At one point he even ate watermelon.

His performance, the worst train wreck since "The Fugitive," was witnessed by more than 3,000 people filling the ballroom of the New York Hilton hotel at a $250-a-ticket charity benefit by the show biz organization. A blocklong dais featured more than 100 celebrities who sat stoneface through the monologue, including such prominent African Americans as New York Mayor David Dinkins, performers Halle Berry, Vanessa Williams, Anita Baker, RuPaul and Mr. T, and boxers Michael Spinks and Sugar Ray Leonard. A closed-circuit camera showed them looking embarrassed and uncomfortable.

During Danson's monologue, talk show host Montel Williams turned his back to the audience to study the closed-circuit screen. Then he stared at the floor. Next to him, director Gilbert Cates, who helmed the last three Oscarcasts, muttered, "This is terrible. It's way over the line. He's completely lost it." Williams nodded speechlessly, got up and walked off the podium. He later wired Friars chairman Bob Saks, comparing the event to a rally for the Ku Klux Klan or Aryan Nation.

Friar's roasts, which are never taped for telecast, are traditionally raucous and obscene.

But the specter of a white man in blackface repeatedly using the word "nigger" and other strongly coded words seemed to cross a line that was sensed by most of the people in the room. The event demonstrated that the painful history of black-white relations in America is still too sensitive to be joked about crudely. Goldberg, whose real name is Caren Johnson, has used her entire career to try to break down racial stereotyping, and in encouraging Danson's approach she may have thought it would play as satire. But, as stand-up comics say when their material isn't working, he was dying up there.

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