Happy St. Pats to Everyone but RFK Jr.

 

Sometimes an entire family is needed to properly slap a cabbage-headed man into something like reality, but also, it hardly works when he's long been away with the fairies. Some people have noted that despite the talk of anti-vax RFK. Jr. selecting anti-vax sports figure Aaron Rodgers as his running mate, he's liable to declare some wealthy idiot named Nicole Shanahan who has enough money to maybe get him on some ballots as his running mate. 

I guess I don't know for sure she's an idiot. I guess it depends on whether she agrees to be the Kennedy idiot's running mate. For all I know, the idiot he runs with is Jesse Ventura, although, despite his lad working for RT, I never thought Ventura was quite that kind of idiot, except possibly in the "fire doesn't melt steel bars" kind of way. 

Anyway cheers to St. Pat, who got the snakes out of Ireland. I truly would love it if there was a saint who would ger the sheer idiots out of politics. But I am proud to support Joe Biden because of his anti-malarkism. 

It's a brilliant start. 

What the Hell Are You Doing? 4: St. Patrick's Edition

On this St. Paddy's Day, a special message from noted Irishman Robert Francis O'Rourke. pic.twitter.com/JRjMEXhZRY

— GOP (@GOP) March 17, 2019

I see that the GOP account is reflecting a few things here--they would like to remind us that the hot, new thing on the campaign trail for 2020 had a DUI (George W. Bush, anyone? Matt Gaetz?)  They would also like to remind us that Beto O'Rourke's given name is "Robert Francis O'Rourke" and not actually "Beto". (Although this would be true of a person whose name was "Roberto" as well--it's a nickname like so many "Dick's", "Bill's" and "Jimmy's".  Politics is full of people with nicknames. I'm not sure what the problem is here--are they trying to do a "Pocahontas" thing as Trump did to Sen. Warren, where somehow, O'Rourke is pretending to be someone he isn't?)

But what this GOP post did was refer to Robert O'Rourke as a noted Irishman (he was born here in the US, making him as Irish as the Kennedys, Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and me). And called up a stereotype of the Irish as being drunks. It isn't always untrue, that poverty, tragedy, loss and homebrew/pub life have intersected, but it was used against a whole class of immigrant in the US to deny jobs and to blame the Irish immigrants for the problems they had in assimilating. The drink was a signifier people could moralize about, instead of just looking at these Irish Catholics through a snobby Protestant lens, which was less sympathetic.

But even if alcoholism was an inheritance among Irish people--it is a disease that can be overcome and not a moral failing, however the wearing o'the green and beer-bonging Guinness have been identified with this Irish-American holiday. And alcoholism is a familial tragedy that touches many in terms of interdependency and co-dependency. It isn't a joke. It isn't a casual thing to throw around for politics' sake.

My own response to this was "Way to stereotype, dipshits." On today, of all days, to use Irish identity to slam a Democrat with outdated and vulgar stereotypes shows a lack of class and character and good sense. I am employing my prerogative to take this insult against O'Rourke personally myself, and will hold a grudge against the GOP until I die, and rise in the morning and go to bed at night cursing their very existence. In increasingly satirical and devastating ways, along the function of a  seanchaí. 

Which I was going to do anyway, as a matter of fact, but because of this, more so.