Mayor Z's St. Patrick's Day Speech

When I was but a wee lad--young and fresh and new to town--Mayor Harold Washington enthralled me with his amazing ability to effortlessly throw around big-time words and phrases that sent me to the dictionary.

Now that I'm an old dog, it's New York City's mayoral whiz kid who's got me scurrying to look stuff up.

Talking about Mayor Zohran Mamdani--aka, the Z man--who delivered one helluva St. Patrick's Day speech, though I suspect the first draft was written by some wordsmith in the press office.

In this speech, Mayor Z linked the Irish and Palestinians in their respective struggles for freedom and independence. Getting him harrumphs from the usual cast of conservative Catholics who have been hating on lefties since forever.

Don’t take it personally, Mr. Mayor—they didn’t like Dorothy Day either.

Liam Stack, the New York Times reporter, summed it up like this…

"Speaking to a roomful of Irish dignitaries and prominent Irish Americans at the [St. Patrick's Day] breakfast, Mr. Mamdani squeezed roughly 1,600 years of Irish history and culture into just a few minutes."

Then Stack ran through Mamdani's references, including...

Coroticus, corned beef, Troy Parrott and his 96-minutes goal, The Pogues and Fairytale of New York.

And here I must admit I flunked the test. Didn't get any of the references--other than the obligatory one to corned beef.

And so to Google I went, where I learned...

When he scored that goal, Troy was so happy, he took off his shirt…

Coroticus was a fifth-century British warlord, whose rampaging soldiers  brutalized Ireland, prompting St. Patrick to write...

"Weep with whose who weep."

Prompting Mayor Mamdani to say...

"It's no small act to weep with those who weep. It's a choice, one that many do not make."

And Troy Parrot is an Irish soccer player who, just last year, scored the hat trick in a 3-2 win over Hungary--the last goal coming at the 96-minute mark.

Which, for all of you non-soccer readers out there, is late, late, late in the next-score-wins part of the game. Think of it as a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth--an analogy of no use to the multitudes who know even less about baseball than I know about soccer.

So forget I mentioned it...

Fairytale of New York is a Christmas song about a beat-down Irish immigrant, lured to New York City by the promise of great fortune, only to find himself in a drunk tank, miserably down on his luck.

I watched it on YouTube and the video had me weeping. Yes, weeping--just like St. Patrick himself.

As for the Pogues...

Please don't get mad at me Gen Xers, but I'd only vaguely heard of them. Always get them mixed up with The Smiths. Though I can't say for certain if one has anything in common with the other.

Turns out they're British--again, like St. Patrick. So for Mayor Mamdani to put them right up there with corned beef is like saying Jerry Jeff Walker is Black cause he wrote Mr. Bojangles.

Speaking of songs about guys in drunk tanks that leave me teary.

Actually, Jerry Jeff Walker has always said the real Mr. Bojangles--the man he met in a jail cell thus inspiring the song--was white.

But you get the point. Or maybe you didn’t. So try this one...

My point is that the kid in the backroom wrote one of helluva speech--even if The Pogues aren't Irish.

Kudus to Mayor Mamdani for having the guts to read it.

And thank you, New York City voters, for having the good sense to elect the Z man as your mayor.