Well first off, I am acting on the premise that the articles are unbiased and what not.

Seems like he was really sincere to me.

I mean hecklers.. and comedians doing stand up are like peas in a pod. Until you are huge, part of your stand up act IS dealing with people who shout whatever during your act.

It strikes me that two things have come out of the incident, firstly once again celeb status gets a person who is still clearly living in the fifties off from racial villification and second Michael Richards has clearly forgotten where he came from or was never a struggling stand up comedian.

To top it all off, he comes off as if he was in the right and that it was a completely random response. Random or not doesn't matter, it was the wrong response.