Saturday, March 14, 2009

Seen at the Denver St. Patrick's Day Parade

Were I Irish, I might be offended by this sort of thing.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Denver has the best St Patrick's Day parades!

Anonymous said...

Hi Seth: We were downtown and I thought of you when I saw this entry in the parade. Susan

Steve Balboni said...

I am Irish and my only suggestion would be that the Storm Trooper be dressed as an English soldier - or Anglican Bishop.

Seth Masket said...

Steve, good suggestion. At least that would make sense.

Anonymous said...

Hi, you dont know me. I am the guy in the picture posted in this blog. I am in fact Irish myself and find your judging of me rather insulting since you have no clue who I am, what I do or why I am wearing my armor with my kilt. If you had asked I woud have been more than happy to stop and talk with you at the parade.

If you would actully like to talk feel free to contact me. My email addy is birrer@gmail.com.

Zac Birrer

Anonymous said...

as a fellow Celtic member of the 501st, Mr Blogger, maybe you should do your homework. I'm offended that the internet is cluttered with pointless blogs like these.

Seth Masket said...

I've had a separate conversation with Mr. Birrer about this, and I think it ended well, but since this thread has nonetheless continued...

I meant the title above as a joke. I apologize if I offended anyone. The image of an Imperial Stormtrooper wearing a kilt at a St. Patrick's Day parade is, well, funny, and I don't think I'm out of line to point that out. I'm sorry if I did that in a ham-handed way.

Now, if we wanted to get into the political symbolism at work here, we could talk about how, in the original Star Wars trilogy, the stormtroopers were the mindless, violent, thuggish bad guys who enforced rules handed down by an illegitimate oppressor government. They regularly harassed civilians and even murdered middle-aged couples in their homes. This strikes me as less symbolic of the Irish than it is of those who have persecuted the Irish over the centuries. Hence my title above.

But, of course, we could ignore all this subtext and assume that it's all in good fun, which I prefer to do.

And I'm sorry if the current clutter of the internet offends you. You needn't read it all.