Radio Review: No one is pining for the days when the Jacob's float was the highlight of the St Patrick's Day parade and the most colourful thing about it were high-school bands from Boston with their shiny polyester military uniforms, tubas and American tan tights.
Now that we have a great big parade that could easily be picked up and plonked down in any part of the world to celebrate just about anything at all, there's been a great deal of ruminating on radio this week about how culturally anonymous the festival has become.
This in turn has prompted what John Waters (The Breakfast Show with Eamon Dunphy, Newstalk 106, Thursday) calls a lot of "egghead discussion" on what it means to be Irish. We heard on Spectrum (RTÉ1, Sunday) that the two words "national identity" are guaranteed to clear a room faster than "bomb scare". That programme featured a fascinating discussion on the new enthusiasm in several European countries for citizenship tests.
In Germany, one region has imposed a test for would-be immigrants that includes such questions as "Are the 9/11 bombers freedom fighters or terrorists?" and "What would you do if your son turned out to be gay?" Rita Vandonk, the Dutch immigration minister, is now so enthusiastic about it she supports a 30-minute computerised test for would-be residents - a test which requires 300 hours of study, costs several hundred euro to sit and must be taken before entry into the Netherlands.
In addition, anyone who lives in the Netherlands with less than eight years of local schooling must sit an exam on Dutch society and culture.
From all that you can take it that Iron Rita, as she has been nicknamed, isn't exactly standing at the border with her arms wide open - and that is essentially the problem with these tests, according to Michael Cronin from Dublin City University. It is, he said, legitimate to expect people to educate themselves to be citizens but the problem is that the tests are used as a way of excluding people, a case of doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
The new British citizenship test proved such a challenge to a group of 20 teachers taking it that only one passed, said Spectrum panellist Roy Foster, professor of history at Oxford, who admitted failing himself with a score of 8 out of 14.
The programme's presenter, Melanie Verwoerd, persistently referred to "Paddy's Day" - not the most culturally respectful thing to hear on the very earnest multicultural programme.
Another panel came up with an hilarious version of an Irish citizenship test - with such gems as Róisín Ingle's "By what other name is Irish singer Paul Hewson commonly known? a) God b) That tax-avoiding fecker or c) Bono", or Fiona Looney's "How do you exit a Dublin bus? a) By the middle door marked exit b) Accompanied by a Garda or c) By the door near the driver marked no exit".
In Eamon Dunphy's discussion on the national holiday, Mary Kenny joined the presenter and John Waters and pronounced them grumpy old men for being so negative about the parade and the general festivities.
Dunphy read out a letter from a listener who wondered why he is so keen on calling the St Patrick's Festival "tacky" while "glorifying pissed-up and roaring red-faced paddies probably skiving off work" - and yes, the listener was talking about Cheltenham.
I can forgive Dunphy's fixation with Cheltenham - sport is a big thing on that show - but RTÉ Radio 1's coverage this week of the race meeting was once again bizarrely out of proportion.
Fine if it was contained within the sports reports and the wretched John Creedon Cheltenham Show (RTÉ1, Tues-Thurs) but it was everywhere, mentioned on nearly all programmes, hyped up as somehow being an essential part of being Irish. Now there's one for the eggheads to get stuck into.
The coverage reached its lowest point on Tuesday when the race results were put firmly in a "we-beat-the-Brits" framework, with the RTÉ sports reporter crowing that "we" won six races while the British only won four.
Of course "we" never win anything - it's the bookies and owners who laugh all the way to their private helicopters, as Paddy O'Gorman grimly revealed in his wander around Waterford's betting shops (O'Gorman's Winter, RTÉ1, Tuesday). He met a man who calmly explained how his life has been destroyed by gambling, an addiction that nearly lost him his family and whose illness is so gripping he can't stop. O'Gorman spoke to other men who take three days off work at this time of year to sit in the bookies and bars and whose description of their Cheltenham days reeked of desperation and disappointment hidden beneath a brittle veneer of great-craic bravado.
