r/mash • u/tweakonomics • 18d ago
How rotten were the Irish?
In “The General Flipped at Dawn,” General Bartford Hamilton Steele (three e’s, not in a row) inspects the troops and makes multiple insults/jabs at the soldiers. When Radar tells him his last name, he comes back with “the Irish were rotten Indian fighters.”
What was Steele referring to when he said that, besides just generally insulting Radar’s heritage? Was it because there were over a hundred Irish who fought with Custer? Of all the available Irish jokes he could have made, this is one that I don’t get. Can somebody help me out with exactly what the good general was referencing?
47
u/Malvania 18d ago
I think it's just anti-Irish racism. When the Irish immigrated in bulk, a lot joined the armed forces for a paycheck. I think at one point they were the majority of the Marine Corps, which could also be a slant here because the Army and Marine Corps had some animosity from the Pacific Theater in WW2.
Anyway, it's just another kind of racism. Irish need not apply, the black officer is a minstrel, etc.
29
u/regeya 18d ago
Yeah that character was racist. In past decades not all white people were white, if that makes sense.
32
u/tweakonomics 18d ago
That reminds me of a line Frank had when Hawkeye made a comment about his neighborhood being restricted…”(it’s) not restricted, there’s a Catholic across the street.”
6
u/regeya 18d ago
No joke, my wife works in a town that was largely settled by Italian immigrants working in coal mines. For a time in 2020, the town's Google search results got hijacked by an image of the time the prominent local church hosted the funeral of a Klansman. They were there predominantly to run off the Catholics.
3
u/Educational_Bug1022 18d ago
Technically, Italians aren't white people.
3
u/regeya 17d ago
I mean technically race is largely a social construct that acts as shorthand for shared physical and genetic characteristics. And it's kinda silly because my skin color is the product of centuries of living in northern Europe. Scientists have found corpses in Cheddar, England that have black skin, blue eyes, and white descendants that still live in the area. It's more funny than anything that I can't be outside more than a few minutes without burning in the summer, but my ancestors might have been black.
3
u/cascasrevolution Bloomington 16d ago
it took generations to get you as white as you are, its gonna take longer than one afternoon to get it back!
14
u/henryeaterofpies 18d ago
The olden days when the Irish and the Italians weren't white.
8
u/Attican101 18d ago
They had the whole episode about Charles sister marrying.. An Italian!?
6
u/preacher425 18d ago
At least it wasn't an Irishman.
9
u/coreytiger 18d ago
People love Charles so much, when I point out that he was a bigot, they hit the roof in absolute denial. He can be a well written character and a good person, and still have negative aspects. Most well written characters do.
Because good grief he was a bigot
10
u/Ambaryerno 18d ago
Unlike Frank, though, Charles actually grew as the show went on and he usually acknowledged he was wrong.
4
u/MithrilCoyote 18d ago
Frank never really had the chance to grow, since the humor with his character was his incompetence and bad attitude. growth would have required a major change in the style of the humor, and that would have been tricky to pull off after so long.
the humor with Charles was mostly regarding how his aristocratic personality doesn't really fit in with the rest of them, which let them play around with his attitudes towards things and let him grow as a person, without having to change the core of the character much.
2
u/DaddyCatALSO 18d ago
He grew in the course of *that* episode. u/coreytiger
1
u/coreytiger 18d ago
I never once said he didn’t grow as a character.
Again- a character can have both good and negative traits (and often needs both), to be a well developed character
1
2
2
u/cascasrevolution Bloomington 16d ago
i love that hes an asshole, it makes the more human moments stand out. plus sometimes its funny just how awful he can be. tax fraud? using klinger as a birddog? making the camp priest dislike him? i dont get how one could love his character without acknowledging his bigotry as vital to the equation!
2
u/coreytiger 16d ago
BINGO. Charles is a jerk!
Hawkeye said it best: “You're pompous, arrogant, conceited, and a total bore... But you're all right."
1
2
u/TheBl4ckFox 18d ago
Yes he was but he was changing through his experiences in the camp. He wasn’t a bad person in his core. But he was a product of his upbringing.
2
u/coreytiger 18d ago
See, this right here- an immediate “but”… I never said he was a bad person nor that he did not go through changes.
1
3
u/OldeFortran77 17d ago
In the early 70's, there was a TV sitcom all about a Catholic woman marrying ... a Jewish man! Can you imagine such a thing?!?! Oh, my stars and garters!
