I started writing this week's article as soon as last week's was out of the way. It was going fairly well until the things I was writing about kept going back and forth between the "on" and "off" positions. Let me tell you that writing these things sure is going to be a challenge; because if you don't, I'll be forced to tell you anyway. I don't envy those of you (kleph) who have to write one of these regularly to maintain some sort of stable income. It's hard, and to those of you who manage to do it, I congratulate you.

Journalists are one of the most under appreciated types of person on the face of the planet. Contrary to what about a Billion people around the world think, news doesn't just get sent to the Newspaper or TV station automatically. Someone has to go and research it, be at an event and take notes. News is made when something happens and someone is there to tell the story. But by that I don't mean that it just gets made up (well, at least not most of the time). There are thousands of journalists and reporters all over the world, watching for anything that might happen. Some are out on location in the deserts of California (or Iraq, but that's old hat), and some work behind a desk meticulously researching every piece of information that they can get their hands on.

Ace of Spades eat your heart out

An even rarer breed is the honest journalist who doesn't use loopholes in the system to further their own career. There are plenty of people in all sorts of professions who will do some of the most unethical and immoral things known to man in order to advance themselves and their position. Some may (mistakenly) call it Capitalism, I call it greed. We've all heard tales and made jokes about people sucking the dick of the CEO to get a promotion. Other ways include bribes (or large gifts or donations) and blackmail. I've seen people talk about applying for jobs and then others saying things along the lines of "play the race card". These people might have a great-grandfather that was a Native American or maybe Puerto Rican and they will use their 1/16th ethnicity other than Caucasian to try and lever themselves in to a job.

I guess I don't know exactly what it's like to be able to "play the race card", as my family heritage is rooted in Ireland, England and Denmark. I'm only about 1/32nd Danish though, so I don't go around claiming to be Danish. I don't join in any Denmark Day (or whatever their national holiday is called) celebrations, nor do I fly a Danish flag during the soccer world cup. I don't claim to be Irish, but I do know that I'm of Irish descent. So while I don't go around speaking with a thick Irish accent and wear green all the time, I do enjoy a pint of Guinness every once in a while when I'm out.

A friend of mine once pointed out to me that the Irish population of the world increases dramatically in the middle of March each year. All of a sudden, you've got millions more people claiming to be the direct descendants of St Patrick and they're all sitting around thinking they're as green as the hills themselves for drinking Kilkenny, Guinness and Caffrey's. Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with a) taking pride in your heritage, and b) enjoying a good pint of beer. But if you're only doing that for one day a year, then you're a fool for believing that what you're doing is of some significant cultural value.

Drinking this secret elixir transforms you in to a wonderful little leprechaun

I can imagine that this would get out of hand in a place like New York, where a lot of Irish immigrants settled. I've seen parades on TV from NYC's St Patrick's Day celebrations. Everyone's running around wearing green and dancing like idiots. Can someone tell these people that they're fifty-eight years late for D-Day? That sort of singing and dancing in the street is only tolerable when you've won a war or it's New Year's Eve. I'm not saying that your average Noo Yawker is as dumb as a sack of rotten potatoes, but the ones that go "Yo, I'm all Irish like" are. I'm just waiting to see on the news that a bunch of over-proud and under-qualified "Irish" Noo Yawkers have just gone and beaten up anyone they see wearing an orange shirt.

It seems that any sort of ethnic or cultural violence would make it to the news a few years ago over here. If three white males ganged up and raped a white female, it would hardly be reported on. But if three Pakistani men (or any other race for that matter) ganged up and raped a white female (or any other race for that matter), the reporters would trump with the race card and the article would be on at least page 3 of the newspapers and on the evening bulletins on television.

For those reporters out there who actually report on worthwhile or at least interesting news, I'd like to send a big thank you out to you. While I'm sure that you can't always choose what you're going to write about, I appreciate that you keep it simple, clear cut, and to the point. There is nothing worse than someone waffling on about irrelevant shit such as which race someone belongs to.

For those of you who skipped forward to the last paragraph to read a summary of the article, here it is. I hate fake "Irish" people. I hate journalists for "News sources" such as "The Sun" and "The Ledger-Enquirer" who write about shit. I hate people who play the race card to advance themselves. But I like honest journalists who write well researched articles that inform me.

Disclaimer: I am not a journalist.