I once lost my cool and let a boss really have it. In my rage, every bad thought I had ever had about him sped past my brain and spilled out of my mouth, rushing like a river rapid, unstoppable and untamed. You name it, I went there.

Could that be what happened to Michael Richards the other night when he launched into that outrageous tirade at a Los Angeles comedy club? It’s obvious that he lost his cool after being heckled during his bit. But whence came the ammunition -- the racial obscenities and threats?

I knew where my slings and arrows had come from. I had never given voice to the thoughts, but they had been bunkered in my mind for a long time. Verily, those were not unfamiliar notions.

But Richards claims his bigoted insults came out of no where. To hear him tell it, his own words were like that creature in the “Alien” movies that takes harbor inside an unwitting person then one day bursts through the flesh. In those scenes, no one is more shocked or hysterical than the host. 

Essentially, that’s what Richards is saying -- he didn’t know the monster was in him. It’s the same excuse Mel Gibson used a few months ago after spraying arresting officers with anti-Semitic invective. He too disclaimed his own words as foreign.

Isn’t it something how these first-time offenders are so articulate, so nimble with racist vitriol? Gibson’s Jew-bashing tantrum was laced with stereotypes. Richards spewed  “nigger” repeatedly, then threw in some references to lynching for good measure. No long time, fire-breathing Klansman could have done better.

Since Richards is not an acclaimed actor and is little known except for his wacky “Kramer” character in the “Seinfeld” sitcom, his performance that night cannot be chalked up to his acting chops. And if he had picked up the language from a script somewhere, he surely would have blamed it on that by now.

VIDEO: Michael Richards: 'I Was Humiliated'

Michael Richards is a guest on the Jesse Jackson radio show in Los Angeles. He said he was humiliated by the hecklers and was trying to humiliate them, when he went on a racial tirade during a comedy routine.

Indeed, he may not know where his hateful words came from, but common sense tells us that they did not debut in his head that night. Others share this suspicion. Of all of Jesse Jackson’s descriptions for Richards’ comments -- “hateful” and “sick” among them -- his most insightful was “deep-seated.” Apparently, Jackson knows too that Richards might never have talked that way before, but he had thought the thought.

On Jackson’s radio show, Richards said he was “shattered” by what he had said and offered an apology to the black men he had targeted. It’s a start. But, if he knows what’s good for him, he will want to do more than tour the remorse circuit. He will find out where that stuff came from and do his best to purge it. Otherwise, it will either escape again -- and maybe more dangerously so the next time -- or it will poison him, rendering him unable to feel safe or happy or free.

He’d be wise to get to work on it because, this time, it only cost him a few gigs and some blows to his reputation.
 
It could have been a lot worse.