Stale fare for breakfast

The nadir of the annual St. Patrick's Day breakfast might have been reached yesterday when state Treasurer Tim Cahill made his way to the rostrum.

Cahill admitted that some of his material would sound familiar, since it had been purchased from the same joke-writers who were employed by many of the previous speakers.

"I'm going to use them anyway," he said. "Because I paid a lot of good money for them." He then led off with two jokes recycled from a half-hour earlier. But now, in addition to being corny, they were stale.

The St. Patrick's Day breakfast is supposed to be one of the signature events in Boston politics, evidence that a proud Irish tradition is going strong. I'm here to tell you that anyone who believes that hasn't been to one in a very long time.

The breakfast is, in reality, a horrible anachronism, one that gets worse every year and will continue to. It isn't state Senator Jack Hart's fault, though he is the poor soul stuck with trying to make it a success every year. It's an event that just doesn't work in the modern world.

For those of you who haven't had the pleasure, the breakfast is an annual roast in which politicians skewer one another. It is a test of one's political manhood -- I use the term deliberately -- to be able to stand in and take the heat.

Often, there is an obvious target for most of the humor, and this year was no exception. The breakfast promised to be chock-full of references to drapes, helicopters, and Cadillacs.

Governor Deval Patrick took his gentle flogging in stride. In his own short speech, he disarmingly poked fun at no one but himself. A lot, he said, had changed since last St. Patrick's Day.

"Last year, I sat in the wings and watched elected officials eat their breakfast," he said. "Today, I get to sit here and be the breakfast." He unveiled a bell that he planned to ring whenever other speakers mentioned his drapes, helicopter, or official car.

Patrick got to ring the bell often, but this was a kinder, gentler version of the breakfast. This was the year that mean comments were declared off-limits, in deference to Diane Patrick's illness. The few speakers who ignored the nonaggression policy got a wary response from the audience.

Oddly, the lovefest backfired, in the sense that it drained the breakfast of the edgy humor that might have made it interesting. Instead, there were the same tired and strained riffs off the same three topics. (Why does everyone go to Hill, Holiday for their jokes anyway?)

In election years, the breakfast is able to muster some star power to generate interest. This year, only Senator Joseph Biden Jr. of the many presidential candidates appeared. His contribution was a bizarre ramble about his Irish-American family in Scranton, Pa. No wonder he once used another guy's speeches.

Two of the oddest and least funny monologues were performed by Suffolk County Sheriff Andrea Cabral and Attorney General Martha Coakley. Their attempts to mine comedy from being women in politics didn't work, to put it mildly.

Their failures were telling. The breakfast is, by design, a throwback: It harkens to a pre-busing Southie and a pre-diversity Boston, a world run by colorful and crafty Irish pols and their constituents. That is an idealized rewrite of history, but it's enough to make some eyes misty.

The problem is that this nostalgia can't be reconciled with real life. It is a fantasy that has little room for black governors or female attorneys general, or outsiders of any kind, really. Coakley, a tough and accomplished woman, adopted the persona of a silly broad to please the crowd. They pretended to think it was funny.

For something that is supposed to be a celebration, the breakfast has become a showcase for tension. No amount of warbling seemed to make the unease go away, and no wonder. The breakfast celebrates a past that most of us don't long to return to.

Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com.