"Racism" is the New "Adopting African Babies"

Celebrities aren't all that different from us are they? I mean, sure, they get paid millions and millions of pounds to speak in funny voices and okay, not many ordinary folk attend extravagant awards ceremonies that give people shiny gold trophies of a naked man for pretending to have a mental disability.

However, one way in which celebrities and non-famous plebs are virtually dissimilar is the fact that both love following short-lived, rubbish gimmicky fads. But whereas normal people fads include hula hoops, Pacman and wearing your jeans so low that everyone can see your boxers, Celebrities are spending all their free time not eating, participating in wacky religions, adopting African babies and losing all their excess pregnancy fat exactly three hours after squirting out a sprog.

But just when you were starting to tire of seeing every 20-something year old starlet carrying a distressed looking Chihuahua around in a handbag like Paris Hilton, there is a new celebrity fad out there. Unfortunately, this latest celebrity fad is shaping up to be the worst yet. In fact, it is so dreadful that it has us all longing for those days when the worst thing famous people got up to was wearing all those stupid "awareness ribbons" at awards ceremonies. What I'm talking about is racism. Yes, celebrity racism has made it's biggest comeback since that time Adolf Hitler was named one of the 50 most intriguing people by the 1930's German version of People magazine.

First of all we had Mel Gibson who decided to get twonked on Tukkelah and tell anyone who would listen that all the Jews were responsible for all the wars in the world and probably also that shitty movie Crash. Then we had TV's Kramer who decided to forgoe telling actual jokes in his comedy routine in favour of just shrieking the word 'nigger' like some sort of ironic version of Martin Luthor King. Probably Bono from U2 did some racist stuff once as well, but I don't have any sort of evidence to back that one up. And now Hollywood's latest fad can claim yet another convert: Jade Goody, the flabby reality TV bint and apparent horrible, horrible racist.

Admittedly I don't watch Celebrity Big Brother but according to the footage plastered across every news program on every channel on the telly and the self righteous opinion pieces on every second page of every newspaper, magazine and internet column Jade Goody committed the terrible, unforgivable veritable hate crime of being a bit mean to a girl who happened to be Indian and also calling her 'poppadom' once.

Okay, so Jade Goody's racism is mostly just a product of shrill media hype. But the whole Celebrity Big Brother saga really highlights how swiftly this trend is catching on. Worst of all, it appears that being a dirty rotten bigot totally pays off. I mean, despite Mel Gibson's anti-semitism and widespread condemnation last year his vanity project made in a dead language Apocalytpo managed to gross over 70 million dollars at the box office. Similarly, Kramer's racist tirade inspired record sales of the latest Seinfeld DVD box set. And regardless of whether or not Bono is actually a racist, lots of people still go to U2 concerts.

Terrifyingly, it seems that it is only a matter of time until the likes of Nicole Richie or Lindsay Lohan jump on the fad-train bound for Nazi Germany. This time next week, don't be surprised if Paris Hilton's catchphrase "that's hot" is officially changed to "I hate Croatians" and Steven Spielberg decides to remake "The Birth of a Nation" and "Triumph of the Will".

When the inevitable happens, I suspect I'll have to become sort of wacky recluse, cut off from all forms of media like Leonardo Dicaprio in that Aviator movie. I'd do it right now actually but I'm pathetically interested in who will win the current season of Dancing on Ice.

"Throw his ass out, he's a nigger!" says TV's Kramer

I was just thinking the other day that it's been far too long since the last big public celebrity self-destruction and co-incidentally enough comedian and former TV star Michael Richards chose this week to get filmed on a camera phone shouting "Throw his ass out! He's a nigger!" at a black man in a comedy club!

Now you'll undoubtedly remember Michael Richards from his role as the hugely popular character Kramer from hugely popular American TV show Seinfeld. You might also remember him from...well, no, that's all he's famous for. Which is a shame really. I mean Mel Gibson is so busy being Mad Max, that guy in that movie about Scottish people mooning English people, that guy who used wacky telepathic powers to get into Helen Hunt's snatch and the crazy one in Lethal Weapon that you could almost forget about that time he was a drunken anti-semitic mysoginistic twat.

So I'm sure your mind is currently boggling at the mental picture of whimsical, loveable, goofball Kramer hurling around racial slurs so deeply offensive that Jamie Foxx wants to kick his ass but that's probably because you've never seen the extremely rare footage of that mercifully cancelled Seinfeld episode where Kramer comically burst through Jerry's door with boot polish on his face while reading Mein Kampf and watching Birth of a Nation. But for those of you unlucky enough to have never seen this imaginary moment in Seinfeld history, you'll just have to make do with grainy footage on YouTube of a haggard Michael Richards shouting such racist malarky as "fifty years ago we'd have you upside down with a fucking fork up your ass" at a black man in the audience who dared to call out "you're not funny" during his act.

The much watched YouTube video also shows a sort of hip-hop diss-off between the slightly overrated Seinfeld character and Frank McBride, the victim of his racially charged comedic stylings. Amusingly, there is a clear winner with Michael Richard's confusing "you can talk, you can talk, you're brave now motherfucker" clearly being trumped by the other guy's hilarious "You're a reject! Never had no shows, never had no movies; Seinfeld: that's it!" Openly mocking a celebrity for being a failure and a has-been? Clearly this guy should have been the one on the stage! Hey Frank McBride? I think Kevin Federline has an opening to be mocked next wednesday if you're looking for more work.

In the wake of this nightmarish incident Americans have been forced to ask themselves some serious questions like "Is Kramer a racist?", "Can we ever forgive him?" and "Did Michael Richards just watch Borat and decide to craft his own timeless, satirically racist comic creation and it all just went horribly wrong?"

Well OK, they're not really asking themselves anything as they're too busy dredging up all their "Is Mad Max a racist?" editorials, blog posts and letters to editors from several months ago and replacing all references to Mel Gibson and jews with Michael Richards and black men in order to indulge in a little more self righteous moral masturbation.

And if you haven't seen it yet, here's a link: Michael Richards fucking up his career

Kanye West in Racist Australian Adventure

My it's been a big week for famous people calling out non-famous plebs for being dirty bigots!

Yesterday it was Elton John doing the shit-slinging. Today it's rapper Kanye West who dabbled in the Oprah Winfrey approved activity of going overseas and then making a massive stink about how racist said country is compared with America. Yes, that America: the self-proclaimed 'land of the free' that ironically only stopped slavery like a hundred years ago or something.

The country apparently full of dirty bigots in question is Australia where Kanye West is embarrasingly touring as the support act for rubbish nostalgia band U2. Now, you more than likely think of Australia as a country full of friendly laid-back people probably because you've seen Crocodile Dundee and probably also because you're the sort of person who makes over-generalizations about entire nations of people based on decades old movies. However, if the man who once chucked a tantrum because he didn't win an MTV music award is to be believed, Australians might not be so friendly and laid-back after all. According to The Age:

"West, 29, was checking out the Opera House at the same time as a large media pack was photographing British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen, aka Borat. The rapper attempted to cross the road and appeared to be pushed by an Opera House security guard. "I just thought it was funny 'cos he didn't even stop my friend and he stopped me," West said after the incident. "Then he pushed me."

How the hell did Borat get dragged into this?

Okay, so Kanye West didn't really kick up a massive stink. However, if Oprah Winfrey's racism drenched trip to Paris is to become a precedent for these sorts of things, we can probably expect Kanye West to blather loudly to the media about his 'crash moment' then dedicate an entire episode of his internationally syndicated talk show to how racist dirty foreigners are.