Kramer's Tirade, Adding Insult to Inaccuracy
Wednesday, November 22, 2006; Page C03
Hey, funnyman: You nailed the wrong guy.
That's what Darryl Pitts would like to tell Michael Richards, the "Seinfeld" star who spewed racist slurs at an African American man after his stand-up gig at a Los Angeles comedy club was interrupted last Friday.
The irony of the insult, according to audience member Pitts: It wasn't the black guy who interrupted him. The black man sat next to the alleged heckler. Pitts told our colleague Darryl Fears the two were in a group of roughly 10 people who ambled into the Laugh Factory during Richards's routine. The comic ordered them to shut up, then asked, " 'What are you talking about?' "
The black guy spoke up: "My friend doesn't think you're funny." The loud-talking friend "was maybe Arab or Hispanic but not black," said Pitts, who was not part of the group. "The way it's been portrayed is that a group of black guys came to the club and were disorderly . . . and that's inaccurate, absolutely."
What followed -- as captured on video and circulated on the Internet -- was shocking. Said Pitts, who himself is black: "It was like buckshot. It hit everyone. . . . I have a difficult time accepting his apology -- 72 hours later. What did he do? Read a black history book? Why the change?"
The Bushes Hit a Few Bumps in the Road
A White House staffer was badly beaten and robbed during the president's stopover in Hawaii on the way back from Asia. Gregg Pitts, acting director of the White House Travel Office, suffered a broken nose in the Monday night mugging on a Honolulu street and was left behind in a hospital yesterday while the rest of the presidential entourage continued back to D.C.
Then, yesterday morning, as POTUS headed to Hickam Air Force Base on Oahu, three local police officers accompanying the motorcade crashed their motorcycles on a rain-slicked street. Two officers were hospitalized, White House officials said -- one with broken bones, the other with a neck injury.
And in another hemisphere altogether . . . ABC News reported yesterday that elder-by-seconds twin Barbara joined Panama-based sister Jenna on a trouble-scarred trip to Argentina. ABC, citing "law enforcement reports" it obtained, said someone stole a purse and cellphone from Barbara at a Buenos Aires restaurant -- right under the noses of her Secret Service agents. Also, an agent accompanying them was mugged during his off-hours. (Unclear when the reported two-week trip took place; Barbara was photographed at the Yale-Princeton game just 10 days ago.) The White House would not comment on the reports.
LOVE, ETC.
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| Uncoupled: Teen sensations Freddy Adu and JoJo.(Michael Buckner - Getty Images) |
HEY ISN'T THAT...
Joan Collins, swanning through the lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Georgetown Monday with exactly the accessories you'd imagine: big gray tweed hat, sunglasses and her three-decades-younger husband, Percy Gibson. In town for a two-week National Theatre run in "Legends!," the "Dynasty" diva caught the new James Bond flick over at the AMC Loews theater next door and dined at the hotel restaurant Fahrenheit. Her co-star, Linda Evans, was also spotted at the Ritz keeping a lower profile but also wearing -- yes! -- a hat.



