Even if the inebriated parade season doesn’t end for a couple of more weeks yet, this year’s build-up to St Patrick’s Day hasn’t been quite as painful as previous editions.
Didn’t have any madcap student leave a head of cabbage on the lectern in advance of my arrival this week. The colleague who wondered how I, a non-drinker, managed to teach through the hangovers March must bring has thankfully retired. Not even a single invitation was received to the traditional “kegs and eggs” breakfasts that seem part of so many annual rituals in these parts. In fact, only saw my first “Drink me, I’m Irish” T-shirt in the wild last weekend. A record.
For those of us who have suffered through too many St Patty’s Day (a linguistic atrocity unique to these parts) seasons in America, this is always a difficult spell. The initial joy of seeing your country recognised, more tricolours billowing from a local car wash than I ever saw in the Cork of my youth, quickly gives way to embarrassment that eventually morphs into anger at the fact so many celebrations revolve around stupefying quantities of drink. Witness the 28 ambulances needed to ferry dozens of students from the University of Massachusetts to hospital the other week, the undergraduates having overindulged at the annual St Patrick’s Day-themed binge called “The Blarney Blow-out”.
When you go from reading about that sort of debacle to wandering through a grocery store where the main “Irish” food being promoted is Guinness-flavoured crisps, made in Devon and tasting every bit as rank as they sound, you wonder how much of this stuff is self-inflicted?
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After all, the most prominent Irish brands advertising their wares here seem to be that particular brewery and gut rot Proper 12 whiskey, a lingering commercial presence reminding every emigrant that Conor McGregor, like him or litigate him, remains the best-known Irish sportsman in America. Sad but true because Rory Mcllroy is only golf famous.
It doesn’t have to be this way. There are alternatives to the relentless “Drink, Drank, Drunk!” narrative espoused by the T-shirt you see at every parade. Each March, the staff of the Irish Arts Centre take to the Manhattan streets and give away thousands of free Irish books to New Yorkers. A smart, creative way to showcase the talent of our nation.
There are myriad other examples of literary, musical and dancing initiatives making sure that Americans, if interested, can understand Ireland’s national holiday is not just about offering boozed-up buffoons in garish green clothing an excuse to misbehave. The number of car accidents involving alcohol doubles every March 17th.
What about our native sports though? Amid all the transatlantic traffic between Dublin and the USA, no effort is made to offer the 127 million Americans who celebrate the day an opportunity to sample the very best of Irish heritage, our most distinctive products of all, hurling and Gaelic football. All it would take is a few bob and a little bit of imagination to create droves of new sporting tourists. Take it from somebody who has been sending Americans visiting Ireland to club and county matches every summer for decades. They are never less than thrilled.
How about a couple of our best hurlers and camogie players having a long puck along a course on Fifth Avenue when it’s closed off for the frankly tiresome parade? You think the New Yorkers and the watching NBC television audience might lap that up? I know they would. A couple of more heroes could be lashing balls around Times Square, trying to hit targets for the benefit of the cameras and the inevitable crowds gathering to savour the spectacle. An Irish tour bus parked nearby could offer curious onlookers the chance to watch games of both codes playing on big screens. I’ve seen the NBA pull that very trick in Manhattan with the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy on board to lure passersby.
Acknowledging the competitive format of the National Leagues makes it difficult for current intercounty players to fly to America, squads of recently retired stars could be recruited for the task of entertaining the locals and promoting the national games.
Aside from small-scale gimmicks like enlisting male and female Gaelic footballers to kick field goals at half-time during televised XFL (the spring professional gridiron league) matches, they could play a mini tour of exhibitions across the country. Flogging this would be easy because, at this time of year, news outlets will give airtime to anything vaguely Irish. There’s only so much step-dancers in Marie Antoinette wigs a nation can take.
It doesn’t have to be that large scale initially either. For starters, the GAA could get ESPN or Fox Sports or CBS Sports, channels that clog up their dance cards with everything from intervarsity Quidditch to Cornhole to Australian rugby league, to show the previous year’s All-Ireland hurling and football matches every March 17th. Given that The Quiet Man and Darby O’Gill and every other slice of Irish-themed cinematic schlock ever made gets an airing this month, surely some television executive could be persuaded to offer curious viewers a sample of something different, something quintessentially Irish, something better.
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Alternatively, we can stick to wasting a small fortune sending a fleet of chinless wonder politicians over here to do whatever it is they do at parades where everybody is too wasted to even register their presence.
