Backlash of the `Borat' effect

Two big-time media operations came correct on the same day -- Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which claimed Monday to be listening to America's outrage when it canceled the "If I Did It" book and TV publicity stunt starring O.J. Simpson, and Jerry Seinfeld's "Seinfeld," which brought off a bizarre and discomfiting public apology Monday night for cast member Michael Richards, a.k.a. Kramer, who appeared on "The Late Show With David Letterman" to express contrition for a racist tirade onstage Friday at the Laugh Factory.

The "Seinfeld" apology -- Seinfeld in studio with Dave, Richards via satellite from what appeared to be a therapist's waiting room in L.A., identified as Television City -- looked for all the world like a bit.

Indeed, the studio audience (at least those who, having queued up all afternoon for the Letterman taping, hadn't seen or heard about the cellphone video making the rounds on the Internet and cable TV) tittered and guffawed as Richards apologized for saying "some pretty nasty things to some Afro-Americans."

"Stop laughing; it's not funny," Seinfeld could be heard admonishing the audience.

"I'm not even sure this is where I should be addressing the situation," Richards said, referring to the unintentional laughs his deadpan was getting.

CBS was sure. The appearance was teased on the local news and then on "CBS Evening News With Katie Couric," with the "Late Show" getting its highest ratings since last year's Oprah visit, according to the network.

Richards did look properly in turmoil about it all, even though there was no way to avoid the uncomfortable spectacle of "The Late Show" having become some bizarro "Primetime Live." And here, perhaps, was the first recorded incident of the "Borat" effect: guerrilla comedy intertwining with reality until it's a shoelace you can't undo.

You couldn't exactly blame the studio audience, conditioned to think comedy first, reality second, for receiving it all as a gag. Richards, like Sacha Baron Cohen, is more intense character actor than stand-up, with the not-insignificant difference that Cohen's comedy is character-specific, a projection outward to get everyone's guard down and expose a bigoted culture, whereas Richards, if you see the video, was just projectile vomiting, revealing only his own lack of judgment on Friday night.