I don't think anyone in New Orleans, of any race, thinks that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoinette_Frank

40%? I'm not ready to discount that completely, but that number makes my skeptic-sense tingle. There is surely some anecdotal evidence that police officers are more likely to be abusers than the general public, but if we're going to be the party of science we need to run a tight ship.

I wouldn't call what I feel empathy so much as skepticism about the media circus surrounding the event. Too many people clamoring to make a Big Important Statement.

Yeah it's actually kind of interesting appropriation situation. The story starts off with Patrick being "kidnapped" by Irish ruffians, which in some is supposed to justify his later return and ministry.

Every holiday is like this. For example, Christmas. The hero of the modern secular variety of Christmas is "Santa Claus," i.e. "Saint Nicholas," the patron saint of children. The fat jolly version of this character is based on pictures drawn by Thomas Nast in the 1880s. The "real" St Nick is a dude from Turkey who…

I find your taking offense to this to be really weird, to be honest. I wasn't there and didn't hear the tone of how he said it, but I am still struggling to understand how saying it might be a "Chicago thing" is offensive rather than just wrong. The way you've described the situation really doesn't paint you as a much…

Till was from Chicago, visiting Mississippi.

Quick: who was Ruby Bridges? Gordon Hirabayashi? Elizabeth Peratrovich? Dolores Huerta?

I had heard about him but the name didn't stick with me. I had to look it up. I am a white boy (well, former "boy," I'm in my 30s now) but when I was a teenager I was enrolled in African American history courses. I don't think we talked about him much in AA history either. Probably because, while his murder was a big…

Well said. :)

I seem to be one of the few who prefers the re-done ending.

St. Patrick was not Irish either. He was from Scotland. He is associated with Ireland because he was a missionary there, not because he was ethnically Irish.

The reason it's hard to tell if it's sarcasm is it reads like so many things said on this blog that were meant to be taken at face value.

Define "holiday." St Patrick's feast day is as old as dust.

It makes me laugh that you think St Patrick was Irish.

Second reply here, not that this article deserves it.

He's probably referring to what most people would call Mardi Gras. Carnival is the more official name of the season, which I believe begins on Twelth Night and ends Mardi Gras day.

As I toiled over an essay that Sunday morning, agonizing over a too-bitter latte and half eaten eclair, disdain continued to rise in me like levened bread. Why heavens no, the previous eve hasten to lower myself into that pit of decadence, St. Patrick's day, I had not, sham that it is. One could say I had the blues.…

]]I fully expect to get flamed by people who don't understand what I'm trying to say. [[

Flip is a diminutive word for Filipino. I actually knew it could mean Filipino but not that it was potentially offensive because a guy I met online and dated for 3 years had the handle "FlipLawyer" and I had to ask him what it meant. I told him about the "flip chart" thing and he was as suprised as I was.