BY MARK SHIELDS

There was a lot more drinking in Washington, D.C., before May 15, 1978. That was the date, as of this writing, I had my last drink. This may help explain why I, as an Irish-American, so dread March 17 and St. Patrick’s Day, which has regularly been turned into an excuse for officially sanctioned public drunkenness, forced gaiety and throwing up on some stranger’s shoes. Instead of honoring St. Patrick, who came to Ireland in 432 and converted the Irish to Christianity, the day often serves to reinforce an ugly ethnic stereotype.
The Irish sense of tragedy — which can help us navigate life’s few fleeting moments of joy — is no historical accident. Western Europe’s worst catastrophe of the 19th century was the Great Famine of 1845. Ireland suffered 1 million dead to mass starvation and disease and lost 2 million more to desperate emigration in less than a decade. Under the heavy yoke of British domination, Ireland lost one-third of its population, while London, capital of the world’s richest nation, did nothing, preferring to see Irish poverty as some collective flaw in the Irish character and the island’s plague of death as the choice of Providence.
Battered and bewildered, the Irish diaspora came to America. Here they were shunned by homogeneous native Protestants for speaking differently and practicing their “superstitious” religion and by economically struggling Americans for being unwelcome competition for low-paying jobs. Irish men, consensus opinion concluded, were childlike, lazy and not to be trusted. Sound at all familiar? Irish women, at least the good ones, could become maids or even nannies.
Of course, a century and a half later, all is nearly forgotten. Today Irish-Americans number nearly 35 million, and Ireland is second only to Germany as the most frequently identified ancestral country in the United States. The U.S. has been good to the Irish, who are likelier, according to the Census Bureau, than other Americans to have graduated from college, to own their own home and to earn a high income. Irish-Americans have given, as well, to the country and its culture. F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flannery O’Connor, Edwin O’Connor and Alice McDermott all have enriched our language and our lives, as did the great director John Ford.
I am reminded of the first major speech then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy delivered after the assassination of the president, his brother. The date was March 17, 1964, St. Patrick’s Day, and it was in Scranton, Pennsylvania. He recalled James Joyce’s describing the Atlantic Ocean, over which the Irish immigrants made their dangerous journey, as “a bowl of bitter tears” and spoke of the difficulties they faced: “As the first of the racial minorities, our forefathers were subject to every discrimination found wherever discrimination is known.”
Then RFK, having acknowledged those unhappy times, challenged his fellow sons of Eire to be faithful to “the traditional Irish concern for freedom everywhere.” He continued: “I would hope that none here would ignore the current struggle of some of our fellow citizens right here in the United States for their measure of freedom. … If we are true to our (Irish) heritage, we cannot stand aside.”
This March 17, why not forgo the swigging of shots and green beer and forget your off-key rendition of “I’ll Take You Home Again, Kathleen”? In the true spirit of St. Patrick and in memory of Robert Kennedy, demonstrate that to be Irish really means comforting the afflicted, welcoming the stranger, remembering the forgotten and speaking up for those unable to speak for themselves.
To find out more about Mark Shields and read his past columns, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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BY L. BRENT BOZELL AND TIM GRAHAM

Elizabeth Harrington at the Washington Free Beacon offers a familiar old slice of sleaze funded by the federal government. An “investigative theatre” company in New York, The Civilians, has been granted almost $950,000 by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) and believe it or not, the National Science Foundation.
Why should the American taxpayer — you — be forced to pay for the garbage that follows? Because you, and everyone else, would never pay for it if it weren’t mandated by this radical administration which will be gone in 22 months, thank God.
Their most recent work of “art” was a musical called “Pretty Filthy,” exploring the “human side of the porn industry.” While the porno piece wasn’t directly funded by the NEA, federal funds keep this propaganda wagon on the road.
In “Pretty Filthy,” the troupe based their songs and scripts on interviews with “adult entertainers.” They promoted themselves as “armed with notepads and recorders,” providing an insider’s glimpse into the “other Hollywood” — the porn industry in the San Fernando Valley.
Naturally The New York Times loved it. Critic Charles Isherwood oozed that the “thoroughly winning cast” showed an “admirable sympathy” for porn stars. He liked the lyrics (“Two things you need to shoot porn? A camera and a thumb”) and the snark (“It was like being with a corpse … a corpse who [sic] giggled”).
But usually The Civilians are funded to churn out radical-left claptrap. Last year, they were awarded $20,000 for a podcast series called “Let Me Ascertain You.” In a series titled “LGBTQ All Out!,” they explored topics such as “a teenage lesbian shunned by her Jehovah’s Witness community, a master domination top who locks people up in his basement, a gay military soldier who attempted suicide, and the life of homeless gay youth on the streets of New York City.”
The company received a $12,000 NEA grant in January 2013 for new plays from their “Research and Development Group.” Winter Miller, a playwright, is working on a project about the “stigma” of abortion. Asking when life begins is hurtful, Miller believes, and has “led to the murder of doctors and the growth of extremist movements in the United States, of which the tea party is the least overtly violent.”
The NEA also provided The Civilians a $25,000 grant to produce a musical on the “Paris Commune” that briefly ruled the city in 1871, which, according to Marxist.com, was “where the working class for the first time in history, took power into its own hands.” Leon Trotsky preached about its lessons and how the “masses” had failed to embrace the revolution. Playwright Michael Friedman insisted the commune resembled the hope springing out of the Occupy Wall Street movement.
Overall, The Civilians has received $247,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts since 2007, including $65,000 for “The Great Immensity,” a musical about the doom rapidly approaching through climate change. The majority of the project was funded by a National Science Foundation grant of $697,177. Characters proclaimed panicky things like, “We are actually breaking the world. We break the world and it’s done. Game over.” Why hasn’t everyone grasped the allegedly imminent demise of our planet? “People are stupid,” they proclaimed.
Unsurprisingly, this amply subsidized global-warming propaganda musical was canceled after only a three-week run last spring at Manhattan’s Public Theatre. Even the reviewers couldn’t make themselves love it.
Thanks, Barack Obama, for your artistic leadership. Thanks, John Boehner, for writing the checks to pay for all this.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. Tim Graham is director of media analysis at the Media Research Center and executive editor of the blog NewsBusters.org. To find out more about Brent Bozell III and Tim Graham, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
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