__
Been saving this since Charlie Pierce highlighted it. We could do with a little more outrage, and even better, a basic level of historical literacy:
Just in time for St. Patrick’s Day , Nike released its SB “Black and Tan” sneakers, a nod to the popular beverage made from mixing stout and pale ale. What the company didn’t realize: the name is also deeply offensive to Irish people. It refers to a brutal British paramilitary unit sent to suppress Irish revolutionaries in the early 1920s. In Ireland, the “Black and Tans” are still widely associated with merciless mistreatment of civilians.
__
The name would be the equivalent of calling a sneaker the “Al Qaeda” in the U.S., Ciaran Staunton, president of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, told IrishCentral.com. Backlash ensued, and Nike offered a a swift apology for unintentionally upsetting the Irish people. It was a complete accident, of course, but it does make you wonder why nobody over at Nike’s headquarters knows how to use the ol’ Google machine…
Me, I’d have gone with a “Blackwater/Xe” comparison, but perhaps Mr. Staunton was being polite. I will also second DougJ’s earlier link to Peter Behrens in theNYTimes:
…[F]or many Irish-Americans and Irish-Canadians, including me, St. Patrick’s Day isn’t really about Ireland. It’s about our ancestors leaving that country, often in bitter circumstances, and risking everything on a hazardous journey and being met with fierce hostility and scorn. It is about immigrants struggling, and mostly succeeding, in their new life, or making success possible for their children and grandchildren…
__
Since we have all been more or less constantly on the move since our ancestors decamped from the old neighborhood in Ethiopia, 195,000 years ago, you’d think that, as a species, we might have worked through our hostility and suspicion of newbies by now. But we haven’t.
__
So let’s have one day — March 17 — where the word “immigration” is not immediately followed by the word “problem” in our national conversation. Because that has never, ever been our real immigrant story. St. Patrick’s Day reminds us to celebrate, not despise or fear, immigrants. And the hyphenated-Irish, descendants of the first “immigrants,” ought to lead the parade.
The prophet Nostradumbass
For dinner tonight: Colcannon
some guy
corned beef AND shepherd’s pie
freelancer
God that Higgins clip gets better every time I hear it.
One thing about St. Paddy’s day that made me guffaw is that, earlier yesterday, one of my best friends, who is from Guadalajara asked me, since I’m half Irish and showed up to work sunburned as a lobster after going to the Angels Spring Training game Thursday, he goes:
“So is St. Patrick’s Day, is that the same type of holiday that Cinco de Mayo is for most actual Mexican people, where Irish people don’t give a shit and it’s everyone else that decides to go ‘whee! I’m celebrating heritage and diversity!’ but if you’re actually that background it’s not that big a thing?”
I responded, “Yeah, I’m half Irish and damned proud for no particular reason. I’m a McGargill or a descendant of them anyways, and we drink enough 364 days a year that the one day everybody dons green and drinks with us and wears hats, we’re like, ‘um, okay, Great. How come you weren’t here last night?’.”
My buddy goes, “Yeah, that’s what Cinco de Mayo feels since I’ve been in the States.”
Happy 17th of March, Juicers.
Ash Can
If only it were as easy to do the kumbaya stuff over non-whites.
Yutsano
Pain perdu made with challah. But I’m French-Canadian/Jewish. :)
Wag
I never got the whole Blake and Tan drink thing. I’ll go with Black Velvet– Guiness and champagne, instead.
AA+ Bonds
It’s about a bunch of watered-down narrowbacks pretending to share a national identity
AA+ Bonds
No offense but as an Irish American, we’re white now
Bort
Come out, ye Black and Tans;
Come out and fight me like a man;
Show your wife how you won medals out in Flanders
Tell her how the I.R.A. made you run like hell away
From the green and lovely lanes in Killeshandra.
some guy
identity is a funny thing, no doubt, but the 17th of March is when my tribe recall a certain saint driving the snakes out of our land.
and now we are here, but it lessens not a whit our allegiance for where the tribe came from.
