Cultured Drinkers

PETER: Many of you have left comments on this topic on Facebook and our website. We’ve invited a few of those people to join us on air. We got a call from Tulsa, Oklahoma, and we’ve got Patty on the line. Patty?

PATTY: Yes, sir.

PETER: Hey, welcome to show.

PATTY: Thank you.

PETER: We’re talking about alcohol.

PATTY: Well, it’s a favorite topic of the Irish.

PETER: It sounds Irish, doesn’t it? Paddy?

PATTY: With two D’s. I am fourth generation Irish in America. But I married a man of Irish extraction. And I was interested to see, since he’s from the East coast, the persistence of alcohol in Irish American culture—of course, it’s famous in Irish culture. But it’s part of Irish-American culture as well. And I wonder how much that had to do with the rejection of immigrants in the 19th century when the teetotalers’ programs were just getting started, and then in come all these immigrants, have drink as part of their culture. It’s deeply woven into the literature, the music, the jokes.

PETER: Yeah, so you’re suggesting in a way that Irish people in America have used alcohol as a form of cultural expression, sort of snubbing their noses at those WASP-y Yankees, those disapproving teetotaler types?

PATTY: Yeah. They were unashamedly drinkers.

BRIAN: Patty, I can’t answer your question directly about the Irish. But it is clear that some of these WASP elites embraced temperance and embraced Prohibition as a way of distinguishing themselves from immigrant groups, including the Irish. So I think you have a really interesting thesis, that even after the Irish became acculturated, they hung on to some of the cultural meanings in terms of distinguishing themselves from the so-called enemy.

PETER: But there’s also the phenomenon of the Lace Curtain Irish, as they’re called. That is, the very hyper-respectable Irish—out-Yankee the Yankee in terms of their sobriety, and so forth.

PATTY: Right. That’s my husband’s family.

[LAUGHTER]

PETER: Boring.

PATTY: But alcoholism does run along with the charm and the talk.

PETER: You have conflicted feelings about it, is what you’re saying right now. That is, it’s been a problem for Irish people.

PATTY: It’s known as the Irish curse. In my family, in my husband’s family, in my in-law’s families, every family has at least one alcoholic. My parents, actually, they were not alcoholic, and they never had a drinking problem. But there have been alcoholics in both sides of their family. So they raised us with the AA Blue Book. I mean, they brought it in the house when I was 10, and they explained to us, et cetera. But it’s still part of the culture.

BRIAN: But you know, Patty, I want comment on something that is reflected in your call itself. Which is because your name is Patty, and because you’re an Irish American, you can talk very openly about certain things that in the mouths of others would be seen as stereotypes.

And I think there’s a bit of an answer to your question in this observation, which is whether or not the Irish drink more or not, the Irish themselves are able to talk about this openly in ways that certainly would give the impression that Irish drink more, whether you happen to be right or not.

ED: When we were in Ireland a couple years ago, I noticed the emphasis on a lot of billboards and radio shows about drunken driving. And the newspapers were actually filled with a very frank discussion of just what you’re talking about, that this is so identified with the right of passage that it really has become—they were saying in their editorials—pathological for Ireland. And the drunken driving part seemed to be sort of a crisis proportion.

So I think it’s a fine line, for lots of different cultures, things that are identifiable as the core of the culture, and set them apart, which everybody’s looking for. Something that distinguishes them can also become the thing that stereotypes them. And it’s always a struggle, I think.

PETER: I’ve read recently that the number of pubs in Ireland has declined by about 50%. That the pubs are closing down, and that the old ways of drinking, the folk ways in which alcohol was a normal part of a village culture and village celebrations—I mean, Irish people are becoming modern people, just as Irish American people became modern long before the Irish people did. That is, they—

PATTY: True. But they retained the drink as part of the culture, whether you drank it at the pub, or drank it at home, or at your friend’s home, they retained the alcohol.

PETER: Well, I think we’ve all retained the alcohol to some extent. Well, some of us can’t retain it. It’s a challenge.

PATTY: Well, the Irish are very good at it. [LAUGHS].

PETER: Well, some of them are. [LAUGHS]. So Patty, it’s been great talking to you.

PATTY: Thank you.

PETER: Thanks for calling. Bye bye.

BRIAN: Thanks for calling.

PETER: Another call. And this one is from Albany, New York. We’ve got Joy. Joy, welcome to BackStory.

JOY: Thank you.

PETER: What’s on your mind?

