Leprechauns: Little people with a big identity crisis
THE Irish Americans have tarted up St Patrick’s Day so much that it has less to do with our national identity and has more to do with commercial enterprise. People celebrate their ‘Oirishness’ by dressing up like Disney-fied versions of our fable folk.
Is there any more absurd example of globalisation than thousands of revellers in Ireland, on streets from Donegal to Dingle, wearing face paint and using tourist-shop trappings to morph into Americanised versions of themselves?
