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Flashback: Bert Newton & Muhammed Ali

Bert Newton remembers one of Australia's greatest Live TV moments.

It remains one of Australia’s greatest Live TV moments…. when a slip by Bert Newton at the Logie Awards in 1979 with Muhammed Ali nearly upset the champion boxer.

“I like the boy,” Newton had said, without realising the inference to African American history.

Those in the audience immediately sought to placate the visiting boxer, who died yesterday at the age of 74.

“It was an honest mistake on my part,” Newton told News Corp yesterday.

“I thought, I don’t think my life is all that secure here.”

Ali had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease for more than three decades and was as admitted to hospital earlier this week, with a respiratory illness.

7 Responses

  1. Then there was “John Boy” Walton, in that long running series. And “The Dukes of Hazzard” theme “Just’a good ol’ boys, Never meanin’ no harm,…”. Despite its widespread use as a racial putdown, the U.S. Court of Appeals recently decided that “boy” cannot be considered a racial slur unless it’s prefaced with a racial marker such as “black”.

    1. “Good ol’ boys” is not the same as using “boy” on it’s own. In fact, in the southern US states where it is used, “Good ol’ boys” refers almost exclusively to white men.

  2. Bert was simply quoting his well-known “at the time” catch-phrase from IMT when he impersonated Colonel Sanders promoting Kentucky Fried Chicken. Bert had no idea it was a racial slur. This story has been reported time and time again…
    Bravo for having a knee-jerk reaction on ‘casual racism’.

    1. Political Correctness gone wild. Another reason why we will never have great TV like we did back in the hay day, as there are too many people who claim everything is racist. I don’t believe Bert went out of his way to upset Mohammad Ali, and never saw Bert as a racist ever.

    2. By today’s standards, maybe yes. By the mores of the time – 36 years ago, remember – not really. Particularly when it happened in Australia; a country where the word was not loaded down with ~350 years worth of association with slavery & racism.

      How do you think your current standards of language, morality, & ethics will look when measured against the standards of the 2040’s or 2050’s? Thanks to the popular explosion of the Internet in the mid 90’s and everyone’s habit of recording their most trivial opinions on it, I suspect we’ll find out soon. I don’t think it’ll be pretty, but it’ll certainly be interesting…

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