Not the celebrating kind
I’m writing this column on St. Patrick’s Day, and for the first time in ages remembered to wear green, a plain sweatshirt that is probably the only green item of clothing I own.
I’ve always appreciated St. Paddy’s Day because I’ve always appreciated excuses for a party, for drunken revel- ry and good cheer, and there are few that compare to the St. Paddy’s Day party in Chicago, with the green river to go with all the green beer.
In more recent years it’s become a family tradition to make the 20-orso-mile drive north for the parade in the tiny hamlet of Sidney, where we get Irish stew and our daughter heads home with a bag full of the candy tossed out by the friendly folks driving the tractors and antique cars.
St. Paddy’s Day apart, however, I’ve never been especially fond of celebrations of ethnicity, race, gender, etc. Those reservations have probably increased as our nation has become mired in identity politics, which is always ugly politics.
As my last name implies, I’m not Irish, and though I wish those who are well, I’ve always found it a bit strange to celebrate something I’m not (or, for that matter, to celebrate what I am either, which is an ordinary white male of German ancestry).
Which means I’ve never had much interest in genuflecting before Black History Month or Women’s History Month or whatever other racial, ethnic or gender commemorations are out there. I don’t necessarily see how any of us had much choice in the matter—in deciding, that is, whether we were Black or white, a woman or a man, or what our ethnicity/national ancestry happens to be.
Intrinsic characteristics like race and gender don’t seem, in and of themselves, to be worthy of celebration of any kind. They simply are.
As for the more recently minted “Pride Month,” and although I’ve been a supporter of gay marriage long before it became fashionable, the only sexual preferences I care about are mine and those of the woman I’m married to. Guys putting on dresses, high heels and wigs strikes me as bizarre; celebrating their doing so even more so.
None of this has anything to do with hostility toward Black folks, women, or any other group; rather, simply a belief that people are individuals, not members of groups based on superficial, ascriptive traits.
Part of it also probably goes beyond ideological reservations to a certain aversion to all forms of political exhibitionism—I’ve never put a bumper sticker of any kind on my car or permitted political signs in my yard, even for candidates or causes that I might otherwise support (and am appalled by those obnoxious “Hate Has No Home Here” signs, with their implication that it lives next door instead).
Space on my office door was strictly reserved for class-related stuff, with no virtue-signaling political slogans allowed. I vote at just about every opportunity but never slap on those “I voted” stickers afterwards (and tend to look askance at the self-congratulatory sorts who do).
Come to think of it, I’ve never attended a political protest or rally of any kind, and likely never will. As strange as it might be for someone who writes a column (mostly) about politics, I’ve never written a letter to the editor or commented online about something someone else has written.
I seldom even read comments on my own columns, assuming that they will consist mostly of the kinds of name-calling and insult-spewing that will further reduce my already too low opinion of humanity.
The closest I’ve come to anything resembling political activism is to sign the occasional petition, the last of which, if memory serves, was an ultimately doomed effort to move Batesville from “dry” to “wet” (to move it, in other words, from backwardness in the libations sphere to something resembling normalcy).
About as far as I’ve gone toward signaling any political orientation in my daily life was owning one of those Adam Smith ties that were fashionable in conservative circles back in the 1980s. It was a gift given in recognition of my admiration for the ideas of the great economist (which we would all benefit from better understanding), but I didn’t wear it much because it was a peculiar burgundy and mustard.
Some of this might be put down to a reflexive contrariness—for as long as I can remember the tendency when seeing everyone going in a particular direction has been to think more seriously about going in the other.
When it comes to ostentatious expressions of political enthusiasm, this leaves me with only the fireworks and cookouts on the Fourth of July, a day of deserved appreciation for the nation that has done so much to preserve the kind of freedom which permits us to choose whether and how much to care about politics.
Even the Fourth, though, can provoke its share of tacky jingoism—as when, at a Memphis Redbird game some years back, we watched as the Redbird was driven around the field on an ATV while waving the Stars and Stripes, accompanied by that wretched and unfortunately increasingly ubiquitous Lee Greenwood song.
It probably wasn’t what Thomas Jefferson had in mind.