Richard's Mouthing Off

I think everyone is in agreement that Richard's response to heckling at an L.A. comedy club were, at best, inappropriate. I can tell what a wreck he is about the whole thing as he referred to members of the African-American community in his apology as "Afro-Americans". How late 70s . . . and more importantly, it reflects that he doesn't have Black people close to him in his life (I'll not speculate on the reasons for that).

While that is important, and let's also not forget about Mel Gibson's anti-Jewish rant, I wonder if it is possible to make such a slur and stir about women. People often, without reservation, refer to women as bitches, hell, we even refer to each other that way. If women had heckled him, would there have been such an outrage if he used any number of stunningly, in my opinion, insulting and derogatory words about us (c--t as one example)? Would his career have been completely destroyed by such an event?

Regularly women are referred to in any number of insulting ways under the banner of art and there is little discussion of it. It takes references to murder to bring any sort of reaction about women (remember Eminem's song about killing his wife) and even that's not a career breaker (unless you actually kill your wife, right O.J.?).

I find it saddening that sexism is seen as a fight that has been won. I think we have a long way to go.