Hey hey, who dunnit?

Here's what I want to know: who was it who watched the Jackson Jive act on old Hey Hey footage from decades ago, when the participants were all young medical students, and decided that it would be a good, funny and appropriate thing to do to invite them back? Who thought that was a good idea? Surely this can be tracked down to a single name. But I bet we never hear it.

Unless it was Daryl Somers himself, of course. He certainly appears to be living in the past in every other way.

For the record I think (a) that when it comes to humour, context is everything, especially with parody and satire, but (b) that blackface, whose origins lie in open mockery (and badly-concealed fear and loathing) of African-Americans, is not appropriate, at all, in any context, ever. (And I did enjoy Germaine Greer's comments on Q&A last night comparing the Hey Hey fallout with women's tolerance of men in drag. I've always taken it for granted, especially after seeing Priscilla, that theatrical drag -- as distinct from private or non-performative cross-dressing, which is about something else -- is grounded in ferocious hatred of and contempt for women, but that is true of so many other things, like The Footy Show, that one has to acknowledge it as a norm.)

Part of the context for the Jackson Jive fiasco, of course, was that one of the judges was a guest from the American South. So whoever set the whole thing up either was too ignorant and dim to realise, or did it deliberately. I'm not sure which is worse.