On Saturday, I was in my office away from home, at my neighborhood saloon. There was a large private party celebrating St. Patrick’s Day. Um, I guess no one told these slap d**ks that St. Patrick’s Day is Friday, not one week before.
All week drunken pukes will drink all day, pretending to be Irish, and acting like fools. Geez, Americans are the dumbest, most culturally insensitive people on the planet. A regular bunch of drooling backwoods rubes, bark chewers, pork swords, and peckerheads. This whole concept of everyone being Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, smacks of cultural appropriation at its worst.
No one claims to be Chinese on Chinese New Year, Italian or Polish on St. Joseph’s Day, African American for Bud Bilikin Day, Mexican on Cinco de Mayo… You get the drift. Yet, dumb, mostly stupid non-Irish White a**wipes think it is perfectly appropriate to claim Irish heritage even though they know little to nothing about Ireland, its people, history, or Irish Americans. Talk about elite privilege.
The only reason non-Irish people celebrate the day for an entire week now is that the liquor and beer companies, along with the saloons, promote it. It gives amateur drinkers an excuse to drink, puke, wash, rinse, and repeat all week long.
My friend, the artist, Tony Fitzpatrick, has his take on the day and the Irish, along with some mythology about the “Luck” of the Irish: Almost every year in Chicago, it’s the same story on St. Patrick’s Day–a bunch of drunken, green-wearing slap-dicks spilling out of bars all over the city and projectile-vomiting foamy green puke on everything in sight.
Some years back, a Greek acquaintance stated the obvious in a saloon full of St. Patrick and St. Joseph revelers wearing their “Kiss me I’m Irish or Kiss me I’m Italian pins. “Man, you guys have it made. St. Patrick and St. Joseph. Kiss me I’ ‘m Irish. Kiss me I’m Italian. What do we Greeks have? St. Nicholas? F**k me I’m Greek?”
We should not make this day a week-long trial of alcohol-fueled debauchery and puking from fake Irish pub crawls. On Friday, hungover fake Irish people will line up in front of fake Irish pubs early and throughout the day, no matter the weather to drink themselves silly, only to wait in line to get in the next one and repeat. I took the picture of the young person above at 2:30 PM on St. Patrick’s Day a few years ago. While she was commiserating, her drunken friends were deciding where to go next to get even drunker.
The Irish should rebel against this cultural appropriation like other races and ethnicities have done. This is their day to celebrate in the fashion they choose. The Alcohol Industrial Complex should not hijack it to include non-Irish people. The Irish should protest loudly against non-Irish amateur drinking people, claiming their heritage for one day or week just to get plastered and leave trails of puke all over the city. I realize I am pi**ing off the Alcohol Industrial Complex, but too f**king bad. This concept of appropriating other cultures just to sell hootch is socially and morally wrong.
That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.