(Originall ran Aug. 22)

I’ve watched “America’s Got Talent.” I’m not proud of this, but I have.

I saw the performance by the Ozzy Osbourne impersonator - well, some of it, since it made me feel queasy. But the sight of this guy on this show - which features Ozzy’s wife-manager as one of the judges - helped clarify something that’s been bothering me for a while.

See, it used to be that the worst association Black Sabbath had was with Satan. Which, in rock ‘n’ roll terms, isn’t a bad one to have.

But thanks to Ozzy’s missus, the mighty Sabbath is connected, however marginally, with reality TV, a failed talk show and now “America’s Got Talent,” which is what “The Gong Show” would be if the contestants were excruciatingly sincere and the judges oozed desperate smarm.

And that’s not what I want to think about when I think about Black Sabbath.

It’s not as if Sabbath gets brought up much on Sharon’s projects. Ozzy is enough of a household name without having to bring up his once and sometimes band to remind anyone who he is.

But if it weren’t for Sabbath, the Osbourne empire never would have come to pass, and it’s a drag to think that Sabbath’s music has even an indirect link to swill such as “America’s Got Talent.”

Oh well, I can at least thank Sharon Osbourne for the 2001 Ozzfest. Because no matter how many useless nu-metal bands I had to sit through that day - this was at the height of Limp Bizkit’s reign of crap and half the bill was mining the already barren rap-rock lode - the 70 minutes of Sabbath that ended the evening more than made up for it.

When Tony Iommi hit the solo on “Snowblind,” I was transported back to my 12-year-old self, listening to an 8-track of “Vol 4,” and discovering for the first time music that was mine, not my older brother’s; music that was dark and powerful and spoke about things I wasn’t supposed to know about.

All the reality shows in the world can’t take that away from me.