and the patent phoniness of his apology on Letterman, offered once he realized how big the incident had become.