Michael Richards twitches, apologizes, twitches more

If Michael Richards’ intent, on appearing Monday night on “Late Show with David Letterman,� was to assure a nation that he was a normal guy who simply had a bad night when he went off this past weekend at the Laugh Factory, that didn’t quite work. If, in fact, he was trying to get viewers to believe that he was, in fact, nuts (and therefore his racist diatribe became somewhat understandable), then just maybe he succeeded.

Letterman’s guest was Jerry Seinfeld, who, quite beneficently, prodded Richards into issuing his mea culpa on Monday night. Richards, a jittery, twitchy guy under the best of circumstances, appeared via satellite from Los Angeles, initially conceding, with obvious nerves showing, “I’m not doing too good.�

“I lost my temper onstage. … I got heckled and I took it badly and went into a rage,� Richards conceded. Twice in the interview, Richards employed the term “Afro-Americans,� a phrase not heard in polite circles since the ’70s.

Richards’ eternally quixotic behavior inspired some laughter in the “Late Night� audience, prompting Seinfeld at one point to implore, “Stop laughing; it’s not funny.� Richards himself at one point said, “I’m hearing your audience laughing … I’m not sure this is where I should be addressing this.

“For this to happen, for me to be in a comedy club and to say this crap, I’m deeply, deeply sorry. I’ll get to this force field of this hostility. … The rage went all over the place – it went all over the room. I’m not a racist – that’s what’s so insane about this. … I tried to jujitsu this – it didn’t work out. You talk about a bad night,� Richards, clearly uncomfortable, declared.

Letterman asked: “Is there more you’d like to do?� Meaning, in terms of apologizing or searching his soul. Richards paused, then stammered, “I’d just like to do more personal work.� Letterman replied, “I hope you don’t have regrets about appearing on this show tonight,� and Richards just waved the cameras off, not wanting to bury himself any further.

After the West-Coast feed shut down, Seinfeld tried for a joke: “This’ll be a breeze to segue back into comedy.�

As for Richards’ blowing up at his crowd for chattering over – and, eventually, heckling – his set: Honestly, if every performer I’ve ever seen in a live show started spewing racist cant at their apparently unappreciative audience, his/her audience for chattering over their sets, every opening act in every live-music bar in the country would be starting race riots on a daily basis. And if a comic can hear people talking, that means not nearly enough audience members are laughing, and if that’s the case, it’s because the comic is not funny.

Perhaps Richards’ outburst was just misguided viral marketing for the DVD release of “Seinfeld’s� seventh season. (Certainly, Richards would be the perfect person to play his doppelganger in the inevitable “Law & Order� episode that’ll spring from this – like Chevy Chase channeling Mel Gibson, he’s just washed-up enough.)

Nonetheless, once again, the country, as it does from time to time, is cast into paroxysms of hand-wringing over the matter of race. Richards’ unfathomable tirade at the Laugh Factory followed the unwarranted tasering of a UCLA student from Iran; those incidents were bookended by the beginning and conclusion of the latest chapter in the sordid saga of O.J. Simpson, who inspired, excepting Hurricane Katrina, the last probing debate on racism in America.

It’s good to see that we’re actually learning something from all the debate. Like the weather, racism inspires a lot of talk, but no one seems to do anything about it.

Let’s accept two truisms:

* There will always be ignorant and under-educated people.

* Therefore, there will always be prejudice and resentment towards others perceived as different.

So, it's simple: Make people smarter.