Erin Go Branding

Happy St. Patrick’s Day, Bafflers! The big St. Patty’s Day headlines today are about all of the beer brands that have pulled out of city parades. In New York City, the organizers of the annual parade there banned “public expression of gay pride”—LGBT groups can march in the parade, but they cannot carry signs or otherwise identify themselves. So in protest, Heineken withdrew its sponsorship from the parade. Yesterday, Guinness pulled out as well. From the New York Times:

Guinness’s decision was applauded by gay rights groups that had threatened to boycott its products. The Stonewall Inn, widely regarded as the birthplace of the gay rights movement, canceled plans to cease selling Guinness starting on Monday.

“Today, Guinness sent a strong message to its customers and employees: Discrimination should never be celebrated,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, the president of Glaad (formerly known as the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation).

In South Boston, a similar discriminatory policy led Sam Adams to stop sponsoring the parade there, too.

Big brands have big sway over these types of cultural events. Likewise, brands often profit from identifying their products with certain cultural identities. It’s actually a big deal that Guinness won’t be a part of New York’s parade, because so many Americans—Irish or no—associate its product with the Irish “experience.” And this is an association that Guinness has been cultivating for a very long time. In Issue 19, back in 1999, Jim Arndorfer took a trip to Fadò, a sterile, corporate chain pub that brought him about as close to Irish culture as the Rainforest Café brings you to the Amazon. While taking in the weirdness of the bar itself, Arndorfer considered why Americans with no particular connection to the Emerald Isle are so hungry for everything and anything Irish. An excerpt:

Marie Antoinette and her attendants played at being peasants; bored nineteenth century English gentlemen idealized the sensuousness of Italy; Irishness sells to Americans because it represents authenticity and tradition in an often depressingly transient and hollow culture. Religion and faith are untroubled parts of “Irish” lives. Family bonds are strong. Neighbors know and help each other. Work is valued but so is play. Song and dance are in their blood—you saw how those paddies got down in the Titanic’s steerage! Good conversation and a sly, authority-tweaking humor spring naturally from their lips. This perception is nothing new: It was part of the vision of nineteenth century Irish romantic nationalism and has been propagated ever since by the entertainment industry and the Irish Tourist Board. Only nowadays, deep-pocketed marketers have the latest in demographic marketing tools and segmentation strategies to cram this vision down our throats.

The accepted narrative of the Irish experience in America also bolsters the ideological foundation of the increasingly conservative body politic. In the New World the Irish contended with bigotry and slaved at menial jobs, but by dint of hard work overcame all obstacles and assimilated into the respectable life of the suburbs and office cubicles. This myth of Irish advancement omits such important factors as political cronyism, the munificence of the New Deal, and the expansion of government, but it does promote self-satisfaction among white folks. If they could make it, the thinking goes, so can anyone.

Read his full essay, “McSploitation,” here.