Hey Hey it’s an over reaction!

OK, so I finally watched the second Hey Hey It’s Saturday! reunion, with all the recent blackface/racism commentary in my mind, so I was already prepared to be ‘outraged’…

WHAT THE FUCK?

The skit wasn’t that great. Had a laugh because they were sending up Michael Jackson more than anyone else, and he died recently, so maybe that’s a bit offensive, whatever.

All this talk about racism and shit? What the fuck? Blackface is pretty racist, granted. Is ‘blackface’ relevant to Australia? No. It was something that happened in America over 60 years ago. Now, by and large, you wouldn’t expect everyone to know about it on account of its generally obscure nature outside the USA. I certainly hadn’t heard of it before all this controversy. That’s the definition of ignorance.

So, that brings me on to the point: how can someone be intentionally racist on a topic they are ignorant of? If you don’t actually know about something, you can’t intentionally make fun of it. You might do something similar which resembles something racist that has been done in the past, but from your point of view, and anyone elses point of view who is unaware what you are doing may be interpreted as racism, it isn’t racist. These performers, and the Hey Hey team by extension, have all apologised for being unintentionaly racist, and that’s OK. They didn’t know. Nobody can know everything.

What really fucking annoys me is HCJ, his ridiculous comments, and the shitstorm he’s ignited over the issue. He was offended, fair enough. So, Daryl was graceful and made an apology to him directly on live fucking television. That’s pretty big, and shows, I think, that they were genuinely sorry. Fine, fine, whatever. The point at which this became an issue was when HCJ decided to go on his little self-righteous rant about making a statement on behalf of America? What the fuck?

I transcribed it from the show:

And I just wanted to say on behalf of you know, of my country I know it was done humourously, but we’ve spent so much time trying to not make black people like buffoons that when we see something like that we take it really to heart. I know it was done in good fun, and the last thing I wanna do is take this show to a real y’know down level, ’cause you know how much I love this show and this country because I feel like I’m at home here, but if I knew that was gonna be a part of this show I probably, I definitely wouldn’t have done it. So thank-you for the opportunity, but I gotta give it up cause Daryl said, I told him at the break, he said, man you’ve gotta speak as an American, not as a white American or a black American, but as an American I need to say that, so thanks for giving me the opportunity.

I think Monty Python expressed this annoying personality disorder best quite some time ago. In short: “I just wanna say, let me tell you” to shut the fuck up.

And let’s not forget Kamahl boycotting the show in his own little way. Kamahl, your ‘why are people so unkind?’ line was funny at the time you said it and went on to become its own in-joke that has obviously been running a long time. There’s nothing racist about what someone said being taken humorously by other people and turned into a joke. Granted, his accent does add some of the humour, but if we aren’t allowed to make fun of accents because it’s racist… well, that actually doesn’t even make any sense. A persons accent comes from those of the people they grow up and live with and has nothing to do with a persons race.

Fuck me! The stupidity honour guard are out in force on this issue.