Krissy

Hey Hey It’s Over

Wow, I am quite… well angry isn’t really the right word, but I am something right now, and had to get this off my chest.

On the Hey Hey It’s Saturday reunion show tonight, there was a skit called the “Jackson Jive” where they were doing a MJ/Jackson 5 impersonation. First off, I have no problem with this kind of skit. However, these guys decided to wear blackface, with the MJ character having his face painted white.

As soon as I saw that, I thought, uh-oh there is going to be some backlash over this.

Harry Connick Jr was one of the judges, and he gave them 0. He was quite offended by the blackface, and rightly so being a US citizen.

So I’m not a US citizen but even I am offended by the blackface. I knew it was offensive, but only recently after an episode of Mad Men featured it, I did some more reading on the topic and was able to understand more about it.

Now I guess blackface isn’t really taboo in Australia, so a lot of people don’t seem to understand how the skit was offensive/racist. It’s not the skit itself that was offensive (impersonating a singing group), but the fact that they painted their faces black. Regardless of whether they were singing, dancing, doing backflips, the fact they wore blackface is what is offensive.

Sure, it may not be offensive to anyone in Australia, but it is highly offensive to some. Really, I blame the show and whatever producer OK’d the act, knowing that one of the judges was from the US where the act is taboo.

PS I am far from one of these politically correct people, I get pissed off all the time over a lot of the PC stuff that goes on, this matter is nothing to do with PC.