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
I know I’m supposed to get very upset every time someone uses “black and tan” but, frankly, I don’t give a shit. The Irish won their independence. Get the fuck over it.
reality-based
So, Bill Clinton was in my neighborhood today- specifically, in Grand Forks, 60 miles away – wearing a green tie, keynoting the state Democratic convention, getting the keys to the city from a grateful Grand Forks (Clinton, and his FEMA director James DeWitt, showed the country how the Government SHOULD react to a natural disaster during the Grand Forks flood in 97, and he is VERY popular here – his keynote address was great, too
– (sigh), of course, Grand Forks always votes for Democrats, anyway – its the western part of the state that’s the problem –
anyway, the Big Dog is still on his game –
Suffern ACE
On a very tangentially related topic, is there anything specifically Irish about mint? I was drinking a shamrock shake today as I usually do on this day, and wondering if the shake could have been lime, apple or wintogreen.
bargal20
As far as I was ever aware, a black and tan was ale and guinness in a single glass.
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
If you get offended by a pair of shoes, you should be protesting outside Red Square 24/7. Way more civilians were killed by Stalin than by the black and tan.
some guy
@Suffern ACE:
as a verb?
Suffern ACE
@Mnemosyne (iTouch): Your linky goes to mandalay bay. I think we should protest there. Also, while there protesting, demand that the house must continue to take cards until 20. That small step alone would help the masses tremendously.
some guy
@Mnemosyne (iTouch):
If you get offended by a pair of shoes, you should be protesting outside Baghdad 24/7. Way more civilians were killed by Bush in Iraq than by the black and tan’s Obama has sent to Afghanistan.
Villago Delenda Est
@Mnemosyne (iTouch):
Link no workee for us neanderthals on desktops.
Suffern ACE
@some guy: Maybe we should just buy Clark’s and call off shoe protests. You can protest other things, and besides, if you’re wearing Clark’s you can protest for hours on end and not suffer from tired feet.
Mnemosyne (iTouch)
As it should, since that’s where Red Square and its decapitated statue of Lenin are. Linking on an iPod sucks.
some guy
@Suffern ACE:
I only wear New Balance
but thanks for missing the point.
MacKenna
This is weird. An independent blues/roots record label in the Netherlands is called Black and Tan. http://crossroads.nl/blacktan/
pseudonymous in nc
Seriously, there are marketing people in the world who don’t have “Black and Tan” listed in a folder marked “100 Great Branding Fuckups Of Our Time”?
I liked Behrens’ op-ed a lot, because it gave me a way to think about Shamrock Shake Day in a way that doesn’t make me cringe. The festival of paddywhackery is a testament to a bidirectional assimilation: the emigrants create traditions that bind the old and new country, and eventually the latter adopts and appropriates it in its own way.
That doesn’t mean I’ll join in. I still remember flying out of Logan in early March, where the departures featured lots of plastic paddies headed to Dublin, and the arrivals had a lot of Dubliners getting the fuck out of Dublin for the holiday.
Mark K
That was me that sent Mr. Pierce the link. If only one Democrat would speak like this! Of course, he wouldn’t be allowed on TV anyway, who am I kidding.
Balloon Juice and Pierce’s blog. My life would really suck without these 2 favorite places.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
Damn that Duke of Ellington!
freelancer
@Mark K:
Being a media guy from Boston with a large following and a gift for snark has its perks.
Kudos on pointing it out to him.
Citizen_X
@Bort: Thought of that song right away. So here it is.
And this verse still has some bite:
Martin
Picked up a new iPad today and its just unbelievably nice to read on.
Silver
So, since March 17 is a made up bullshit holiday, I can keep on not giving a shit and not putting green food coloring into a shit lager?
Cool. Turns out I’ve been doing that my whole life.
I’m from Canada, and I don’t turn into a raving Canuck on July 1 either. It’s just a day. Olympic hockey…different story, of course.
Citizen_X
@pseudonymous in nc:
Interesting exchange. Boston, probably the world capital o’ plastic paddies. But that’s where the Dubliners end up going.
But the place to experience St. Paddy’s, er, week is St. John’s, Newfoundland. Lard Jaysus. I get drunk just thinking about it. (Don’t believe me? Ask Russell Crowe!)
Yutsano
@Silver:
My personal opinion: that should be a four day holiday for both countries so we can have a summer vacation in celebration of our two nations and the rather unique relationship we have with each other. Not a lot of places can brag of a peaceful border like we’ve had for well over 100 years.
freelancer
@Silver:
I’m sorry, WTF happens on July 1st? Is that the day Julian and Ricky are released from jail and meetup with Bubbles, Celine Dion, Rush, Dan Ackroyd, and Nathan Fillion; and implement Freedom 35 with an assist from Red Green?
