Racist Comedian Helps Us Forget What We Did to the Indians on This Day, or Crazed Pilgrim Takes a Stab at Dark Meat

By now, everyone has heard about Keith Richards' racist rant at a Los Angeles country club last Saturday. The incident was captured on video by a random shlub in the audience, and by Monday the video had spread to every corner of the internet, irreparably tarnishing Mr. Richards' career, if not axing it altogether. Mr. Richards is best known for his role of Dr. Eunice Giggles on the popular 70's TV show Marcus Welby, M.D.. He was never able to follow up with a project more estimable than that, but he found a niche in recent years with lifelong fans of the show, banking off the popularity of that character, and made his living performing at Bar Mitzvahs and playing for his own slush fund at celebrity golf tournaments. All of that is about to change. Mr. Richards berated two stable boys at the Peaceful Gulley Country Club on Saturday with a barrage of pointed "yo momma" jokes. He then used a pitchfork to usher the young men into a cauldron, and only realized he was on JumboTron after he set fire to the wood underneath. Fortunately, the boys sustained no injuries. Mr. Richards issued a swift apology Monday afternoon to a small gathering of close friends and family from the balcony of his Malibu condo and said he'd apologize to everyone else later. Still, the backlash was fierce. Communities all across the country organized DVD burnings of Mr. Richards' popular show, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson went on a hunger strike. The most damning backlash came undoubtedly from Monday evening's Larry King Live, on which the mother of the two boys appeared and proved to over 20 million viewers that she was, in fact, not so fat as to jump up in the air and get stuck. The entire country, it seems, has hitched a ride on the hate-on-Richards-train (Richards being the guy up there tied to the tracks). Next stop: Pariah Junction. Those who aren't outraged are heartbroken. They've seen the sinister underbelly of a universally beloved TV personality, a man whose fans were as familiar with his weekly antics as they were with the details of their personal relationships, a man whose particularly lonely fans might even call him their best friend. These fans must now face the fact that Mr. Richards, they hardly knew ye. All they new was a rascally grin and a smattering of facts - most of which are probably incorrect - and yet to many people he felt like a friend. The whole situation is made doubly tragic by the fact that I told you not to befriend any TV personalities way back in chapter five of my 1985 self-help book Breaking the Cycle: 10 Steps to Regain Your Untelevised Life. Vindicated.