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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. For our last few minutes today, a low-stakes debate on the Irish exit, sometimes known as the Irish goodbye. Basically, this means leaving a wedding or some other group gathering without saying goodbye to anybody. You just disappear. According to Rice University's database of neologisms, the Irish exit refers to someone leaving a party early in an attempt to avoid exposing how drunk they really are. Basically, it's poking fun at this stereotype of an Irish person who may or may not have a reputation for drinking a lot.
The term is actually pretty old, dating all the way back to 1751 according to the Oxford English Dictionary, and it wasn't originally called an Irish exit at all. Linguist Anatoly Liberman explained to courts that the original Irish exit was actually called the French leave, coined by the English to poke fun at French stereotypes. In France, you might say, to leave English style, and in Germany, if you leave without telling anyone that's to take a Polish leave. In Europe, they are just passing this around, country to country, but basically, it all comes down to blaming what is considered rude behavior on someone else's culture.
Our question is, is it rude at all? Listeners, we invite you to represent both sides of this argument in this low-stakes debate. Is the Irish exit, is leaving a wedding or something without saying goodbye to anyone the superior way to leave a party? Or is it just plain rude? Call 212-433-WNYC, or text, 212-433-9692. Who does it? I know people who are real Irish exit fans, they look for that opportunity to slip out rather than going around, make the round, say goodbye. Do we have someone out there who likes to politely or rudely, as however you may judge it, just kind of disappear? 212-433-WNYC.
Do we have someone out there who has never left a party early and unannounced? Make your case, and tell us how you think people should say goodbye. 212-433-9692. Or maybe the way you leave an event just depends on how you grew up. Here to help us with this, as your calls are coming in, and obviously, we have struck a nerve because, boy, are your calls coming in, is journalist Fortesa Latifi, who writes about influencer culture, politics, and chronic illness and disability.
Her work can be found in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Teen Vogue, among other places, and her piece in Slate, which inspired this call-in is titled Just Leave Without Telling Anyone. Fortesa, thanks. Welcome to WNYC.
Fortesa Latifi: Thank you for having me.
Brian Lehrer: Why are you partial to the Irish exit?
Fortesa Latifi: I just don't understand why more people don't use it. I actually think that instead of it being rude, that it shows that you have a real understanding of yourself and the social situation because you just don't want to change the dynamic by leaving it but you still want to leave.
Brian Lehrer: How does it change the dynamic if you say goodbye to the bride and groom?
Fortesa Latifi: Well, first of all, I'd like to defend myself that the wedding that I Irish exited from was my own, and well, also my brother's. I don't know. I didn't want to stop and make people have to say bye to me and have to explain where I was going or why I was leaving. It's better to just slip away and it's done.
Brian Lehrer: There's a sub-question to this low-stakes debate. Does it make it better or worse if it's your own wedding that you sneak out without saying goodbye to the guests?
Fortesa Latifi: [laughs] Yes.
Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. You want to finish your thought there?
Fortesa Latifi: Oh, just that I didn't go into my wedding planning to do that, but once it hit, I had to. To be fair, I didn't tell my husband and my mom. I just didn't tell anyone else.
Brian Lehrer: How many people were at your wedding?
Fortesa Latifi: Over a hundred.
Brian Lehrer: Now I know why you wanted to leave, right? Better than saying goodbye a hundred times to a hundred different people who were going to wish you well and not a hundred different ways.
Fortesa Latifi: Yes.
Brian Lehrer: Jim in Hillsborough is all for the Irish exit. Right, Jim?
Jim: Yes, I am.
Brian Lehrer: Tell us why, and have you done it?
Jim: I have done it all the time. I am Irish and I take the Irish exit all the time. I always make sure, however, before I leave that I at least touch base with the bride and the groom and talk with them about the service and how well the reception is going. Then when it's time for me to up and leave and go home and go to bed, because I like to go to bed nice and early, I don't want to have any conversations with anybody. I just up and leave, and it works out really well.
Brian Lehrer: Jim, thank you very much. Rufus in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Rufus.
Rufus: Hi, Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to observe that I know this Irish goodbye more as a kind of observation that goes like this, that WASPs leave without saying goodbye like these Irish, and Jews say goodbye without leaving, and I have both in my family.
Brian Lehrer: [laughs] Rufus, thank you very much. I don't know, Fortesa. These are funny, but we're playing on all these stereotypes. I thought we were supposed to be against stereotypes now.
Fortesa Latifi: Well, I don't know. I think it's harmless in a way. I started thinking about this because I'm Albanian and we do the same thing as that caller just said that Jewish people do. We say goodbye without leaving. It's like a half an hour thing to say goodbye, you never leave. Oh my God. You just have to keep talking, you have to drink another cup of coffee. I wonder if that's why I love the Irish goodbye is because Albanians do not leave.