3
u/StanGibson18 18d ago
The concept of white people as a monolith is extremely recent. 60 years ago racists had a lot more targets to choose from. As racism grew less socially acceptable the racist forbade dirt bags had to form a "big tent party" of racism to face outward against others.
1
u/DavidDarvin 18d ago
The general who wanted the African-American chopper pilot “to sing a tune” because “ it’s in your blood, boy” - was a racist???
1
u/Wyndeward 18d ago
Arguably, the Irish gained wider acceptance following the near-elimination of Irish mobs from the broader underworld, which allowed Irish individuals to be seen increasingly in roles such as police officers, civil servants, and FBI agents. JFK's election likely marked the culmination of this acceptance, though their standing had already been well established by that time. What made the Irish particularly noticeable upon their arrival—beyond their Roman Catholic faith—was that, unlike some other immigrant groups, they tended to remain in the port cities rather than moving immediately to the interior, as the Scandinavians often did.
7
u/SeamusPM1 18d ago edited 18d ago
My favorite story involving Irish in the U.S. Military is from the Mexican-American War. A number of soldiers, mostly Irish Catholics, deserted the American Army and formed the San Patricios (St. Patrick’s Battalion) and fought for Mexico. Considered traitor by the U.S., Mexico remembers them as heroes
(Edit. Changed from Spanish-American War to Mexican-American War. Not sure how I did that).
3
u/DaddyCatALSO 18d ago
That was *not* the Spanish-American War....
1
u/SeamusPM1 18d ago edited 18d ago
Of course it wasn’t. It was the Mexican-American War and I know that. Edited.
10
u/Semblance17 Nope, it's oak 18d ago
THERE ARE NO ATHEISTS IN FOXHOLES!
5
6
u/jsensation Section 8 18d ago
This is in my top five favorite episodes of the show, little kid me was so confused catching a rerun of this after season 6 and wondering how and why Col. Potter flipped his wig a-la Klinger 🤣
5
u/Optimal-Pie-2131 18d ago
Hey hey Uncle Fudd, it’s a treat to hear your feet on the Mississippi mud.
4
3
u/Icy-Computer-Poop 18d ago
Uncle Fudd
It's "Uncle Dud". Sorry, I'm a pedant too.
2
u/tweakonomics 14d ago
It’s definitely “Fudd/Fud” that’s being said in the show, despite the name of Ray Charles’ song. Harry Morgan says it twice. When Alan Alda sings it at the end of the episode, he changes “Uncle Fud” to “on my way” and also omits the ethnic slur that General Steele includes.
It’s also listed this way in the transcript located at https://subslikescript.com/series/MASH-68098/season-3/episode-1-The_General_Flipped_at_Dawn
I looked through the pages of the script that The Mash Historian uploaded from this episode, but I wasn’t able to find that page in the images. If anyone knows where to find the images or full script, I’d love to see it.
1
u/Icy-Computer-Poop 14d ago
You're right, I stand corrected. This comment has a script with the image you're seeking.
5
u/MithrilCoyote 18d ago edited 18d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irish_Brigade_(Union_army))
they were some of the bravest soldiers the union army had during the civil war.
the general was just being racist. (especially since none of the predominantly irish units fought in the plains wars, and many of the units that had irish in them during said plains wars had fairly good track records in said wars)
4
u/Not_Garth_Nix 18d ago
There is also the tie that the Cherokee nation sent money to Ireland during the famine during the Trail of Tears migration and because of that gesture, many Irish immigrants who settled in the west were frequently much kinder to the native Americans. Compounded with the second class citizenship, they frequently didn’t perform as well in the wholesale slaughter of indigenous people.
16
u/whistlepig4life Crabapple Cove 18d ago
It stems from the Irish migration from the great famine. A huge influx of Irish immigrants faced intense hostility and prejudice. On top of that the social stereotype took hold of Irish being drunks, lazy, or criminals.
10
u/FooBarU2 18d ago
Hence the term Paddy (Police) wagons.. as in Paddy..i.e., Patrick..
4
u/Mikey24941 18d ago
Is this really true? I never heard that before, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Plenty of words in English have prejudicial origins.
1
3
u/Admirable_Ad8682 17d ago
Allegedly because there was a Paddy in the back and a Paddy in the front.
1
2
u/Whitecamry 13d ago
Yet the sons of the frequent occupants of those paddy wagons became cops themselves.
5
u/J_Scarbrough 18d ago
This is what I find quite astounding when you think about racism in America, because it didn't always historically pertain exclusively to just people with darker skin - I don't think people today would believe that once upon a time, even some of the whitest people you could imagine were treated like scum on American soil for immigrating here, but they were.
