Reply #22: having performed for over 10 years on the streets in NYC

[habitual]

i can tell you, there is a productive way and a destructive way to deal with hecklers.

Most newer performers wind up using the destructive way because they haven't learned to turn things around to their advantage yet. I don't know why Michaels went down the road he did, but it was very destructive and caused a huge loss of his audience, something you try to avoid at all costs.

Make fun of the heckler, sure, but in a way that isolates and embarrasses him/her, not insults and degrades them. You try to get the rest of the audience to be on your side not the hecklers... in this situation, he went down the wrong road and the audience sided with the hecklers, which is the worst thing and you wind up losing it, like he did.