Is this an Ohio thing? A Midwestern thing? I have never witnessed this; I am genuinely, naively asking. In the Irish part of my family, I believe that people are therefore more sympathetic to the people who are (a) still having a hard time and (b) had/still…
Eh… not really? There are Irish communities in NYC that are like this, in my experience. Like, really socially conservative “Irish neighborhoods” where folks go BUCK-WILD NUTS ABOUT HOW AWESOME IT IS TO BE IRISH and then talk about how Barack Obama really isn’t an American AT ALL is he. I think the perils of “white ethnicity” are fairly widespread. Few are the social ills that confine themselves specifically to Ohio.
One should note: if one is German, you only get Steuben Day (which has a parade, but who cares?), your cuisine is such that even the natives prefer other people’s cooking, and you learn to answer all questions about your heritage with a muttered “Beethoven was really great, huh?”
