Other Crap

GALLUP: Gauging the Impact of the Michael Richards Incident ... "Richards rated more negatively than other Seinfeld stars, but still more positive than negative"

• Statistics sometimes depend on how you present them. Here's a different spin on the matter. Kramer has a 36% negative rating, compared to 11 for George and Jerry and 9 for Elaine. Put those numbers on a graph by themselves and you get a different picture from Gallup's headline above, don't you? I assume Kramer would have been in the same 9-11 range if he hadn't had his blow-up, so it's fair to conclude that the incident hurt him a lot, especially considering that nearly half of all respondents aren't really following the incident, so Kramer got nuked within the group following the story.
• Obviously, Kramer's negative rating has increased by 25-27 points, and that correlates perfectly with the fact that 28% say they are now less likely to watch him.
• The other three stars are perceived exactly the same by whites and non-whites, while Kramer has now developed a gap, unsurprisingly enough. I have to think the gap would be much greater if more non-whites had been following the issue more closely, because Kramer's actual meltdown was genuinely ugly.