Faith and begorrah it’s that time of year again. Time, that is, for the kind of “virulent eruptions of Paddyism” that, in the words of Ireland’s greatest newspaper columnist, is another form of “the claptrap that has made fortunes for cute professional Irishmen in America.” Yes it’s St Patrick’s Day and Myles na Gopaleen’s withering verdict on the nonsense of professional Irishism remains about the best there is.
These days, mind you, it’s gone so far that you can no longer easily determine what’s pastiche and what’s become parody. In a curious way, the celebrations in New York, Chicago and Boston are the real deal and it’s the attempts to emulate them in Ireland that are the most ridiculous part of the entire shenanigans. The American stuff, while still enjoyably absurd, is at least real fakery; the Irish end of the bargain is the fake fakery.
At least that’s how I recall it being when I was a student in Dublin in the mid-1990s.
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