Irishman and a Jew: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''I once heard Dave Belasco Say<br />

''You couldn't stage a play today<br />

No, this isn't [[I Thought It Meant|a place to list stale old jokes]], though it does have a very important connection to them. An [['''Irishman and Aa Jew]]''' is much subtler (and older) variation on [[Salt and Pepper]] (by comparison, [[White Dude, Black Dude|think of the Irishman as the "black dude" and the Jew as the "white dude"]] -- [[Dissimile|although the Jew will usually have slightly darker skin]]); it is a fairly common but typically low-key form of [[Odd Couple]] pairing that largely originated in [[Vaudeville]], making it [[Older Than Radio]].

Simply put, it refers to any situation in which there is extensive collaboration or pairing between an [[Useful Notes/Ireland|Irishman]] or [[The Irish Diaspora|Irish-American]] (the latter is ''much'' more common) and a [[Useful Notes/Judaism|Jewish]] person. This can apply either to an onscreen pairing of two fictional characters or to a [[Show Business|behind-the-scenes]] collaboration in [[Real Life]]. Interestingly, the latter seems to be ''far'' more common, and the full [[Odd Couple]] potential of this trope is rarely exploited, probably ''because'' the ethnicities are those of the performers themselves, and not so important to the characters they play.

When the trope is exploited for [[Odd Couple]] purposes, it usually hinges on the ways in which the two characters' respective upbringings and outlooks on the world affect their personalities. Newsday critic Frank Lovece [http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/tv/futurama-finds-a-new-future-on-comedy-central-1.1402526 outlined the two different traditions] of Irish-American and Jewish humour; the former is said to be concerned with the sentimental bonds of blood family, while the latter uses laughter as a defensive technique to deal with a cruel and hostile world. Along similar lines, self-described "Bad Catholic" writer John Zmirak [http://www.catholicity.com/commentary/zmirak/06750.html humourously contrasted] Irish Catholic guilt over [[Sex Is Evil|lust and concupiscence]] with Jewish guilt about [[Race Tropes|race]] and [[Urban Segregation|inequality]]- note how Vienna-born Jewish attorney Felix Frankfurter helped found the American Civil Liberties Union, while Irish-born Archbishop John T. McNicholas founded the [http://en.[wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Legion_of_Decency:National Legion of Decency|National Legion of Decency]]. (To put it more bluntly, Irishmen are thought of as conservative and Jews as liberal, although this is by no means always so cut-and-dried: there have been socialist and even communist Irish, and Orthodox Jews tend to have very puritanical social mores.)

And of course, [[All Jews Are Ashkenazi|the Jew will most likely be a German or some kind of Slav (typically Russian) as far as nationhood goes]], while the Irishman will ''always'' be a Roman Catholic.

This trope was fairly common in the golden age of Vaudeville and still [https://web.archive.org/web/20100504095934/http://www.jewish-theatre.com/visitor/article_display.aspx?articleID=2601 persists in the theater today]; nonetheless, it has become much less prominent in recent years, as younger generations of each ethnic group assimilate to local norms and lose their distinctiveness. (This is particularly true of Jews, who mix with other ethnic groups through marriage more than any other American group, although paradoxically U.S. Jewish identity politics have grown stronger in the past decade.

{{examples|Examples:}}

* The great [[James Cagney]] [httphttps://wwwweb.archive.org/web/20160305073222/http://mahnishmah.com/system/scripts/modules/admin/pages/show_page.cgi?p=13241 got a lot of laughs] in the 1932 film ''Taxi'' by launching into [[Yiddish Asas a Second Language|fluent Yiddish]] in the presence of an [[Officer O 'Hara|Irish cop]]; Cagney (an Irish-American) had learned the language in school and on the streets of New York.

{{quote| --"It'd be just my luck to pull a name like ''Paddy Murphy'' and then I'll have lost the Jewish vote- they'll say I palmed it".}}

* Similarly, ''[[Max KeeblesKeeble's Big Move]]'' has the titular Max, who is [[Ambiguously Jewish]] and even has a (somewhat) stereotypical [[Jewish Mother]], get picked on by red-haired, freckled tough guy Troy McGinty.

