Mark Sawyer, CNN
- Harry Connick Jr. almost got it right when he challenged the doctors who mocked the Jacksons in blackface on an Australian version of “the Gong Show.”
The fact is, even Australians know better. It isn’t that they did not know that what they were doing was shocking and offensive; they just thought they could get away with it.
“If they turned up looking like that in the United States,” he said on the “Hey Hey It’s Saturday” television show, “Hey, hey, there’s no more show.”
In a message posted on his Web site, Connick wrote that “in the American culture, the blackface image is steeped in a negative history and considered offensive.” He also wrote, “I do not believe that the performers intended any harm.”
