If Furburt doesn't mind it. I don't mind it.Furburt said:
Now, read this again, Furburt.
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/st-paddys-day-disgraces-six-of-gamings-most-offensive-irish-stereotypes/a-20100317141644212032
Red Dead Redemption Upsets the Irish
- Thread starter Logan Westbrook
- Start date
Now, read this again, Furburt.
http://www.gamesradar.com/f/st-paddys-day-disgraces-six-of-gamings-most-offensive-irish-stereotypes/a-20100317141644212032
This is ridiculous. I'm Irish (and I'm not that Irish guy who doesn't care) and this doesn't upset me.
It's not Rockstar calling the Irish drunk, It's what the people of the time said back then. Just like in a movie set in the depression a character calls a black person "******" it's because that's what the people of the time would've said, not what the writer of the movie thinks.
Such a stupid thing like and any Irish person needs to gtf over it every race has their stereotype and has to live with it.
The biggest thing here is the character isn't actually Irish, it's a nickname given to him. This strengthens my point further.
It's not Rockstar calling the Irish drunk, It's what the people of the time said back then. Just like in a movie set in the depression a character calls a black person "******" it's because that's what the people of the time would've said, not what the writer of the movie thinks.
Such a stupid thing like and any Irish person needs to gtf over it every race has their stereotype and has to live with it.
The biggest thing here is the character isn't actually Irish, it's a nickname given to him. This strengthens my point further.
Stop saying 'why are the Irish are taking offense' because 1) it was a news site that claimed it and 2) IT WAS A FUCKING NEWS SITE THAT CLAIMED IT, not the irish population.
Read the bold text by the op. An irish news site, not the irish people.
These news sites are sensationalists who like to kick up dirt for a few extra readers.
Getting the irish together as a sort of 'us v them' type thing is the best way to do it. They run these types of stories from time to time.
Hitler famously took this idea and ran with it.
It creates this idea that the news site is for the irish people and it will protect irish integrity. Then the small percentage of dumbfucks/patriots/dumbfucks moan for 20 minutes of their teabreak after they read the article in work, because they are lead to believe they are being hard done by 'those who dont understand us'.
Read the bold text by the op. An irish news site, not the irish people.
These news sites are sensationalists who like to kick up dirt for a few extra readers.
Getting the irish together as a sort of 'us v them' type thing is the best way to do it. They run these types of stories from time to time.
Hitler famously took this idea and ran with it.
It creates this idea that the news site is for the irish people and it will protect irish integrity. Then the small percentage of dumbfucks/patriots/dumbfucks moan for 20 minutes of their teabreak after they read the article in work, because they are lead to believe they are being hard done by 'those who dont understand us'.
Just when i was starting to think, RDR was the only R* game (open world sandbox) to escape controversy.
Actually, for a long time, 19th century majority of WASP Americans hated all the Irish (and Italians) who immigrated to the U.S. In short, they distrusted what they considered to be uneducated and poor masses who were conspiring to take over the democratic system with authoritarian Catholicism. They were frequent targets of discrimination, beatings, and scapegoating. Sort of like the Jews in Europe, although not quite as bad.Mr Companion said:
Well I'm not sure what anyone expected aside from GTA4 In The Wild West.DividedUnity said:
Otherwise I will go so far as to say that there is this entire field of sociece known as "Sociology" that pretty much proves not only that stereotypes are true, but that things can be predicted based off of them. The success of things like advertising are proofs of this.
People as a whole aren't as individual as we would like to believe, but when dealing with a stereotype it's important to understand that the idea is that when dealing with a person they are going to match more aspects of the stereotype, than areas they differ from it on. There are so many stereotypes, especially for large groups, that by differing from one stereotype you simply enter another one.
At any rate, I've read a lot of stuff about Ireland through the years, both about the Irish in the US, and overseas. To put it bluntly, massive consumption of alcohol is part of the culture. You can't change that just because some people decide (for whatever reason) that it's suddenly negative. What's more with some of the songs produced by old bands like "The Irish Rovers" (who were Irish) I'm not going to be convinced that most Irish think getting drunk is a bad thing.
What's more when the Irish came to the US there was a proliferation of "pubs", they were always around, but I've read some stuff talking about how it was the Irish who introduced a lot of American "bar culture", and even today being an "Irish Pub" is not a bad thing.
On top of this, complaining about characters like "Irish" in a game set in this time period is silly. Not only are such complaints the absolute worst kind of political correctness, but also historical reinventionism. At the time this game was set, the US was seeing a massive influx of Irish immigrants who were NOT treated well. Like any other group of poor people coming into the US they brought problems with them, including a lot of crime, and social blight. The Irish overcame this, which is sort of a point about Racism: a group of people can earn acceptance through taking their lumps, and assimilating to their new home without forming an all consuming counter culture.