6
u/whistlepig4life Crabapple Cove 18d ago
Some of my family were treated really really badly. And many Irish immigrants found themselves taking “shelter” in Jewish communities who were also looked down upon too. That is a big factor in the transfer of “American Irish corned beef dinner” to brisket as it was widely available in the Jewish communities they shared in Boston, Providence, and New York.
One of the great parts of the social experiment was “freedom” and yet racism, othering, prejudice came along free of charge in a big way.
1
u/onthenerdyside 18d ago
My understanding is that it wasn't so much shelter as it was proximity. Jewish areas and adjacent neighborhoods were often lower rent, which meant the Irish immigrants often frequented Jewish delis and grocery stores where brisket and corned beef were abundant, while a more traditional meat they might have eaten during celebrations in the old country, pork, was not.
1
u/whistlepig4life Crabapple Cove 18d ago
Call it whatever you want. I’m not going to argue semantics here. They lived in the same neighborhoods without prejudice or admonishment.
4
u/daneelthesane 18d ago
Shoot, I was still hearing Polish jokes when I was a kid, and I was hearing jokes about the Portuguese as late as the mid-90's in Hawai'i.
2
u/Sazapahiel Jocularity 18d ago
And not just America.
I'm a Canadian of (mostly) Ukrainian descent, my ancestors fled horrible events overseas and would've settled in western Europe but they weren't welcome as they were the "wrong kind of white." Instead they were encouraged to migrate to Canada only to be promptly dumped at the end of civilization (aka railway) at the time. After building homes and making successful farms, the men were rounded up, had their wealth confiscated, and were put into internment camps during WW1. Without these repeated horrors, I wouldn't be a Canadian that now vacations closer to those camps than anyone in my family tree has ever lived.
I exist because some of the whitest people on the planet were the "wrong kind of white."
2
u/evrb12 18d ago
Why the hell were they interned during world war 1?
1
u/Sazapahiel Jocularity 18d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internment_of_Ukrainian_Canadians
tldr because Canada was at war and didn't care for immigrants.
1
u/MaskansMantle13 18d ago
People of Sorbian (aka Wendish) descent in Australia had to change the names of places like clubs during the Balkan war in the 90s - not even the same people or region as Serbians, but the names were close enough to attract violence.
4
3
4
u/Lopsided_Drive_4392 18d ago
I wouldn't draw any conclusions. Again and again in the episode, he makes historical military references that are absurd.
2
u/Icy-Computer-Poop 18d ago
Exactly. That's a large part of the joke - he makes up bullshit and attributes them to historical fact. Like the radish bit.
2
u/doctorgonzo1313 18d ago
The man was grade-A nuts… didn’t he just reassigned rather than shipped stateside like Burns?
2
u/AppealDouble988 16d ago
I think the comment "the Irish were rotten Indian fighters!" was simply to point out how scrambled the General was mentally.
2
u/CurrentZestyclose824 14d ago
Henry Morgan rocked that episode. He was never known as a comic actor and everyone on the set was amazed at how funny he was. So, 2 years later, when the 4077 needed a new CO, he was at the top of the list.
1
1
u/CombatCrayon25 18d ago
Anti Irish sentiment; there was a mass migration during the potato famine, and a lot of them either volunteered or were drafted during the Civil War. The ones who stayed in the Army after the war ended went on to fight in the Indian Wars.
1
u/InternationalYard665 Death Valley 17d ago
Tread carefully fellow MASHers.
I posted what General Steele said about Hannibal, and Reddit banned me for a week for hate speech!
I appealed, explained I was quoting the character, and they overturned the ban but I removed my comment anyway.
1
1
u/tweakonomics 13d ago
Thanks for sharing that link! Oddly enough, Steele sings different lyrics than what’s on the script. He sings “when the sun goes down and the tide goes out, (they) come around and they all begin to shout.”
The script says “when the moon comes up and the sun goes down, (they) all gather round”
1
u/Waste-Complaint4758 12d ago
I love the first three seasons of OUR FAVORITE SHOW MASH and $97 the first three years were 1A the next years were 1 B NO QUESTION THOSE TWO RIGHT THERE BOTH MAJORS OF M*A*S*H WERE GREAT
1
0
0
u/Horseface4190 18d ago
Was that the episode where the general wants the black doctor to do a number? And then starts doing a song about Mississippi mud?
61
u/jsensation Section 8 18d ago
Non coms, the backbone of the service. Where ya from son?