The funniest dance I’ve ever seen has got to be the one in Bring it On when former high school cheerleader-princess Campbell performs as the basketball team mascot – a leprechaun – at the inner city high school she’s been abruptly transferred to. She does so winningly, shaking her rump around in a furry green jacket, high-waisted plaid trousers, and a gigantic grinning leprechaun mask. The dance is great fun because you can, right through the costume, sense the good will of the character (and also the actress, Taylor Lauderman), and because it begins to reclaim the tiresome ethnic stereotype of the leprechaun.
In our sophisticated, post-racial age, there are still a lot of these little green fellows running around. There’s the one on the Lucky Charms box, the ones that preside over the Notre Dame sports teams and the Boston Celtics, and the whole lot of them that comes out of hiding just before St. Patrick’s Day. Perhaps, because people of Irish descent don’t see to be too vocal about it, it’s all good fun. But the little boxing leprechaun that the law firm Fitzgerald and Fitzgerald (F&F) use in their logo is something particularly awful. It’s meant to suggest that F&F lawyers are, like all Irish people, pugnacious and relentless. One reason it bothers me so much is because it rubs up against my own just-as-dumb belief that Irish people are dreamy and literary. F&F are a major New York City subway car advertiser, so on a slow, crowded, commute, I often end up face to face with one of their ads, tinted green and adorned with leprechauns. Who would want to retain a lawyer from a firm with a mascot, especially one like this?