* There may be some [[Subtext]] along these lines in ''[[Weekend At Bernies|Weekend Atat Bernie's]]''. While there is no indication from their Anglo-Saxon surnames "Wilson" and "Parker", the characters played by Andrew McCarthy and Jonathan Silverman conform to some extent to these stereotypes- McCarthy's character is a confident, outgoing, booze-swilling and not-too-bright merrymaker (who takes to praying the "Hail Mary" under duress), whilst Silverman's character is neurotic and constantly aghast at the horrible things happening around him. McCarthy's character's aggressive pursuit of the fairer sex seems like it is in contradiction to the usual stereotype of the prudish Irishman, but the sequel reveals that his private life may be more in keeping with expectations.

* Used on one episode of ''[[Good Eats]]'', of all things. A scene explaining how corned beef came (erroneously) to be associated with Irish cuisine employed a Jewish rabbi and and Irish priest sitting in a bar. After some dialogue and an explanation<ref>Before the Great Famine, a fairly typical Irish dish was boiled ''bacon'' with potatoes and cabbage; when destitute immigrants arrived in New York City, they found that bacon was too scarce and expensive, so they replaced it with corned beef, which they purchased from stores owned by their new Jewish neighbors.</ref> from [[Drop in-In Character|Alton's nutritional anthropologist]], we get the set-up to a corny old-fashioned joke: "A priest, a rabbi, and a nutritional anthropologist walk into a bar..." Then Alton, the priest, and the rabbi all roll their eyes and get up to leave.

* A rare modern-day example is found in Comedy Central's two fake news shows, ''[[The Daily Show]]'' and ''[[The Colbert Report]]''. [[Jon Stewart]] ([[Stage Names|born]] Jonathan Liebowitz) takes news stories heavily laden with corruption, stupidity, and disaster, and handles them with [[Deadpan Snarker|sarcasm and exasperated]] <s>ranting</s> [[Yiddish Asas a Second Language|kvetching]]. [[Stephen Colbert|Stephen Colber]]'''[[Stephen Colbert|T]]''', despite the French-sounding pronunciation of his character's name, is predominantly Irish-American and unapologetically Catholic, and watching his [[Patriotic Fervor|onscreen persona]] is like watching every single patriotic [[George M Cohan|George M. Cohan]]<ref> Despite what it sounds like, the name "Cohan" is Irish: the Jewish name is usually "Coh'''e'''n".</ref> musical [[Up to Eleven|all at the same time]]. He also shares Gracie Allen's [[The Ditz|obliviousness to reality]].

* [[Conan O 'Brien]] and his former bandleader Max Weinberg would do a lot of comedy bits together on both ''[[Late Night]]'' and ''[[The Tonight Show]].'' [[Inverted Trope]] because O'Brien was neurotic and self-deprecating while Weinberg was the morally-loose [[Casanova]].

* The two male leads of ''[[All in The Family]]'' were Caroll O'Connor and Rob Reiner. Although neither of their ''characters'' were written to match their real-life ethnicities (Archie Bunker was a [[White Anglo Saxon Protestant|WASP]] and Mike Stivic was Chicago Polish), there was a considerable amount of [[Subtext]] going on, which many viewers noticed; O'Connor modeled Bunker's mannerisms and speech patterns on many of the blue-collar Irish-Americans he had known growing up, while Reiner [[Not Even Bothering Withwith the Accent|made no attempt whatsoever to sound like a Polish-American from Chicago]].

