Kramer vs. Kramer


Jesus, Kramer, I thought you were just playing a crazy on Seinfeld. Funny how you grow into your role that way. Not long before you lost your cool onstage I was watching you on Seinfeld reruns; you were dressed up like a pimp. A whore was turning tricks in your car and it ended with the cops showing up, and you were to all appearances a pimp roughing up his whore. You're a method actor, aren't you?

When I first heard you calling those guys "niggers," and then saying, "Oh, you're shocked," or however you were phrasing it, I thought:

"He could handle this with charm if he wasn't faux Jewish."

You know what I mean, Cosmo? You're in a mother of an identity crisis. "I'm not a Jew but I play one on television, so I think I can handle a heckler." No, Cosmo, it' s not just a surface thing. You have to take into consideration that if you are Jewish, slavery is the seed from which you grow stage presence.

Lenny Bruce explained it once at Berkeley, when he was talking about slavery. The blacks discovered singing, he said, "Sang their ass right off the farm." They have their show business niche.

The Jews, he said, tried dealing with slavery by being charming. "The Jews had a hipper boss. The Egyptians weren't so easy to bullshit." My memory for the exact quotes is not exact, but the gist of it was that the slave masters knew the Jews were bullshitting with the charming bit, but they liked it anyway. So the Jew found show business as a result of being charming to the Egyptian slave masters.

But then, look what happened to Lenny. He got a hot shot. Not everybody is charmed by the same material.

You had a hard gig, Cosmo, hanging out with George and Elaine, neither of whom was actually Jewish. Even George's parents weren't really Jewish. What the hell could Seinfeld have been thinking, taking unsuspecting goys and asking them to pretend to be Jewish? What could screw you up more than that? The whole Jewish thing is confusion on the rocks with a twist. How did Abraham get from defining goy to not even being goy?

Abraham was promised a goy gadol (great nation), and somehow the term for Jewish became the term for not being Jewish. And wouldn't you know? Goy is also the Cantonese pronunciation for "devil" or "ghost," and is used to describe anybody who isn't Chinese. Goy is an exclusive club, one of those you wouldn't join if it would have you for a member.

oy, vey, goy vey!

Lenny Bruce or Seinfeld would have handled a couple of black hecklers by standing back and carving them up with the skill of Dr. Tetrazzini taking a patient through a near death experience, you get personal. You come on like Dick Cheney at a skeet shoot.

Don't get me wrong, Kramer; I know how crazy some black people can make you. They call each other "nigger" in every other sentence, just to make sure you know they are in as exclusive a club as you are. It's the word they use to card you at the door. Sure it pisses you off after awhile, because it's trite and borish. And how do you figure out which white people have special dispensation and can use the word as much as they want? Quentin Tarantino can bitch and moan for hours about not running a "dead nigger disposal site" and Jules doesn't introduce him to Ezekiel.

The trouble is, Cosmo, you used the wrong word. These guys were undoubtedly being "assholes." The color of an asshole is not the determining quality, it is the elasticity left in the anal ring. Some of them just don't close right anymore, and thoughts go through them like crap through a goose, just undigested, raw footage. It's a kind of possession, and yes, it can flip you out if you get caught by it.

Everybody has an asshole and everybody can be one at times. But being black, or white, or Jewish, or Chinese ... none of us can do anything about that. Even when you've noticed a pattern of behavior in a lot of black people, or Jewish people, or Chinese people, that has a lot to do with how they are educated culturally.

Barak Obama won't dis yo mama. He wasn't given the idea that there's something to be proud of in being loud and aggressive in public settings. There isn't anything much to be proud of in being a narrow minded white asshole, either, but it's a popular obsession. Ask the Dixie Chicks about that.

Anyway, Cosmo, sometimes you just don't know what's enough until you know what's too much. And sometimes when you've been inside a box for ten years, playing a crazy Jewish neighbor to Jerry Seinfeld, you can lose touch with cultural realities.

I personally forgive you, because if I don't, I have a hard time forgiving the assholes who won't let you do your act because their one big chance at the stage is yelling at it from the wings. Maybe you need some work, Cosmo, but remember that Jerry was smart enough to do consciously what you are having such a hard time with. He went back, developed new material, and made a movie of himself failing before he found new success.

By the way, man, you did a wonderful job as Kramer, and if you never do anything else in your career, you know what it's like to be on top of television. Except with black people. They never watched Seinfeld. Go figure. As for the shadow side of success, "You can really learn a lot that way. It will change you in the middle of the day. And though your confidence may be shattered. It doesn't matter."

Posted: Wed - November 22, 2006 at 12:12 PM