"I AM NOT A FRIGGING MINORITY GROUP" | 2005-12-01
The two voting blocs that switched from the Democrats to the Republicans and caused the Reagan landslide were Southern whites and Northern Irish.
After the meetings of the "politicals" on Thursday evening, me and an Irishman from Philadelphia would usually have a talk. Neither of us could understand why the Yankee Republicans were so hoplessly bad at politics.
One evening I told him a Catholic joke where the Catholic came out on top.
He said, "Why isit that every Catholic joke I hear, the Catholics come out on top?"
He had me dead to rights. I was being patronizing.
You NEVER tell a joke where a Jew ends up looking silly. You NEVER tell a joke where you make fun of a black. They cancelled Amos 'n Andy for that.
Jews, blacks and Hispanics are Official Minority Groups and they expect you to know it. Gays are likewise. They used to be univesally ridiculed. Now they must be universally praised.
So what my buddy was saying was, "What do you think we Catholic Irish are, a friggin' minority group? You think we can't take it?"
So when I worked in the Chicago steelworker district, I would never have DARED refer to them as "Polish People" the way the sitcoms do. They were Pollacks and proud of it.
That was then. This is now. Everybody now knows the word "patronizing." But today you better call them "Polish People" and the Catholic better come out on top.
As with so many other things, everybody knows the buzzword, but nobody knows what it means.
Today if you don't want to be patronizing, you have to patronize.