Fun_People Archive
15 Mar
In Defense Of The Irish

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Mon, 15 Mar 99 12:33:54 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: In Defense Of The Irish

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Forwarded-by: Keith Sullivan <KSullivan@worldnet.att.net>

IN DEFENSE OF THE IRISH
	-- by Ian Wolff

Not all Irish people, myself included, are mindless religious zealots
running amok on bland colorless trash strewn streets while feverishly
attempting to stick a bomb up someone's Protestant Grandmother.  Nor are we
all drunks, cops, priests, IRA members, or club carrying unionists.  Some
of us are musicians, artists, and one of us is even a doctor.

Does Hollywood do this, you ask?  Yes, for proof just take a look at the
latest in their long litany of Irish bashing flicks.  Namely -- "The Devils
own," Starring Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford.  Ford plays an Irish cop,
surprise!  Pitt plays a member of the IRA, double surprise!  What, no
Leprechauns?

But just any IRA member, you ask?  Pitt, Oh no.  In fact he is single
handily responsible for killing 11 British cops, 6 British soldiers, 5
British agents, two mockingbirds, and... screw it, you get the picture.

On with the plot.  After killing everything British in Northern Ireland,
Pitt flies off to the states and is taken in by Harrison Ford and family.
Why does he take this stranger in?  Simple Hollywood logic here; Ford's
Irish, Pitt's Irish, and of course, as peoples of all cultures know -- that
IS the only criteria required for allowing a total stranger to sleep six
feet from your teenage daughters.  It would seem that according to
Hollywood; we Irish are a simple little people.

"Pardon me fella.  But did I just hear you say you were Irish?"

"Yes I am!"

"Oh great then.  Do me a favor, take my car and pick my daughter up from
her bikini competition, drive to my house, wake my wife up, make sure to
knock first because she sleeps in the nude.  Tell her to open the safe and
give you fifty thousand dollars so I can make the final payment on our
retirement home, and then you just drive back here and pick me up, OK?  I'll
be right here when you get back.  Attaching a bomb to that bus."

The mission.  Pitt is planning to purchase a cache of stingray missiles and
bring them back to Northern Ireland in the off-chance any British authority
figures have dared to replace the slaughtered masses in his absence.

Harrison Ford is supposed to figure this out and stop him.  How a man who
goes off to work everyday leaving his wife home alone with the 'sexiest man
alive' is supposed to figure out anything -- is quite frankly, beyond me.

And since when did Hollywood get the idea that the entire Country of Ireland
couldn't manufacture a missile?  They do have an army.  But then again, we
are a simple little people, and as such, we are often forced to traverse
the globe in search of things we're incapable of making on our own --

      "What, no more Ice? Oh well, off to America!"

So does Ford figure it out?  You bet he does.  And he's properly outraged
at Pitt for putting his family in danger.  In fact he's so outraged by the
risk Pitt has placed on his families safety -- he decides to arrest and or
kill him if he must.  Figuring, of course, that killing one of the IRA's
leading terrorists would insure his families safety for at least a day
maybe?  Contrary to what Hollywood believes, there really are planes in
Ireland, and as far as I know -- IRA people fit in them very nicely.

But then again, he is an Irish cop, and we are a simple people.  I have
children myself so I can relate to Ford's concerns.  Organized crime, for
example, scares me.  So lately I've been thinking, in an effort to protect
my children, that perhaps I should blow the freaking brains out of some
Mafia Don.  That would surely keep my little cubbies safe.

"Geepers," would surely be the Mafia's response.  "We better stay clear of
that zany character and his family!"

In summing up:  The good Irish cop wins, the evil IRA guy dies, and the
stingrays were later sold to Iraq which is another story entirely and far
more complicated and ranging in scope than this one.  So I can't tell it.
Because I am but the one-celled by-product of a SIMPLE little people.

Blarney Stone <http://members.tripod.com/~iwolff/irish.html>
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