Huffington Post columnist responds to IrishCentral over anti-Irish jokes

'If we ban all Irishman jokes, what next? If someone from Dingle claims offense, must we ban all Kerryman jokes?'

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Rory Fitzgerald: 'If we ban all Irishman jokes, what next? If someone from Dingle claims offense, must we ban all Kerryman jokes?'

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IrishCentral.com Poll

Do you think Irish jokes should be banned?

No. People have no sense of humor.

Yes. There's nothing funny about Irish jokes.

Some people have said that Irish jokes are “racist” but this is an abuse of the word. There is no racial difference between British and Irish people: take a hundred random pictures of Irish faces and British faces, and you won’t be able to tell the one from the other. Genetic studies also show that there is little or no racial difference between the two peoples. Both also share an inordinate tendency to drink tea.

Jokes about the English

And let’s not forget that in Ireland we have tons of jokes about the English, the Scots and others. If we ban all Irishman jokes, what next? If someone from Dingle claims offence, must we ban all Kerryman jokes? Then the cute hoors from Cavan will cop on to the “being offended” industry, and will sue people for making Cavan jokes. If we carry on like that, we will have no jokes, and no freedom of speech.

Many of the “offensive” commenters who left jokes had Irish names and mentioned their own Irish ancestry. They just weren’t overly sensitive about it and were happy to tell jokes at their own expense. Most of these jokes were harmless, but one or two peripherally mentioned the famine. That hits a deep vein with me, as it does with Irish people everywhere. Perhaps some British people don’t understand how the ancestral memory of that horror is still alive in us. Do such jokes cause hurt and cause offence? Yes.

Yet every nation and people has its horror stories: the Russians lost 18 million people in the Second World War. As recently as 1979, the Cambodians saw one quarter of their population eradicated. I need not mention what befell the Jews.  These atrocities happened not because of racist jokes, but because books were burned and freedom of speech was curtailed.

Outdated caricatures

Ireland is an amazing little nation which has had a disproportionate impact on the world. Irish people are at the top of every field of human endeavour: business, science, law, politics, literature, sport, everything. We do not need to get offended about outdated caricatures of ourselves, because the world knows that they are no longer true. Perhaps its time we learned that ourselves. British people tell jokes about Americans, and Americans have jokes about the “limeys”. They don’t get upset, they just laugh and get on with things.

 We will know that we have truly overcome the legacy of British rule when we banish the old inferiority complex that causes every perceived slight to be amplified beyond reason. We will have arrived as a grown up nation, the equal of Britain, when we no longer get offended at Irish jokes but just shoot back (with a joke, that is). I do not say that Douglas Murray is wise in calling for Irish jokes. Where I agree with him is when he says this:

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