* In a strange meta-example, ''[[ItsIt's Always Sunny in Philadelphia]]'' (frequently called "''[[Seinfeld]]'' [[This Is Your Premise Onon Drugs|on crack]]") can also be seen as the Irishman to ''Seinfeld'''s Jew: despite using the same general sort of setup, the characters in ''It's Always Sunny'' have unmistakably Celtic names (and run an Irish-themed pub) and their brand of [[Comedic Sociopathy]] generally comes from overconfident, un-self-aware [[Idiot Plot|abject stupidity]], while the gang on ''Seinfeld'' were nit-picky about themselves, constantly whining and complaining, intellectuals/professionals, and consisted of three Jews (OK, one Jew,<ref>Jerry</ref> one Jewish-Italian half-breed,<ref>George</ref> and one guy who isn't supposed to be Jewish but totally comes off as Jewish<ref>Kramer</ref>) and one Eastern European Catholic played by a Jew.<ref>Elaine</ref>

* One of the all-time most popular detective pairings on ''[[Law and& Order (TV)|Law and Order]]'' was Mike Logan and Lennie Briscoe (although Briscoe is only ethnically Jewish; he was raised Catholic). This trope also holds true for the tag team of the show's most popular detective (Briscoe) and attorney (Jack McCoy), who shared star billing for ten years. For that matter, both [[Mc CoyMcCoy]] and predecessor Ben Stone were Irish-American prosecutors who consulted with Jewish District Attorney Adam Schiff.

* Mixed into one character to great effect in one ''[[Saturday Night Live]]'' sketch -- asketch—a commercial parody of an album of ''Irish Drinking Songs''.

{{quote| '''They picked me face up off the floor and said now "Who'd be you?"''' <br />

* [[Averted Trope]] / [[Inverted Trope]] on ''[[Glee]]''. Despite being [[The Ditz]] and [[Big Man Onon Campus]], Finn is a lot more sensitive and soft-spoken than either his teammate [[Jerk Jock|Puck]] or his [[Love Interest]] [[The Prima Donna|Rachel]], both of whom fall squarely under [[Informed Judaism]].

* In ''[[Being Human (TVUK)|Being Human]]'', John Mitchell the bold overconfident Irish [[Our Vampires Are Different|vampire]] and George Sands the shy smart Jewish [[Our Werewolves Are Different|werewolf]] are best friends.

** Among the many imitators was the 1926 film (and subsequent film series) ''The Cohens and Kellys'', which inverted the sexes of the romantic pair (Irish-American boy, Jewish girl) and played up the "feuding families" aspects. The series was most famous for a lawsuit which resulted from it, in which the playwright who penned ''Abie's Irish Rose'' sued Universal Pictures for copyright infringement. Famously, Judge [[Awesome McCoolname|Learned Hand]]<ref> This was an opinion written for the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. However, since the was written by Hand and was a copyright case originating out of New York (hence the appeal up to the Second Circuit), it is given deference by most Courts as if it were a Supreme Court case.</ref> ruled that copyright protection could not apply to [[Stock Characters]].

* ''~[[Finian's Rainbow~]]'' incorporated elements of Irish folklore ([[Did Not Do the Research|more or less]]) and featured an Irish protagonist named McLongergan; the show was penned by an all-Jewish writing team.

* The two antagonists in Harold Pinter's "The Birthday Party" are a stereotypical pair of sinister gentlemen named [[Mc Cann]]McCann and Goldberg, who make a point of invoking their ethnic origins in their dialogue. Pinter himself was Jewish.

{{quote| '''[[Adam Sandler]]:''' "He's a quarter Jewish -- not too shabby!"}}

** But then, which country hasn't? Even Vatican City has had its share of Jewish popes and cardinals -- besidescardinals—besides the obvious Peter, many sources recall the scholar-Pope Sylvester II/Gerbert d'Aurillac as being of Jewish descent.

** That was more than likely used as an insult, as the prevailing attitude of the time was that Jews were 'Christ killers' and thus [[Always ChaoticExclusively Evil]], and he was regularly demonized as a sorcerer after his death because of his impressive achievements, magic being another inaccurate trait prescribed to Jews by the superstitious, the uneducated and the stupid (most of Mediaeval society was at least two of these).

* Colin Quinn has recently{{when}} done a one man show on Broadway, directed by Jerry Seinfeld.

* Don Adams, star of ''[[Get Smart (TV)|Get Smart]]'', was the son of a Hungarian Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother, both of whom were effectively disowned by their families over the marriage. He was raised Catholic.

[[Category:Irishman Andand Aa Jew]]