Intelligencer

Top 13 Reasons Not To Like St. Pat’s Day

1. GAYS vs. the New York City parade organizers (yawn). See 1991 and every year since (yawn). Same arguments, same circular insults, same tired reporting by the media. Only good news is that this year the Queens Irish parade had some original controversy with the Boru vodka story we exclusively reported last week. Otherwise, please go back to well deserved anonymity, all leaders on both sides for the next 364 days.

2. Suggestion — we get the Sesame street puppets to act out the gay furor in future. Elmo can be Jim Barker, and Cookie Monster the leader of ILGO. Big Bird can try and referee – and whatever we do don’t allow the Teletubbies to show up. One of them is reputedly gay.

3. Fake Irish accents used by presenters on air and various others. Nothing more annoying that the begorrah and bejaysus brigade, who seem to think they have captured the Irish brogue perfectly. Don’t they know this nonsense began with Chauncey Alcott, a Tin Pan Alley composer of the 1890s who catered to the sentimental dreams of thousands of Irish emigrants? We don’t think he meant that it should still be taken seriously in 2004.

4. Bad news — Jakers, the new children’s show on PBS, imitates the worst of those stereotypes, so we’ll have another generation in a few years mouthing the same old clichés.

5. St. Patrick’s Day parade commentary. Not really their fault, but how can you make line after line of cops, firefighters, Irish organizations all that interesting for four hours of network coverage? Some of the features the folks at NBC use as fillers are worse. Maybe they should try to introduce some genuine Irish culture into the programming.

6. The all-male dinners — i.e. the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick — that will not allow women. Now known as the Talibans of Irish America, their insistence on an all-male night out smacks of the old boy and exclusive clubs their immigrant forebears loathed. Don’t worry girls, your “Intelligencer” correspondent has been to a few, and they are boring as all hell.

7. Network executives and schedulers who think the only Irish movie ever made was The Quiet Man. Now we have to say we love the movie, but there have been so many other Irish offerings, including Oscar winners over the last few decades, that we could all benefit from spreading the message a little bit.

8. Visitors from Ireland with attitude. Those who think Irish Americans know nothing about the old country and that they are somehow lost in the mists of the last century. Okay, maybe they could get that impression from the parade head bottle washers, but it ain’t true of most Irish Americans we know.

9. St. Patrick as stereotype. Similar to George Washington, Patrick never gets a break, always posing with a shamrock in his hand and an old grey beard. Actually he was a fascinating character, like Washington, and his story deserves much better treatment than ending up as the symbol of green beer and leprechauns. If you watched the excellent Hallmark documentary on Sunday night you probably learned a lot about the real Patrick. 

10. Hangovers. People using the day as an excuse to skip work and tell you in no uncertain terms how drunk they got the day before and what an AMAZING evening they had. Bore bore.

11. Shamrock ceremonies at the White House. Back to the day when we were only too happy to get within an asses’ roar of an American president. It’s a silly ceremony with the president and Irish leader posing awkwardly with a bowl of shamrocks. The best occasion was a few years ago when the bowl started leaking because it was a cheaper brand of crystal than Waterford.

12. Every politician from the president on down claiming to be Irish on the day. Would we try to claim Jewishness on Israel Day, or Italian on Columbus Day? What is it about these guys?

13. Anyway, bah humbug, have a great day!