Happy St. Patrick’s Day, one and all.
The Irish are one of the few peoples left on earth who don’t really care about being stereotyped. After centuries of serving as England’s ashtray I suppose being portrayed as pugnacious drunks doesn’t seem like that big a deal.
Half of the Jeff Macke family tree runs straight through Dublin. Some 100-plus years ago my Great Grandfather O’Farrell presumably said something snarky, boarded a boat and wept all the way to America. The snark and the weeping and fighting are all part of being Irish. I’m half Irish, half German. My German side is smarter but the O’Farrell side could take it in a brawl.
Great grandpa probably didn’t get a warm welcome when he landed in the States. As recently as 1923 the NY Times was still publishing help wanted ads explicitly telling the Irish they need not apply.
Shortly after that last Times ad Joe Kennedy put an end to the stereotypes by building a bootlegging empire, siring countless children and buying a Presidency for his second favorite son, Jack.
Yet the Irish are still second-class citizens everywhere except Boston, which obviously doesn’t count. Well not anymore. Today, March 17 2016, a combination of March Madness, beer and joyous fist-fighting will drive the S&P 500 back to positive for the year. Today Bears will be sealed in a full keg of Guinness, chugged and thrown-up on the Streets of Wrigleyville. By tomorrow the correction of 2016 will be nothing more than a fuzzy memory.
(Half) my people have spent centuries derided as animals, shot on the orders of Winston Churchill himself and made into Catholic school mascots. Today, at last the Irish will be celebrated for serving as the rheumy-eyed connective tissue of this nation.
You’re welcome, America. Now give us a kiss…
Facts and levels of note:
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Jeff, I was intently watching the Williams Sonoma earnings release and reviewing the call transcript, hoping to ride aboard the specialty retail train. While WSM didn’t have nearly as disastrous of a call that Restoration Hardware did, it still drew a parallel to me.
While specialty retail has performed tremendously well (from a stock perspective) over the past few months, a pocket of them have struggled. Depsite housing being strong, RH and WSM are those laggards. I think this goes back to your point about focusing CapEx on developing/strengthening online distirbution. The problem with the home furnishings is that it’s difficult to sell online because so many of the products you really need to touch and see in person.
Just an observation, but I’d love to hear your take on it. Go Green (for St. Patrick’s Day and Michigan State basketball on the first day of March Madness.) Thanks in advance.
Sort of a tricky space in bn moderate and super high end. The show rooming thing aspect works in their favor, I think, but you have to be seamless with your on and offline offering.
If a customer comes into WS and takes a sales person’s time they won’t stiff the chain for $50 on a $2500 purchase. Really. But you can’t make your site hard to shop or fundamentally different in feel than the store.
When someone walks into a chain and starts smart phoning they are telling a store “I’m going to buy this product someplace”. I have no sympathy for a chain that’s not equipped to close the deal from there.
was reading up on the Marilyn Monroe fake suicide … a lot of fingers point to the attorney general Robert Kennedy
perhaps J Edgar Hoover let it go to use against him and ensure his silence at a later date when his good bud LBJ conspired with other criminals to off his bro in President
The death of RFK is strange also. No end to that stuff. There’s a whole Onassis tie-in…
The mid-60s were some deeply messed up times in American history. We have so little perspective.
jeez, I just posted something but it got rejected, probably because I linked to a truther site. I’ll take the link out and see if it goes through.
I haven’t looked heavily into the RFK murder except to say that the poor guy in jail probably didn’t do it.
America’s issues these days have their roots that easily go back to the 1963 coup d’etat only the truth is much harder to bury.despite all the shovels and the shit-peddling media. On Huffington Post, I saw no less than 13 anti-Trump headlines on their front page. The oligarchs are going all-in to keep Trump out and to install their next ball-playing crony Hillary.