Hey, are you going to punch someone too -- 'cause of course, getting drunk & punchin' someone is the -only- thing StPat'sDay is about. (uh, not)

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Sorry, I must rain on your St. Patrick's Day parade
by Dominic Gates

Today on St. Patrick’s Day, I’ll avoid conversation with strangers. I’ll try hard to keep my Irish eyes smiling by gritting my teeth and nodding at comments on my “lovely” accent.

I’ll give my usual brusque affirmation in reply to the daily telephone question, “Are you from Ireland?”

Yes, I am from Ireland, but I’ll have to bite my tongue to stop myself from berating some naïve American with how I hate your damned ignorant, fake and racist St. Patrick’s Day.

A secretary once asked me, “Could you hang around the office all day and just talk?”

Usually I’m content with this easy power to please. It is always women who comment on the accent, so it’s a light-hearted boost to my male ego.

But I’ll not be playing the game on St. Patrick’s Day, darlin’. I refuse to be boyish, roguish and charmin’. Ah shure, you know where you can stuff your paddy whackery.

Does that seem a little over the top? Let me calm down, and try to explain why your lovable holiday is so appalling.

First realized that your charming images of Ireland, replete with Aran sweaters and tweeds, are 50 or 60 years out of date, based on Hollywood romanticizations like John Ford’s “The Quiet Man”.

That’s the 1952 movie where Irish American John Wayne returns to live in his ancestral village, woos the fiery redhead Maureen O’Hara, wins her over and proves his mettle to the menfolk by beating her stingy brother, McLaglen, in a brawl that is such fun every man in the village joins in. Both the argumentative courtship and the brawl are good naturedly comic, of course, just like the Irish.

O’Hara falls in love with Wayne, and McLaglen buys him a drink after their day-long fight. Shure, and how could you not love the passion of the Irish?

Let’s stay with images a while. Part of the pervasive iconography of American St. Patrick’s Day is a variation on the University of Notre Dame’s mascot – the “Fightin’ Irish” figure.

You’ll see it everywhere on the 17th of March, from Hallmark stores to T-shirts to street banners: a diminutive man with buckles on his shiny shoes and another on his billycock hat, his snub nose, heavy brow, and mustacheless beard accentuating a simian quality to his features: he has a pugnacious scowl on his face, his fists are clenched.

THAT IMAGE GOES further back than Hollywood; its source is English anti-Irish bigotry from the 19th century.

The English Victorian satirical magazine “Punch” specialized in savage “humorous” cartoons that created an infamous Irish stereotype, on documented in the 1870s by Perry Curtis in “Apes & Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature”, and more recently by the eminent Irish historian Roy Foster in “Paddy and Mr. Punch”.

Punch derided the Irish as stupid, feckless, drunken and lazy; the apelike cartoon image portrayed the Irishman as subhuman.

It is almost incredible that this racist image could survive, but one only has to look at a few of those Victorian cartoons to recognize that the “Fightin’ Irish” figure is nothing but a shallow Disneyland version of Punch’s subhuman.

You’ll have to excuse my killjoy failure to be charmed by the caricature. It may have lost its meaning to you, but I know where it came from.

Try promoting African Americans as thick, ugly, violent alcoholics, quick to anger, not very bright, but good for a song or a story, great entertainers in their place – try that, and let’s see how charming they find it.

How can it be that in today’s politically correct America this racism is not merely tolerated, but celebrated as good clean fun? The unfortunate truth is that many Irish Americans are as ignorant as anyone else about the realities of Ireland.

Though my blood boils at the perverse holiday stereotypes, Irish Americans join in with gusto. St. Patrick’s Day is their special day. What else can they do? How about trying to learn about the real Ireland? Find out why the shamrock is a national Irish symbol, and the four-leaf clover is not.

Discover that, happily, no one in Ireland wears bowler hats, except the Protestant Orangemen of Northern Ireland celebrating the Twelfth of July.

For a flavor of modern Dublin, try reading Roddy Doyle. Rent the movie version of his book, “The Commitments”. Notice the absence of Aran sweaters and tweed jackets.

Educate yourself about politics, too. There is a complicated political peace process going on in Belfast; try to discard the old knee-jerk, anti-Brit reactions and make sense of it, including the fears of unionists.

Listen to Van Morrison playing with the Chieftains, and note that he is a Belfast Protestant.

Find out about the enormous Scotch-Irish contribution to the making of America, and include that in your picture of Irishness.

Go visit Ireland, Belfast as well as Dublin; avoid stage-Irish tourist traps like Killarney.

Read Swift, Shaw, Wilde and Yeats. Read Seamus Heaney and John McGahern. Read Joyce.

Or ignore my railing. Step out on St. Patrick’s night, wearing something green, and enjoy your ignorance. Get drunk and hit somebody; but kiss then afterwards, sing a sentimental song and buy another round of green drinks.

Keep the stereotype alive. But realize it has damn little to do with Ireland.

Sorry to open your eyes; but shure, raining on the parade is a St. Patrick’s Day tradition, too.


Dominic Gates is a Seattle writer who emigrated from County Tyrone in Norther Ireland. Copyright The New York Times.