Letters to the Editor
maureenodonnell
Published Letters: 475 Editor's Choice: 5
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MacK, I don't remember any particular "controversy" about President McAleese's decision not to wear a mantilla when meeting the Pope, apart from a few letters in the liberal "Irish Times"
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]However, she did provoke controversy when she visited Saudi Arabia and adhered to the strict protocol applying to women's clothing in that country. You're just trying to provide a fig-leave for you-know-who. President Mary McAleese may be "very, very catholic", as you say, although you needed to capitalise the "c", but she does not thunder from a pulpit or keep carrying on about "the 800 years of Saxon oppression". She was elected, unlike Uncle Jeremiah, although I did not vote for her. What's more she has been a communicant at St. Patrick's Cathedral, which is non-Catholic. and her message is all about reconciliation which is what the overwhelming majority of people on this island and our neighbouring island
wants. You are obviously out of touch and your information is second-hand and raggy. Last week at the Ireland-Scotland rugby match in Croke Park (!), Princess Anne, daughter of the British Queen, was in attendance. That didn't even raise an eyebrow, much less a boo, as Anne is a rugby-fan who is an officer of the Scottish Rugby Union. Modern Ireland is bored with an endless re-run of historical grievances. As for religion, we can take it or leave it.
Your cynical attempt to relate a harmless figurehead like Mary McAleese, our own version of Mary Poppins, to the poisonous polemic of Uncle Jeremiah is odious and, even worse, a barefaced lie. Barack Obama "found Jesus" through that man,did he, but in doing so he must have lost his marbles. Btw, you're so out of touch that you've confused Mary McAleese with Mary Robinson, the NOT very, very Catholic President who took off her shoes when visiting a mosque but visited the Pope with an uncovered head. Double standards were rebuked by those who find hypocrisy in such things. When JFK and his elegant wife, Jacqueline, had an audience with the Pope, she wore a mantilla as a courtesy and in accordance with protocol.
Jacqueline Bouvier-Kennedy was so stylish that everything looked good on her, including a mantilla. From the video of Jeremiah Wright that's gone right around the world, it's quite clear that he's a bit of a dandy but somehow I don't see him wearing a mantilla. His vestments are surely lovely, all the same, although those killed in New York on 9/ll might not think his speechifying quite so pretty. It must have gone down a treat with the Obamas for them to have such a high opinion of him. I wouldn't touch a man like that, of whatever religion, with a forty-foot bargepole but that's just me.
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Neil Fiertel, you should apologise to the English language for so grievously garbling it.
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Geraldine Ferraro crawled out from under a rock, really? At least she's not a snake-in-the-grass, a dishonest and sneaky person. In your list of sub-human creatures such as Geraldine Ferrararo, I suppose you haven't thought of calling Jeremiah Wright a dinosaur with a close resemblance to T.rex? Your classmates must really have been green with envy.
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Harvard-educated, KcM! Big deal! What did Sam Rayburn say about the warrior academics , including Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara, during the Vietnam war?
[Read the article: Geraldine Ferraro still needs to apologize]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Well, Lyndon", Rayburn said to LBJ, who was still VP at the time,"You may be right and they may be every bit as intelligent as you say but I'd feel a whole lot better if just one of them had run for sheriff once". The Harvard coterie, the lobotomised generation, the naked hatred of Jeremiah Wright and his supporters, the omniscience of Oprah, make up the ingredients of this nutty fruit-cake. It's been glib but it's starting to unravel. Huckabee and Romney have been taken to task by the media for their religious background but Obama thinks he can run away from Wright's rancorous preaching by saying he wasn't there or maybe it was that he just signed "present" and kept his mouth shut. Michelle Obama was also, we're to believe, also demurely mute while Wright stirred the cauldron of national divisiveness, of polarisation.
I can well understand the rejection of Bush and all he stands for as he's been despised in Europe before "the madness of King George" was recognised in America, and that is feeding into all this frenzy for Obama. Bush referred to Western Europe contemptuously as "old Europe" but because we've seen racist hucksters come and go, empire-builders of all sorts, we've become more wary of dream-merchants. From the very beginning, I found it strange that Barack Obama was so hung-up about his racial identity as he was born and, for the most part, raised in Hawaii where only 20% of the population is white and his skin colour would have blended in far more easily with the majority of people there than if he'd had red hair and fair, freckled skin. Moreover, his African ancestors were never slaves but it makes a great story-line for Hollywood if not the Oval Office.