Is saint Patricks day bigger in the USA than in Ireland? video of Saint Patricks Day parade in Japan http://vimeo.com/833479 Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Rescheduling the Day? I don't know. In 2008, a friend and I went to Neumos, in Seattle, to see The Clumsy Lovers for the St. Patrick's Day show on March 15. And that year, March 15 was St. Patrick's Day, because otherwise it would have fallen on a Sunday. Someone in Ireland decided that St. Patrick's should fall on Friday, so that people weren't drinking themselves senseless on the Lord's Day. Plus, people spent Saturday hung over, instead of Monday. I think rescheduling the holiday in order to better facilitate people getting into the spirit is pretty significant. We do that sort of thing in the U.S. for certain holidays, but only to avoid breaking the work week in half. And, of course, pretty much every bar in Seattle did green beer and what we refer to up here as "Amateur Night" on Monday, March 17.
That's in all of New Mexico (really, most of the southwest) and the important distinction is between people of Spanish descent who have lived there since before Mexico took over, and the more recent Mexican immigrants. Which is why the term "Hispanic" is preferred to "Mexican-American." That crowd considers itself to be something like a landed European aristocracy, and so holds "Mexican" to be something akin to a racial or class slur. Mexico only held the territory in question for a few decades, after all, and almost nobody migrated there during that time. The population prior to accession to the US was composed almost entirely of Spanish colonists and natives (and there weren't very many of either group, at that). There is no substantial "Mexican" population there from before the 20th century. Hence all the mythical "Aztlan" stuff - the sort of nationalist identity politics being pursued by revanchist groups requires them to pretend to be indigenous. The fact that their "connection to the land" actually postdates the arrival of the Americans is toxic to their rhetoric.
Indeed, and my point is that the sociological connotations are the relevant ones, here. These dipshits obviously didn't show up to school wrapped in flags because they would rather the French had won the battle of Puebla, or anything like that. Yeah, nobody ever seems to notice that Mariachi is basically a modified form of Polka or ask why it is that the Mexicans have been making lager for so long, etc. Along those lines, there's supposed to be a big Chinese community in Mexicali dating back to the railroad days. I've been told that Mexicali actually has the 2nd best Chinese food on the West Coast (behind only SF - eat your hearts out, LA and Vancouver!). Yeah, the Southwest is a killer on the allergy front. There were days in high school where I'd literally walk around with a box of Kleenex all day. By the way - since you are sort of a stickler for accuracy and background - the Ugly American is the hero of the eponymous book. One is supposed to want to emulate him, as he works against the "ugly Americanism" of his better-looking countrymen by reaching out to people and helping the poor advance themselves (this book is set in Southeast Asia). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ugly_American Of course, the whole double entendre of that title is never going to get enshrined in the slang term, so it's pretty much a losing battle to argue agains the standard usage of the term. But, still, every time I encounter it I think "no, no, you want to be the Ugly American!"
I think it's just California's excessive pacifism. It's the idea that if you hit me or attack me it must be my fault because I provoked you by failing to accommodate your ego. So, we bend over backwards accommodating every minority group's egos, at the cost of our own, and...... we still end up with violence. Huh. Go figure. Maybe the violence is caused by something else?
My brother once nearly got to see him... but he got arrested on his way there. I remember him saying how he wished he could have been drunk at the show with Shane. I almost cried about it. If you ask me, the racial divide is purposely stoked by our evil authorities to use it against us. Nothing better for your power-base than millions of illegals on the dole that you are fighting for.