JOY: I’d like to talk a little bit about that dichotomy between how we expect our teens to behave in terms of the alcohol consumption, and what we allow for ourselves, and whether or not it’s really fair to expect more of our teens than the behavior we actually model for them.

PETER: Whoa. That’s a heavy question.

BRIAN: May I ask how old you are, Joy?

JOY: I’m 24.

BRIAN: I’m sorry. We’ve got a minimum age here for the Backstory hosts.

PETER: Yeah, you’re practically a teenager as far as we’re concerned. So you’re talking about double standards?

JOY: Yes. I think that we expect our teens to be moderate alcohol consumers and not drink and drive, and we as adults don’t necessarily model that behavior, and when an adult does caught drinking and driving, there’s no guarantee that there will be an actual punishment.

BRIAN: Well, I guess my answer would be—it seems that Joy is getting at the hypocrisy that’s surrounds adult drinking. And without sounding like a member of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, as the father of three teenage kids, I would—the higher the drinking age, the better, as far as I’m concerned.

But I do agree with Joy that there’s a lot of hypocrisy entailed in the way we treat adult drinkers, especially those who drive. And I, for one, would really like to see the police enforce this more seriously. And the courts, of course, often have their hands tied on this for some reason, which I can’t figure out.

PETER: Well, guys, let’s do some history here. This is BackStory, right? What about drinking ages through history? And the whole notion of Joy’s question is about how we manage teenage drinking. When does that become a problem? When do adults begin worrying about teenagers acting out, and link it to alcohol consumption?

JOY: Are you asking me, or are you asking someone else?

PETER: I’m asking them. They’re supposed to know something, Joy. [LAUGHING]

ED: But maybe you know.

JOY: Like, my understanding is that youth alcohol use really wasn’t an issue until the 20th century, and really, actually, the post-World War II period. First of all, in terms of the 19th century, children and teens were seen as the victims of parental alcohol abuse, particularly paternal alcohol abuse—

PETER: Yeah, good point. Good point.

ED: I think that’s right. And in some ways, the problem of teenage drinking begins when we have teenagers, which is also 20th century invention. Before that, there was just a gradation between children and adults. And when they became a distinct category, sharply defined, then it looked like a problem to be solved.

BRIAN: And why it’s a 20th century issue, number one, I think, is the car, and the combination of drinking and driving, and the inherent necessity of state regulation, certainly, of cars. The state had regulated alcohol for a long time, but not necessarily in regard to kids.

Secondly, it’s after World War II, and especially the 1960s, that large corporations start targeting kids for major marketing campaigns. And they do that because, for the first time, kids, middle class kids, begin to have a lot of spare change. They can get their hands on this alcohol pretty easily.

PETER: And I think getting back to Ed’s point about the invention of the teen years, there’s a tremendous discrepancy now between arriving at an age in which you’re capable of driving cars and going to parties and drinking a lot, and being responsible. Because we’ve protracted adolescence well into the 20’s, if not the 30’s for our kids. I’m not calling you, Joy. You’re not an adolescent still, are you?

JOY: [LAUGHS]. No, but it’s a really interesting thing, because I look at my peers sometimes that are still drunk dialing, and I’m like, you’re 24.

PETER: Yes. And that’s the real problem, is how do you define a precise age at which it makes sense to, in effect, license a whole population to go out and have a good time.

ED: Well, we can legislate that people can be drafted and that they can vote. So it’s kind of funny that you can go off and die, but you can’t have a drink.

PETER: I agree. I agree.

BRIAN: You know, maybe age is not the right way to do this. There’s certainly lots of ways to predict who is going to be a responsible drinker.

PETER: What, DNA testing, or what?

BRIAN: Not DNA testing. The insurance companies know all of this. They know about differences between men and women. They know about differences between people based on their grade point average. Those might end up being—

PETER: That sounds like profiling to me, Brian.

BRIAN: Those might end up being much better predictors than age. But Peter, I think you really put your finger on it. Age seems neutral. We’re not—

PETER: We’re not discriminating.

BRIAN: We’re not picking on male athletes with GPAs below 2.0, for instance. On the other hand, to address Joy’s very real issue, why discriminate against the responsible 20-year-old, may not make sense in this day and age.

PETER: OK. Joy. Well, we wish you joy.

[LAUGHTER]

JOY: It’s been a pleasure talking to you.

PETER: Great. Thanks for calling.

ED: Thank you so much.

JOY: OK, bye bye.

PETER: Bye.

BRIAN: Bye bye.

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