CSotD: Cushlamacree!
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The whole issue of St Patrick's Day is fraught, given that it grew to prominence as a kind of civil rights march in the era of Know-Nothing bigotry and morphed into a nationalist event each year, raising money for the liberation of Ireland but has since somehow became the Stepan McFetchit monstrosity it is today.
I blame Maggie, the lace-curtain social-climber of George McManus's "Bringing Up Father," a monster hit in its time, which began in 1913. As seen in the above scan, the basic tension of the strip was between Jiggs, who had made his fortune in construction and was still fond of hanging out at the pub with the lads, and his wife, who curried favor with the upper set by denying her workingclass roots.
Well, evidently she won, because Jiggs and his pals down at Dinty Moore's have been reduced to once-a-year buffoons.
But her creed of anything-to-fit-in assimilation is only part of the issue. There's also the matter of jokes that are funny when I tell them about me but not so funny when you tell them about me.
Drunk jokes are to the Irish what the N-word is to African-Americans: Some refuse to tell them at all, some only tell them within the family and some blabber them all over the place because it makes them feel like they have a lot of friends.
There are, however, some pretty funny Irish cartoons, and I would certainly be remiss if I didn't feature my favorite Barnaby of all time, in an arc in which his parents have taken the boy to a psychiatrist because of his refusal to admit that his fairy godfather, Mr. O'Malley, is not real.
While they confer with the expert, Barnaby is supposed to be working on a battery of tests:
O'Malley, as his fans all know, was a member of the "Elves, Leprechauns, Gnomes and Little Men's Marching and Chowder Society," though not always a member in good standing, given to filching cigars and otherwise taking advantage of whatever came his way.
It's a touchy character that needs to be handled right. In Bringing Up Father, Jiggs is hard-drinking but also hard-working: The rapscallion is Jiggs's brother-in-law, Bimmy, who is portrayed as an embarrassment to his high-falutin' sister and a constant pain to Jiggs himself.
Just as Redd Foxx could bring a similar character to mainstream comedy without the offense caused by Steppin Fetchett, there are Irish loafers and rascals whose depiction is within the pale and those who are not, and it's a personal matter of where to draw the line.
It's that way with a lot of Irish characters.
Personally, I find the Barry Fitzgerald characters and John Ford's frequent Irish buffoons too broadly drawn and sentimental. Your mileage may indeed vary.
But if you aren't Irish, well, tread respectfully. There's not a lot of difference between green face paint and burnt cork.
In any case, there are Irish cartoons from Punch that crack me up despite not coming from inside the group. If they crack you up, too, enjoy the laugh.
Otherwise, please feel free to take notes on, and umbrage over, this scholarly cultural anthropological study of Celtic-inspired, Sassenach-published imagery over the years:
Granted, this piece is no compliment to the Irish intellect in general, but it's a style of fools-play that the Irish love, and only a slight step removed from the wit that is truly prized, particularly in the service of puncturing the pompous.
Daniel O'Connell, the Great Liberator, was revered as a crusader for justice, but also loved for just that sort of wit. In court one day, his opponent made a reference to a "false fact," and O'Connell muttered from his seat that there was never any such a thing as a "false fact."
Opposing counsel whirled and declared, "There are false facts, and there are false men!" to which O'Connell retorted, "Yes. Your case, and you."
This is more the classic Irish bull that I mentioned the other day, a logical disconnect in mid-sentence. Some of it may come from the difference in structure between Irish and English, which has persisted well after native speakers became an endangered species.
For instance, there's no distinct word "yes" in Irish, rather, they use the verb "to be," which is why if you say it's a beautiful day, an Irishman may respond, "It is that," rather than "yes, it is." It's direct translation of a language he likely doesn't speak.
But there are also issues of word order that show up in how sentences are constructed. My favorite example comes from a Galway woman who had grown up in a native-speaking small town and was tending bar in her family's pub one night when someone came in and asked, in Irish, if anyone had seen a particular fellow.
Not wishing to speak the old language in front of a young girl, one of the men at the bar mustered up his best English and said, "He was here afore he left, but he's not long gone since."
Which sort of linguistic confusion could give rise to the lovely exchange above.
On the other hand, there is also a wide streak of what is not Irish bull but simple bloody-mindedness, as in this cartoon …
And this one.
And then there's the Irish gift of prophecy, which can't be denied:
Who knew that these two would foresee the Internet and all it offered?
I will be making corned beef and cabbage not so much to acknowledge my roots but for the annual excuse it provides. I need neither the fat nor the sodium but, then, I didn't need all that turkey and gravy at Christmas and Thanksgiving, either, did I?
I might even have a glass of something bracing, more or less along the same lines.
In any case, skip the plastic derbies and that horrible green beer, but do have a lovely day, and if one of us makes a joke on ourselves, feel free to laugh.
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