Race creeps back in the media conversation: The topic of the day is Michael Richards racial rant at a West Hollywood club. The man whose claim to fame is to have played the obnoxious neighbor Kramer on the "Seinfeld" show lost it to a couple of hecklers. An ugly, vulgar, not funny side came out in full view as he hurled one racist epithet after the other, with increasing rage. A very miserable performance, which starts a cycle of more miserable performances, with the predictable "apology tour". The American media asks gravely if this is the sign that racism is still alive and well - making it sound like it would be a real surprise. Yet that same media regularly reports on racism, but it is mostly the institutional kind, tagged to a malevolent bureaucracy or corporation, or the cartoon sort - imputed to marginal or marginalized losers. The surprise, if any, can only be that it was uttered by a television icon that the media assumed was "one of them": well groomed, properly progressive, and mostly inoffensive.