Obviously, a huge number of movies have been made that paint the Republicans in a sympathetic light. Furthermore, there seems to be a lot of sympathy for them nowadays, after the Good Friday agreement. But how publicly could one express sympathy for the IRA during the hunger strikes? Was it portrayed as a tragedy? Any sort of insight would be hugely interesting, thanks!
Thanks to the strong tradition of free speech in the US, of course one could express any number of opinions. But I get the sense you are asking what the range of expressed opinions was.
With regard to the hunger strike itself, there was support for the hunger strikers at a relatively high level of US politics. The legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (home to many Americans of Irish descent) unanimously passed a resolution condemning prison conditions and asking the British government to recognize Bobby Sands as a political prisoner. A handful of US congresspeople from both parties signed on to a telegram asking President Reagan to urge Margaret Thatcher to action.
Other action occurred as well. The International Longshoremen's Association boycotted British ships for 24 hours after Bobby Sands' death. I don't get the sense they found many ships to boycott, but the gesture stood.
That's not to say there was unanimous support. The Boston Globe, in an editorial upon the death of Bobby Sands, noted the "American reflex to transfer automatic blame to London," but concluded that "the government in London to which Bobby Sands was elected is innocent compared to the organization in which he is a commander, the Provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army."
The Provisional IRA and Sinn Fein were regarded as terrorists by many in the United States. But political support for them during the hunger strikes of 1981 was a mainstream view in the US, and was freely expressed.