I understand the points your making and certainly now think its more likely to have been light hearted.
Ok so...when you first saw it and recorded it, you thought it was in good fun. Somewhere along the way, you started believing it could be a diss. Then, in jabbering back and forth with me about it, you've come back around to believing it was in good fun.
But the fact that it can be interpreted differently is understandable.
It precisely isn't understandable, in fact it's bordering on delusion.
It is valid to have a different opinion or interpretation of what went on given what was said. This was NOT a rehearsed skit. Its NOT a matter of 2 + 2 = 4. It is easy to see how it could have been interpreted differently.
It's right there on the freakin' video! It's hilarious, and it's clear they are both taking the piss. There was no bitter feud before or after, and noone made a huge deal about it. Everyone laughed. Ha-ha. And to this day I can't figure out why anyone feels the need to create this theory that U2 somehow wanted to publicly diss Phil Collins. Like, why? It makes no sense. Yes, they had said before (or maybe it was years later, can't remember) that they disliked prog-rock, and Genesis was prog-rock. But by that point, Phil was a solo pop artist, and they were pop musicians also. They even have a couple songs (Red Light and Surrender spring to mind) that sound somewhat similar to some of his earlier solo stuff. There's just no basis to believe they hated him or his music and so wanted to publicly diss him on national television.
Since you are so assured that it was NOT a dis, I thought for sure you would at least have some vague idea of what would be a dis.
This is such an illogical argument. "The getaway car was blue" "Are you sure it wasn't red?" "No, it was blue." "But how can you be sure? What would it have looked like if it was red?" "I dunno, a fire truck?" "Are you saying a getaway car can't look red?"
You're asking me to speculate on what they might have said if they did in fact hate Phil's music and did in fact feel so inclined as to publicly diss the person handing them a freakin award?? Really??
Fine, I'll play along, borrowing inspiration from other posters in this thread who actually don't like Phil:
"Hey Phil - we've got alot in common...for instance, we used to have really bad hair, us two. The thing is...I lost my mullet...while you just LOST YOUR HAIR bwhahahahaha"
"Hey Phil - don't cry that you didn't win any awards this year - it's not every year you can come up with a (ROLL EYES) brilliant masterpiece like, you know, Sussudio (winking and nudging each other)"
"Hey Bono and the rest of you drunken Irish twits - what's with the big puppet heads - aren't your egos big enough as it is?"
If they had simply said, "Larry could not make it. We love your music Phil." Then obviously, there would be nothing to dispute.
It would be positively yawn-worthy, and not what the producers wanted, which was something edgy and funny. Plus, they don't have to love his music to not truly want to diss him. They're taking easy funny soft shots, that they both can have a laugh about, not shooting meaningful disses his way.
You claim this has been brought up here six times before which is just another way of showing that the situation was such that different opinions or interpretations of what occured is reasonable.
So let me get this straight: If 6 dimwits posted the video of Larry saying to Bono "If I had a head like yours I'd bleedin bury it" with the caption "OMFG LARRY DISSEZ BONO ONOH!!!!111!1" on 6 different occasions, you'd say that it's reasonable to interpret it that Larry was really dissing Bono for real??