Holy Fuck that’s good salami!
PS Has anyone seen Cory and Trevor?
Silver
Nice thought, Yutsano, but can you imagine your militant idiots (Don Cherry types, Republicans) “sharing” a holiday?
Albertans might go for it. They’re so fucking stupid, they look at the US as a goal to shoot for. And before anyone starts to protest, I was born in the Royal Alex. My “people” are like George W Bush or the Saudis: Born on third, and convinced they hit a triple.
The prophet Nostradumbass
@Silver:
In the US it certainly is a bullshit “holiday”. In Ireland, not so much.
Bubba Dave
There’s one webcomic I naturally think of when the subject turns to St. Paddy’s Day….
Suffern ACE
@The prophet Nostradumbass: I just don’t know about the made up part. I think the entire concept of holiday was developed to describe things like St. Patrick’s Day.
Mino
We have a disgusting murky green river flowing through the city for a week. I could do without that.
On a separate topic:
Washington Monthly has an interesting blog article on Obama/Hedge Funders and their relationship this go-round.
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/political-animal-a/2012_03/obama_and_the_anxieties_of_the036125.php
It explains why supposedly-smart guys are embracing the robot.
The prophet Nostradumbass
John Demjanjuk, dead. Rest in pieces.
Citizen_X
@freelancer:
Every day is the day that Julian and Ricky are released from jail.
TBogg
Wait. we’re supposed to care what the Irish think?
That’s adorable….
HeartlandLiberal
Indiana University Hoosier beat VCU last night with a two point shot by Will Sheehey with 12.7 seconds left. VCU got off a final effort to shoot a three pointer, but it hit the rim, went over the basket, and the clock expired.
The Hoosiers had not led at any point in the second half, but they managed to pull it out. A tough and exciting game against to well matched opponents, the best kind of game and the most fun to watch. Especially if your team pulls out the win.
I watched Tom Crean’s press conference on the Big Ten Network later, and have to tell you, Crean gives a great press conference. Preceding him, the reporters interviewed three of the players, and it was a pleasure to watch three intelligent, polite, and well spoken young men. Crean has built quiet a crew, and next year’s class will take the team to an even higher level. And he has focused on long term goals, not the short term go pro as soon as possible style of Calipari down in Kentucky, which I think needs to be regulated somehow by the NCAA, it is just antithetical to college football.
But my favorite moment was his response to a reporter asking if he was worried about the fact that Calipari of Kentucky was using the fact that Watford’s buzzer beater that clinched the victory over Kentucky earlier in the season was being played constantly on air to motivate his team’s anger at IU, who they will now face in the first round of the sweet sixteen.
Crean smiled, and said, well, he had watched that video again and again, and you know what, the ball still went in every time.
This is first time IU has made it to the sweet 16 since 2002. But an even more interesting statistic, this is the most wins for the Hoosiers in a season in 20 years.
Needless to say, at the moment here in Bloomington the mood is pretty much one great big “GO IU, GO BIG RED!”.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@The prophet Nostradumbass:
Nah. Not bullshit. Out of hand, maybe, but the nature of the holiday here- survived the English, The Famine, coffin ships, poverty, slums and epidemic disease and discrimnation…HAH, NOW WE GET SHITFACED!- is completely different than it is on the Old Sod.
That we invite others to join us in the celebration and they don’t know what it’s about is on them.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@HeartlandLiberal:
Isn’t that nice?
Go Spartans!
Peter A
“The Irish were seen as unclean, immoral and dangerously in thrall to a bizarre religion. They were said to be peculiarly prone to violence.”
Let’s be honest. Immigration sentimentality aside, all of this is pretty much true. Irish immigration has hardly been a boon to the US.
Baron Jrod of Keeblershire
@Peter A: Eat shit.
NotMax
St. Patrick’s Day is for pikers.
Now, Hogmanay, that’s a real drunk.
Was in Scotland in 1974/75, and when I left on Jan. 8, the festivities were still in full liquid celebratory mode.
AxelFoley
@Baron Jrod of Keeblershire:
ROFL
What’s with all these anti-Irish remarks here? Is this snark? Let me know, because my snark detector’s been on the fritz lately.
