Operation AXIOM
Welcome to St. Paddy's Day, America's annual pageant of ethnic prejudice. The Nativists & Know Nothings of the 1840s & 1850s would be proud to observe a holiday that reduces Irish culture to & caricatures it as nothing more than early-morning drunkenness, a fondness for shamrocks, & leprechauns, leprechauns, leprechauns. Imagine if firms advertised by painting actors up in blackface & having them enact grotesque imitations of exaggerated & distorted rural Southern black culture; such depictions of black Americans have been recognized as offensive & banished from the public square since the civil rights movements of the 1960s, yet it is still entirely acceptable for firms to hawk their wares using actors made up as leprechauns, jigging preposterously & lilting away about the incredible savings on offer. That such behavior is still acceptable in this day & age is staggering. Can anyone defend St. Paddy's Day as anything other than a pageant of ethnic prejudice?

Let's dispense with the fiction that St. Paddy's Day has anything to do with the feast of Saint Patrick, shall we? Yes, I freely admit that St. Paddy's Day gets my Irish up, as it were.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of St. Paddy's Day
Denis Leary, "Traditional Irish Folk Song" from No Cure for Cancer (M.P.W.)