Photo: Heidi Gutman/ABC
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 4:00 PM ET | By Scotty Gore
(SoapOperaNetwork.com) — Two recent episodes of “One Life to Live” spark outrage from a particular ethnic group.
The ABC sudser has been no stranger to controversy in recent weeks. Gay and lesbian groups have protested the ouster of the show’s only same-sex on-screen couple (‘Kish’), and African-Americans have voiced their concerns over the purging of certain black cast members. Now some Irish-Americans are upset over how the show handled the St. Patrick’s Day holiday.
The website IrishCentral.com is blasting “One Life to Live” for what it calls “the most disgraceful depiction of St. Patrick’s Day [they have] ever seen.”
The episodes in question, which aired on March 17th and 18th, featured Roxy Balsom (Ilene Kristen) wearing a green dress that “includes a mug of beer on her hat. She is drinking two glasses of green beer at the same time and is obviously drunk,” laments the website, which goes on to comment that the St. Patrick’s Day episode also “included a conversation in a bar between two policemen. People in the background have green plastic hats and are drinking green beer. They start drinking beer and switch to Irish whiskey. It continued in the next day’s episode in a woman’s hair salon with a woman completely dressed in green. Later, from off-screen, you hear a blood-curdling scream and this woman announces, ‘We are out of beer!’ Later the women stumble into the bar where the policemen are now throwing down numerous shots of Irish whisky.”
The site claims that they “have never seen such a despicable display of stereotyping and bigotry. Everyone, not just Irish-born or of Irish ancestry, should be offended by this show. We have decided that we will not watch anything on ABC.” They also awarded “One Life to Live” with their first annual PADDIES Award, which stands for the worst “Saint Patrick’s awful dreadful, dire, Irish entertainment scene.”
To read the entire IrishCentral article, click here.
“One Life to Live” airs Weekdays on ABC. Weeknights on SOAPnet. Anytime on ABC.com and SOAPnet.com. Check local listings.