Open Letter to Kramer

© 27 November 2006, The Griot Poet

“Cosmo Kramer” has left the building!

As Michael Richards launches a chilling tirade

Of the shade I'd overheard and seen at a Cross lit Klan meeting

During a JROTC overnight in NC we cadets happened upon amongst the trees…

You used the n-word a symbolic SEVEN times,

Added injury to insult describing a violent, sodomy crime,

“Stick a fork up” my rear

50 times for 50 years ago when WE were the de facto slave labor of the “land of the free; home of the brave”: building houses; picking fruit and cotton; working for pennies on the dollar (without health benefits)!

Our prophet, Marvin said:

“Makes me WANNA holler, throw up both my hands!”

As real soldiers like Rosa Parks, Corretta Scott and Martin Luther King Junior, Medger Evers, Malcolm X and others fought & DIED for us to “rock the vote” and get up

From the back of the bus for our

“Inalienable right” to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”: our brothers PAID for this abuse!

Your behavior has no reasonable excuse.

Your “penis envy” of Jerry Seinfeld evident, every star used the president of the hit show to boost their creds… not you!

I’ll be honest with you: I watched maybe three episodes of your hit show the whole TEN YEARS of “Much Ado About Nothing” to quote Shakespeare,

Since it is hard for me to digest “whites only” characters and NO black regulars on a show based in New York City (include “Friends” and “Sex & the City” in this offense!).

You looked as if you'd hit new heights after smoking a large CRACK pipe before you hit the stage!

I am enraged for my brothers that you made cushy public apologies to David Letterman, Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson: for one,

We haven't watched much late night since they canned Arsenio Hall!

And, your little, well-acted pouting to the presidents of the National Action Network & Rainbow PUSH do you NO good at all!

You want redemption? You want a career?

Lean your ear to this advice and hold it dear:

It is not repentance
Until you humbly face those you've offended,
And offer DOUBLE restitution
Asked for in recompense.

Let me repeat it:

It is not repentance
Until you humbly face those you've offended,
And offer DOUBLE restitution
Asked for in recompense.

FACE the brothers you crudely fronted and be a MAN!

Until you do this,
You will not satisfy our
Sense of justice,
Else your career – such as it was – will be over, “past prologue”* and SPENT!

* “What is past is prologue.” William Shakespeare