At any rate, at the time, having drunken Irish vagrants was not uncommon. A lot of Irish had no place to live either for that matter. This is kind of showing things as they were. The Irish were NOT adapted to US living, people didn't want to hire them (I believe there is actually an old Broadway song about "Irish need not apply"), and they actually wound up running a lot of the organized crime before The Italians came along.
I mean honestly, if you start getting politically correct and portray Irish, Chinese, Blacks, Indians, etc... by the modern standards, it's not going to be much of a simulation of "The Wild West". What's more to be honest things wind up being a certain way for a reason, racism is not entirely a one way street. People wind up thinking like they do for certain reasons and the way some of these groups were back then sort of show how these things came about. As time went on not only did people become more accepting, but a lot of those same groups themselves adapted to fit better within society.
Don't misunderstand this though. What I am saying is that imagine for a second that your a well adapted American, and you visit a Chinese rail-workers camp at this time period, where your dealing with people who are not just unable to speak english well, but are also uneducated and dirt poor. You've got to keep a close eye on your possesions, because like any poor area it's full of deperate people, and on top of that you might see people chowing on animals like dogs, cats, or rodents due to a combination of differant standards, and sheer desperation. The same can be said about other groups in a similar vein.
What, are we supposed to say it never happened?
Truthfully, I get tired of the politically correct screaming. Honestly if someone was going to make a complaint about this they should have been all over movies like "Gangs Of New York" which was making pretensions of accuracy, unlike this game which is claiming to be western fantasy to begin with.
Apologies for any who this upsets, but really political correctness annoys me, as does historical reinventionism, and attempts to limit the free speech of others because they might not like someone.
Heck, go yell at the Notre Dam "Fighting Irish", their icon is probably more "Racist" by these standards than RDR is.
I'm Irish and could care less. As an Irishman living in Ireland, I can attest that there are plenty of Irish drunks who very easily fall into the stereotypical Irish drunk stereotype. I can also quite clearly state, I couldn't give a toss about the Irish Herald which the mainstay paper read by tutting old biddies who'd scowl at you for not behaving as if it was 1960 when the Catholic church was strangling the common Irishman and woman with overbearing moral brow beating.
Look how that turned out.
Look how that turned out.
RebelRising said:
Very true, though in general I think it had more to do with them being a group of refugees. In general refugees tend to be the dumbest, least educated, and poorest people of their respective countries. The influx of Irish in the US was caused by a combination of British rule and a massive crop blight ("the great potato blight", I can't remember the Irish name for it).
This differs from regular immigration due to the numbers all at once, and the fact that the people start out by trying to basically uproot a foreign culture and then plant it right there in the back yard of the US. With time and willing adaption things can change, but it's a slow process.
The same can be said about groups with similar problems. After the Irish you had a massive number of Italian refugees fleeing to the US all at the same time. Due to policies at the time, people who were immigrating "legally" an those "fleeing" were handled differantly. The slander term "WOP" comes from the fact that due to them fleeing as refugees pretty much all of the Italians were told to stand in specific lines which were marked by signs saying "WOP" which stood for "ith apers" so people started to call them "Wops" as a derrogatory comment. I don't think the term exists anymore (at least I don't hear it) but it's an interesting piece of history and sort of explains the situation.
The thing is though that The Irish and The Italians were pretty serious about becoming Americans, and adapted well over a period of time. As such you really don't see much in the way of discimination anymore, unless people are intentionally looking for some kind of fight.
Generally speaking, any time hundreds of thousands or millions of poor, uneducated people migrate to another country there is going to be a massive impact, regardless of whether you accept them (which the US did), or try and keep them out at the border.
Such is my opinion and how I learned things.
I certainly wouldn't care enough to let it bother me, this kind of stuff crops up all the time. Sometimes it can even be pretty funny. It does make me think the writers are a bunch of lazy idiots though, if they can only resort to tired stereotypes (and nothing else) to create a character. The Family guy episode where they went to Ireland smacks of that laziness too. It's just boring at this stage.
Speaking as someone that is at least a quarter Irish, Herald.ie can take the broom out of its arse and get a life. Seriously.
As a news site, besides, isn't it your job to just report the news? Not make it? Not very objective reporting going on at the ol' Herald.
As a news site, besides, isn't it your job to just report the news? Not make it? Not very objective reporting going on at the ol' Herald.
As a man who is part Irish this isn't to offensive, most Irish people I know actually fit the steryotype quite well and are, on occasion, very proud of it.
Hey, I'll have you know Tom Cruise's performance in far and away was masterful. I mean it's simply genius how he parodies the American's view of a typical Irishman, while making his accent as un-irish as possible so we know he's in on it.MiracleOfSound said:
Or you know, he just has the worst Irish accent ever.
Funny how on St.paddy's they love the image. but when its anyone else saying it. OH YU's Be Insulting me people.. cha chicha chicha.. go hide your lucky charms ya drunks