The Michael Richards Debacle

By now everyone has surely heard about Michael Richards' racist diatribe at a comedy club the other night. The actor best known for his portrayal of Kramer on tv's Seinfeld Show totally lost his cool while performing live at a comedy club. It seems a couple of patrons were heckling him and he went into attack mode, hurling n-bombs and racial insults faster than the speed of light.
Fast forward to last night's David Letterman show. I'm not even going to describe how little respect I have for Mr. Letterman. That's another post altogether. But at Jerry Seinfeld's request Richards was allowed to offer an apology on the live broadcast. I was really surprised at the actors' apparent sincerity. He looked awful and sounded like he was really angry with himself about speaking so horribly.
The more cynical among us might say that he was angry with himself because it's time for another Seinfeld DVD Box set to be released and sales might not go so well.
Some other cynics might say that he's an actor, so naturally he knows how to "look sorry."

I'd like to think that he meant it when he said that he needs to look deeper into himself and hopefully find what would cause him to lash out in such a manner. I'd like to think that this could be a jumping board for many of us to consider our own views on race/ethnicity/religious differences.
Beauty from ashes? Maybe.
Let's pray for Michael Richards.