WereBear
We’ve had enough stupidity about “who’s better” for the past 12 years. When we share 75% of our DNA with bananas, racism and nationalism have no real basis in fact.
jeffreyw
@WereBear: I have a nightmare where I am a banana, split.
Jeffraham Prestonian
@pseudonymous in nc: Seriously, there are marketing people in the world who don’t have “Black and Tan” listed in a folder marked “100 Great Branding Fuckups Of Our Time”?
Taco Bell’s “Chilito,” later renamed the “Chili-Cheese Burrito,” since “chilito” is Mexican-Spanish slang for “tiny penis.”
.
Uncle Cosmo
At J. Patrick’s in Baltimore (the only Irish pub in town that isn’t plastic-Paddy-paradise), a request for a “black&tan” is met with the following reply:
I have no Irish in me but the blarney I was born with and the Jameson & Harp that (all too) occasionally lubricate my alimentary canal. (FTR I can’t abide Guinness beyond barge distance from St. Jamesgate.) But I’ve hung with the Hibernians for the last 30 years or so–the music (trad & ballad both) & the dancing & the crack are far superior to my own ethnicity’s. (The food’s far worse, but who says I have to eat there?)
Wag
@WereBear:
So I was curious about this claim of DNA homology between humans and bananas, so I did a quick Google search. And low and behold, I have discovered a nepherious right wing plot. The top several hits on a search for DNA homology bring you to a series of creationist/ID sites. I think the ID crowd has discovered how to “Sanatorumize” Google searches for evolutionary terms.
kdaug
@Jeffraham Prestonian:
Reminds me of when Chevy tried to market the Nova in Mexico.
“Nova” literally means “doesn’t go” in Spanish.
Maude
@Jeffraham Prestonian:
LOL
Svensker
@MacKenna:
I’m white than white so maybe I’m wrong, but when I was growing up in Seattle there was a black music club called “Black and Tan”. I always assumed they were thinking about skin color shades and not at all about Irish people’s history.
WereBear
@Wag: Those fiends!
I do think, they think, that manipulating the appearance of Reality is the same as actually having an impact on Reality. This is why they are also so good at Denial; for those many times such efforts don’t work.
HeartlandLiberal
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Well, FWIW, IU at home beat Kentucky, Ohio State, and Michigan State this season. Three teams in the top five. Never before done by any Indiana team.
Of course I am sure you know that Izzo is a mentor to Crean, who worked as an assistant for him at Michigan State earlier in his career.
Mino
@Svensker: Black and Tan is also the name of an old, old breed of foxhound in England and a coonhound in America, predating the 1920s British troops.
PurpleGirl
College memory: Going to the English Pub on 6th Avenue for Black and Tans. Still like Bass Ale a lot.
scav
Ahh yes, Saint Patrick. A probably posh, either Welsh or English (certainly Roman) outsider who came to Ireland half convinced that if he preached at the very back of beyond, he could bring about the Apocalypse. Indeed, that boy’s got Erin go bragh tattooed right next to party animal.
muddy
@scav: Patrick did great harm to Ireland. The Celtic church was much more reasonable and came in second to the lawbooks. Patrick insisted on the Roman version. Then the law came second, and women were put in their places. FF to present day, the Roman church is still an oppressor around the globe. Fk him.
Nutella
@Citizen_X:
I hadn’t heard the phrase plastic paddy. I call that kind of person a professional Irishman.
I knew some Irish people who worked in Chicago and were amazed and amused by the way so many Americans would tell them “I’m Irish” when they were, of course, Irish-American. Not the same.
muddy
@Nutella: There’s also “green necks”.
Robert Sneddon
@Nutella: Actually they’re American-American, three generations back or more usually. I find it a little surprising that so many Americans are hyphenated-American wannabees rather than, you know, thinking of themselves as 100% American.
ThresherK
@bargal20: Same here. Plenty of Irish descended folks, myself in part, in our ordinary suburb, and I wonder if many of our good-beer-bars pour a black and tan without knowing either.
I did remind my wife, who knows and cares nothing of Scottish football (go Dunfermline!), to not get herself caught between fans wearing the green and white hoops of Celtic, and the blue of Rangers.
Here, she is more in danger of having to swerve her car to avoid deer and bobcats in the road.
brantl
@Peter A: Eat large and steaming piles of shit.