Harry Connick Jr. Speaks Out About Blackface Skit On Australian TV
The Australian show Hey Hey It’s Saturday (even though it’s Wednesday) welcomed Harry Connick Jr. on their live reunion show where he performed and guest judged the talent competition called Red Faces. Well, Red Faces was full of painted on black faces when a group called the “Jackson Jive” came out . And my face turned absolutely dead white. THE FUCK IS THIS?!
They had been on the show 20 years ago, and apparently were really popular, so they came back for more fuckery. The audience seemed to enjoy their asses and even brought the boos when the group was gonged. However, Harry wasn’t amused. Not only did he give him them a giant ZERO, but when he got backstage, he threatened to quit that bitch. The producers and the host told Harry that they would let him say a few words about his feeling towards that shit.
Harry said, “I just wanted to say on behalf of my country, I know it was done humorously, but we’ve spent so much time trying to not make black people look like buffoons, that when we see something like that, we take it really to heart. I know it was in good fun, and the last thing I want to do is take this show to a down level—because you know how much I love this show and this country—but I feel like I’m at home here, and if I knew that was going to be part of the show, I probably—I definitely wouldn’t have done it.”
The dudes who took part in the skit still don’t think it was that offensive. They said they did it as a tribute to Michael Jackson (insert THIS FACE here). One of the dudes said, “I suspect things are probably a bit different in America in terms of what that (black face) mean. I understand the history of the black face but certainly it was not construed in that way at all. All six of us discussed this at length whether or not we should put this on because we realised it may be controversial. We did go to the trouble of checking with the production staff and they seemed to ok it. Two of us come from India and one of us comes from Lebanon so we can’t afford to be racist to be honest. If we did offend him (Connick) we truly didn’t meant to.”
I think the “Jackson Jive” needs to spend their Thursday night watching that episode of Gimme A Break! where Joey Lawrence performs in blackface at Nell’s church and learns a life lesson from it. They can do that while I go and vacuum the fish tank.
VIA Scandalist