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“most of them are black as well, would you put a little colour on your face?”

Partridge Kenny gets 90% of €850k a year for this:

Is this racist? I very much doubt it’s hate speech but it is rather dense. Now, if Gerry Ryan said the same thing, would we think it was someone out of touch or more? What if Tommy Tiernan said it?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 23rd, 2009 at 11:04 pm and is filed under irishblogs, tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

12 Responses to ““most of them are black as well, would you put a little colour on your face?””

  1. CiaránMac says:
    March 23, 2009 at 11:58 pm

    A facepalm moment.

  2. Eoin O'Mahony says:
    March 24, 2009 at 8:34 am

    So in order to be a dancer in New York you have to (a) be black, or (b) put on blackface. That’s where I’m going wrong.

  3. Keith says:
    March 24, 2009 at 9:46 am

    Cringe.

  4. UnaRocks says:
    March 24, 2009 at 10:39 am

    It doesn’t matter if he meant it to be racist or not – it’s fucking stupid and offensive. He’s basically encouraging a 7-year-old to become a minstrel! Just because it’s Pat Patridge, and we’re relatively used to his gaffs at this stage, doesn’t mean it’s any less shocking. If an American or British television presenter said the same thing they would be in serious trouble. The lack of indignation about this (offline, because there has been a fair amount of message board action) just shows our own collective acceptance of such imbecilic casual racism and ignorance.

  5. Sweary says:
    March 24, 2009 at 1:18 pm

    Yer man Aragorn there doesn’t seem too offended.

  6. Robert Synnott says:
    March 24, 2009 at 2:03 pm

    It also presents worrying evidence that Pat may be over 100 years old.

  7. Ronan Gallagher says:
    March 24, 2009 at 2:14 pm

    I think we are being a little over sensitive here guys. Given the language used in much of hip hop culture I think the ‘homies’ back in NY and around the world wont take too much offence at what was at worst a somewhat thoughtless though innocent comment from Mr Kenny.

  8. John Braine says:
    March 24, 2009 at 2:17 pm

    Here’s Pat getting ready for some body popping:
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/jbraine/3379175317/

  9. Robert Synnott says:
    March 24, 2009 at 2:36 pm

    Ronan: Blackface has historically been considered particularly offensive.

  10. Eoin says:
    March 24, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    @Sweary: that’s because he’s whitie’d up himself.

  11. johnmryan says:
    March 24, 2009 at 9:07 pm

    Yes, I gasped when I saw this, but no one else in the room seem to get what was wrong with what he said, so I dropped it, it seems like he started and dug an even deeper hole

  12. Dave says:
    March 25, 2009 at 1:42 pm

    That video’s been taken down; there’s a copy here.

    Also: Jesus Fuck – and I’m paying for this?