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WHAT A DAY
St. Patrick's Day - March 17, 2008
by Mike McCormack
WHAT A DAY
Awakening with a slight fever on March 17, I realized that this would be
only the 4th time in 50 years that I would not march in the magnificent
New York parade up the Queen of Avenues. After liver transplant surgery
two years ago, I’d been cautioned against crowds due to a low immune
system enacted to avoid rejection and so I resigned to make the best of
my fate, by watching the celebration on commercial TV. WHAT A MISTAKE
THAT WAS!
I would have been better risking illness, for what I saw was sickening
enough. Obviously America’s major networks have no sense of what we
Irish are all about. If I saw one fool dressed up as a leprechaun, I saw
dozens. Fox news even had a quintet of costumed morons kicking up their
heels in a mock jig behind a performance by Black 47. Larry Kirwin
should have known better. Fake exaggerated accents called brogues
permeated the airwaves and the term St Paddy was repeated ad nauseum.
Hoping for some recognition of the true contributions of the Irish to
world culture, I checked out A&E’s History Channel. Now, I knew that
there were “complaints of misleading information in some of their
programs” according to Wikipedia. I had even corrected them on their
presentation which identified the Zorro legend with Joaquin Murrieta
instead of Wexford-born William Lamport as was verified by Fabio
Troncarelli, Professor of Human Science at the University Della Tuscia,
in Viterbo, Italy, who discovered the story researching the history of
the Inquisition in Mexico. But I figured I’d give them a try anyway,
after all one of their managers is named O’Connell. The first program I
noted was called "Paddy Whacked" - the story of the Irish Mob in which
Ireland’s nationalist resistance to Crown oppression was incorrectly
identified as a tradition of Irish violence against authority and the
reason for the Irish inclination to becoming natural gangsters. Granted,
there were some Irish who turned to crime in a society that rejected
them for their immigrant status and their religion, but how insulting it
is to highlight those few and exclude programs on the majority of the
Irish who contributed to scientific and civic improvement as doctors,
lawyers, judges and politicians, not to mention the support provided to
sports and the arts such as theater, music, and literature. It was
especially misleading when the roster of Irish criminals included such
names as ‘Mad Dog’ Coll, ‘Legs’ Diamond and Owney Madden, none of whom
knew anything more about a connection with their Irish heritage than how
to spell their last names!
However a redeeming offering appeared on their affiliated International
History Channel entitled "Saint Patrick - the Man the Myth and the
Legend". Then came the New York Parade televised by NBC which is to be
complimented on their coverage, as is John Dunleavy and his committee
for an excellent presentation of a true picture of our heritage despite
the plastic paddies on the sidelines with the hats shaped like mugs of
beer and the shamrocks plastered on their faces. I should have stopped
there, for after the parade, NBC’s 'Ellen degenerated' the Irish with
her opening monologue about Irish drinking then further debased our
Irish heritage by putting on a pair of Dutch wooden shoes and calling
them Irish Clogs. That was the end of TV for this writer.
I went into my library and selected a good book on the history of
Ireland and was appropriately moved with pride in all that my ancestors
have suffered, accomplished and ultimately given to an ungrateful world!
Mike McCormack, NY State Historian
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