St. Jing-Tao-Wow Day

Nate’s at it again. He’s been watching Lou Dobbs go off on his annual anti-St. Patrick’s Day rant and Nate is taking a sarcastic suggestion on Dobbs’ part and running with it. He’s pushing for a new holiday. Nate is starting a movement to make March 31st Saint Jing-Tao-Wow Day. It seems, according to Nate, that Saint Jing-Tao-Wow is the patron saint of ethnic and racial stereotyping. Personally, I wouldn’t swear to that, but then, I’m no theologian. He thinks we should be as stereotypical as possible on the 31st. I’m working on it. I’m Irish-Italian-Jewish myself. Since the first thing I think of when you say “ethnic” is food, all I could come up with at first was pizza bagels and Guinness. Problem is, while I love pizza and I’m partial enough to a nice everything bagel with a schmear and on special occasions, like Christmas morning, some lox, I don’t like pizza and bagels as one food. And as far as Guinness goes, I like a nice diet cola. So I’ll have to give the whole thing a little more thought. Nate has provided a video, to watch and/or post, promoting his great idea.

Apart from the issue of illegal immigration, which seems to be his personal white whale, I don’t really get what Lou Dobbs finds so troublesome about diverse cultural influences. Where I was born, in New York City, even in the Leave It To Beaver fifties a normal day’s errands involved encountering people from at least three different continents with all kinds of different accents. Some spoke English, others were just learning. It all seemed perfectly natural. That was a long time ago. There’ve been changes, as there always are, in which groups of people are arriving here. What doesn’t change is that each ethnic group finds its way to fit in and adds something new to our culture. So, I don’t know about stereotypes, but there might be something in the idea of having one day to celebrate our different heritages.  Best case scenario – a day off. At the very least, though, there should be great food and maybe some sales.