Brian Lehrer: Apparently, Italians don't either. Louise in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi, Louise.
Louise: Hi, Brian. I'm laughing as I'm listening to this conversation because we call it the Italian goodbye. It takes an hour. We can never get ourselves out of the door. I'm usually pulling on my husband's arm and I'm saying to him, "Come on. We were supposed to leave an hour ago." When people do leave without saying goodbye, I admit we notice it, but we don't take offense at it because it probably makes a lot more sense than what we do as Italians. I don't know if it's just an Italian thing or a European thing or just the fact that we love being with people and we take a long-- We don't want to leave. We really don't.
Brian Lehrer: I think we have heard now the Italian, Jewish, Albanian. Albania and Italy are pretty close to each other on the other sides of that same body of water there, but interesting. We're seeing trends. What about Tracy on Staten Island, who's in a mixed marriage? Hi, Tracy.
Tracy: Hi. Yes. My husband is a Welshman, and he is a fan of the Irish goodbye. In my family, we call it the Puerto Rican goodbye. At leaving a party, he's horrible. He'll be sitting out in the car, and I'm still hugging and kissing every single person in the room to say goodbye. It makes leaving parties a little challenging in our house.
Brian Lehrer: Very funny. There we go. Well, and again, another family in this case that sees it as cultural. Right? Even though the one does the one and the other does the other. They hang on to that.
Fortesa Latifi: Well, I think that's the perfect mix is to have one who does it and one who doesn't because my husband doesn't do it. In fact, I don't think he ever has. He stays behind and explains. If anyone asks where I went or is looking for me, he's the keeper.
Brian Lehrer: You write in your article, "Perhaps you conceive of the Irish exit as rude, antisocial, or immature. Here's another way to think about it. It is the mark of a self-assured person who knows their limits and wants to abide by them without letting their leaving change the dynamics of a social event." That's a good, either, explanation or rationalization. We'll leave it up to our callers.
Fortesa Latifi: Maybe both.
[laughter]
Brian Lehrer: Nick in Brooklyn, in another mixed marriage, you're on WNYC. Hi, Nick.
Nick: Hi. Yes, my wife is Irish, I'm Jewish, and I grew up saying goodbye for most of the party I was at. When I met my wife, it was a revelation, this Irish goodbye, and it was an amazing thing. I would ask her, "Shouldn't we [unintelligible 00:09:48] people?" [inaudible 00:09:49] "How do you do that to the party? It's going to take it down. We should just sneak out," and I thought, "Wow, that's--" I loved it. I'm not very good at it. I try it sometimes. [laughs]
Brian Lehrer: But you can't resist going around saying goodbye?
Nick: Yes, I feel [inaudible 00:10:12]. The idea that it brings the party down to make your own presence or--
Brian Lehrer: Presence felt.
Nick: Yes.
Brian Lehrer: It was new to you.
Nick: That works. Yes. I think that's-- It is a rationale in part for all kinds of neurosis on her and her family's part. On the other part, on the other hand, it's true. It works.
Brian Lehrer: Nick, thank you very much. Well, we framed this as a debate and it could have been just all Nick debating himself [unintelligible 00:10:50]. One more. Ben in Croton-on-Hudson with yet another very different take. Hi, Ben. [silence] Ben?
Ben: Hi, Brian.
Brian Lehrer: Hi.
Ben: Thanks for taking my call.
Brian Lehrer: Sure.
Ben: Yes, I think it makes sense to just frame this in terms of an accessibility issue for neurodivergent. Parties are party all the time until we close the venue is great for some people who are extroverted and get lots of energy from it. For other folks, it's draining. There's only so much of it that they can take. They want to be there. They want to celebrate the lifecycle events or whatever it is, but there's only so much they can take.
They shouldn't have to budget a third or half of their social tolerance for the risk of this long, drawn-out goodbye process. They should just participate in the event as long as they're okay and happy and able to do so, and then they should just be able to go.
Brian Lehrer: Ben, thank you very much. A serious call and I think for real, right? The neurodivergent goodbye.
Fortesa Latifi: Yes, I do think that is a part of it, and I write about that too, that part of it is when I leave, it's about my chronic illness symptoms. Maybe I feel a migraine coming, or I can just feel that my energy is dissipating. I don't feel like explaining that to people, and I'm just going to leave. Now it's so much a part of my personality that everyone knows to expect that from me. No one was even surprised when I did it at my own wedding.
Brian Lehrer: Fortesa Latifi, her piece in Slate, which obviously gets a lot of conversations going, is part of the one-thing column on life advice and is titled Just Leave Without Telling Anyone. I don't have that option, Fortesa. I'm out of here.
Fortesa Latifi: [laughs] Well, I'll say bye this time. [laughs]
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