Test Your Own Standard of Forgiveness

“Seinfeld” fans will cotton to this autobiography. Actually, despite his zany Cosmo Kramer character and politically incorrect language in a standup routine, Michael Richards is a sensitive, interesting man who writes about his loopy journey connecting with Billy Crystal, Larry David, and Jerry Seinfeld, in the first person.

“I sign up, I like.”

“My mother takes” is a clever device to bring in the reader. Despite his wild hairdo and zany antics on “Seinfeld,” Richards paid his dues early on, even as a bus driver, then trained in his serious acting craft with Stella Adler.

But then, the proverbial s–t hit the fan, while performing his standup act at the Comedy Factory in 2006. When heckled by the audience, he let his anger get the best of him and lashed out with expletives and the “N” word. This all went viral, and Richards was culturally cancelled. He spent years analyzing and

apologizing. As a spiritual soul, he often quotes Rumi’ s poetry. By comparison, after his on-air conflict with Dan Rather about the Iran Contra scandal, George H. Bush said, “How would you like it if I judged your career by those seven minutes when you walked off the set in New York?”

Read the book to evaluate if Richards, now 75 and a prostate cancer survivor, has sufficiently apologized to move forward after almost two decades of self-imposed exile, as a changed person who has done his Teshuva, the right time of the year for that.

He stated, “I had to go deeper into what I was apologizing for, to really know what was the basis for my anger … I had to come apart over this is order to put together a better person.”

The book concludes with a touching moment with his mother at 101 suffering from dementia, when he explains that “the sun is in his heart” … feeling the light is a good thing.

Make no mistake, despite his Jewishy Cosmo Kramer role, Richards is a Catholic.