Impressionist and broadcaster Mario Rosenstock says a decision by US TV show 'The Simpsons' to re-cast a black cartoon character with a black actor has 'gone too far'.
'The Simpsons' has previously announced that actor Hank Azaria will no longer voice the character of Carl Carlson.
Azaria is a white man, while the character of Carlson is black.
Alex Désert made his debut in the role this week.
Mario Rosenstock is one of Ireland's most famous impressionists, and the creator of 'Gift Grub'.
He told Lunchtime Live: "I think it's gone too far, Andrea, and I wouldn't go so far as to say it's PC gone mad - because I don't like the expression 'PC gone mad' cause I actually believe in political correctness and I believe to be politically correct is a nice thing, and denotes decency and kindness to other people.
"But I think that you can go too far with these things.
"In this instance I think Hank Azaria is a white actor who is doing a black voice - he's not seen on screen, the voice actor - so in other words, for all intents and purposes, it could have been anybody doing the voice.
"Hank is also part of what we might call an ensemble or a troop: in other words, a group of talented actors who do many different voices.
The character of Carl Carlson (left) is now voiced by actor Alex Désert. Picture by: Twitter/@TheSimpsons"So you could be doing an Indian voice, you could be doing a Japanese voice, you could be doing a woman's voice.
"And in fact you could be a woman doing a boy's voice; so for example, in 'The Simpsons' a woman does Bart's voice.
"I feel it is going too far, because I think when you go down this road you introduce a number of problems.
"And the problem is probably most obviously this: if you have a person of colour in, let's say, a radio sketch show or just being voiced like in 'The Simpsons', must that character be performed by a person of similar race and colour?
"This is a problem for me.
"You probably then would extrapolate from that: let's say we have a Japanese person in 'The Simpsons' - must that character be voiced by a Japanese actor."
'Tokenistic jobs'
"If, for example, you have an Eskimo character [that] comes into 'The Simpsons': must an Inuit actor be sourced from the mountain tops of Greenland or Alaska - and then relocated, and his family presumably relocated, to Hollywood or wherever they're shooting.
"You see where I'm going with this?"
"It does bring in other areas as well", he said.
Using his show 'Gift Grub' an example, he explained: "I perform all characters - so I perform female characters and I perform male characters.
"I also perform characters of mixed race, like Leo Varadkar.
"So I would ask should I not be performing Leo Varadkar, and should an actor of mixed race be brought in to perform Leo Varadkar?
"Now obviously I'm being devil's advocate here, but I'm saying that you see the problems that you're getting yourself into."
The Simpsons. Picture by: Twitter/@TheSimpsons"There are two different types of impressions: first of all when I'm doing an impression of somebody it is my impression of somebody, it's not yours.
"In other words, it's my opinion baked into my impression".
"Similarly, I might do an impression of a woman, and I'm kind of wondering when it'll get to a stage where people go 'Should your man Mario Rosenstock be doing impressions of women at all - is that not taking work away from women actors, who should be doing the voices themselves?'.
"Or would other people go 'Nah, I prefer him doing Miriam O'Callaghan actually, cause I like him doing Miriam O'Callaghan and I like him doing Joan Burton'.
"And I suppose then you get back to the old argument: do we tokenistically give jobs to people on the basis of ticking a box called 'diversity' - or do we give jobs to people based on the basis that they are the best person for the job?
"And this is an argument we're going to get into time after time whether it be feminism or impersonation or impressions.
"So for example, some people will tell you 'No, there will be no gender equality until women have the job of every CEO in the country'.
"I don't think that's fair - I think if a woman deserves the job of a CEO, she must be the best person for the job".
"It's not unfair to extrapolate from this that somebody's going to go: I object as a Kerry person to Mario Rosenstock doing the Healy-Rae's - he is not from Kerry and he is culturally misappropriating the Kerry voice and he should not be allowed to do it'.
"So who should be allowed to do it? A native, pure-blood Kilgarvan man should only be allowed to do Kerry voices".
