This isn’t actually racist at all actually, or at least not to any objectionable degree, but I just wonder about the way it’s presented here, on an otherwise highly reputable blog. Will the blogger be posting a clip of sombrero-wearing ‘Mexican’ puppets warbling some Mexican song come November 1st? Or some ‘gansta’ ‘black’ puppets rapping and eating fried chicken when Martin Luther King day falls next year? And if not, why is it therefore appropriate to jokingly suggest that Irish culture can be reduced to such worn-out clichés as wearing green hats, drunken singing and self-pity/alcoholism?
I’m not complaining so much about the content of the perceived slight as I am about the inequality of the situation. Maybe I’m just being over sensitive though, I don’t know. It just seems to me like there’s a double standard at play. Maybe it’s because the Irish are white, and it’s considered acceptable to mock white people under the rules of PC (see, inter alia, French jokes, English jokes, the rather funny stuffwhitepeoplelike.wordpress.com, etc…).
March 17th, 2008 at 8:43 am
I think that you *are* being too sensitive here.
I think you miss the point of the post. Kieran Healy (the poster at Crooked Timber) is an Irishman, living in the United States, who has presumably seen his share of ridiculous paddywhackery in that country.
I think that this sketch is a great satire on all that nonsense and I laughed like a drain at it.
I also am an Irishman, living in Belfast.
Michael
March 17th, 2008 at 9:21 am
You do know that Kieran is Irish don’t you? There’s a general exemption that you’re allowed to poke mild fun at your own culture.
March 17th, 2008 at 10:31 am
I’m offended.
March 17th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Oh, I didn’t know he was Irish. I suppose it’s ok so. I should probably have checked that out before mounting the high horse…