TiVo Alert: ‘Kramer’ apologizes on Letterman tonight

Talk about coincidences. Talk about timing. Talk about a one-day wonder.

Michael Richards, who won fame as “Kramer” on Seinfeld, but who’s done little of note before or since, was videotaped aiming a racist tirade toward hecklers at a West Hollywood nightclub over the weekend, and became an instant notorious celebrity of the Mel Gibson variety today– the same day that his former co-star and meal ticket Jerry Seinfeld is booked to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman. Richards appears on the show tonight to apologize via satellite link.

So it may be worth watching– if only because that schnook Jay Leno doesn’t get the mea culpa for once!

(See the shocking video after the jump…)
We avoided brining you the clip, one because it’s really offensive and loud and NSFW or anywhere, and also because for most of the day, it was exclusively in the domain of TMZ.com, an ultra-sleazy corporate gossip site that practices bad tabloid, and doesn’t deserve the web traffic (keep watching this space and its links for good tabloid) But you can see the clip below. If you dare.

As for Richards, he can be seen around LA, seemingly in a world of his own, and though he’s been around comedy for years, he’s not a practiced stand-up. The brief clip of his tirade sounds as if he may have been trying to be funny and that it someway sprang from an act that the audience didn’t “get”– he speaks part of it in an accent. In fact, Tabloid Baby’s pal, the comedian and actor Paul Rodriguez, who walks a very fine line of racial controversy with his role in the current film comedy, Cloud 9 (now available on TV, On Demand), was at the club that night and tried to offer a defense before he was shouted down by what was left of the crowd.

If Richards was trying to be Lennybrucian, it didn’t work. It’s funny that until now, his most famous comic moment outside Seinfeld was on February 20, 1981, when Andy Kaufman deliberately sabotaged a sketch on the show Fridays, and castmember Richards, who wasn’t in on the joke, freaked out.

–Tabloid Baby