Letters to the Editor
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Walsh/Obama
Joan Walsh is wrong this time. Obama did not mess up, neither when speaking to his Marin County funders nor at the so-called ABC debate. ABC, Charlie Gibson, and George Stephanopolos moderated the most inane meetings of any candidates since the Kennedy/Nixo sessions in 1960. Clinton continued to display her compulsion to be politically ugly, practicing what her husband disgustingly calls a "contact sport." Obama, as usual, was cool, never nasty, and displayed that he has the kind of intelligence, thinking, and judgement fit for the job of President of the United States. Obama was right in California. Millions of us are disgusted and bitter about this Bush/Cheney Administration, and both the Republicans and Democrats in Congress--to say nothing of the Roberts/Scalia/Thomas/Alito Supreme Court. Nothing is being done to open opportunity to poor ethnic/racial groups, and the doors of opportunity are fast being slammed shut on the middle class. Poverty results. Poverty always promotes crime, and crime in this country causes guns to proliferate under the guise that any sane restrictions would violate the Constitution or make the citizens weak against their government with its nuclear weapons. I wish we had a video of Hillary Clinton being taught how to shoot as a little girl by her father. We would run it along with the video of her arrival under sniper fire in Bosnia. No, not everyone who is bitter resorts to crime, but bad times certainly exacerbate crime. And in bad times, people always resort to the succor of religion more than in normal or good times. So where's the argument?
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@david sugarman -- impact of the famine
You said: "the irish still hurt from a 160 year old famine - and the number of irish is now maybe 10 times it was then."
The population of the island of Ireland (North & South) was over 8 million just before the famine -- estimates are 8.2-8.8 million -- today it a a little over 6 million, after 35 years of recovery. So I am afraid on this point you are just not right.
There were many factors in the Irish population decline, but the famine was a big one.
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David Sugarman, I just know you'll be interested in this......
An archaelogical dig in Dublin (Ireland) has led to the discovery that Viking raiders came south for plunder in the 9th century AD, a hundred years earlier than previously thought. Wait for it! We don't just have to be moaning about the Famine any more, which I must admit can be tedious and anyway I don't like potatoes. We have something else to grumble about. These Vikings came here as slavers:"And we're talking about raids that took 300 to 400 people at a time and then shipped them off to be sold in other locations. The Irish people they captured could have ended up as far afield as Russia"(The Sunday Times" April 20 2008).
The New World was yet to be discovered so there's no possibility of making political capital out of that but we'll have to take a serious look at Putin's Russia and add it to the list of grievances. The Vikings who came here were mainly Norwegian. Norway is a very wealthy country so, having grown tired of the Obama/Clinton tussle on this forum, I think I should concentrate my energies on demanding an apology from Norway, with suitable emoluments, instead of singing dirges about the potato blight. There's one slight problem, however. The red-haired and blonde-haired denizens of this country could easily have Viking ancestry and that might lead to accusations and counter-accusations, tantrums and squabbling. This must be encouraged, of course, and we can all have a free-for-all on this side of the world while you (Americans) can carry on similarly until November next - and possibly after that.
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@MacK
of COURSE i was including the diaspora (hell whether american or australian or south african or canadian or south american, they are still irish by my reckoning) how could that little island hold 80 million!? i didn't even see that as a question.
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maureen, where i grew up there were a lot of irish
and they looked irish - but of different types. there was the nordic type who had blond hair and were big. there was what i called the celtic type who were short and dark haired, sometimes grey eyed, leprechaun looking and there was the pasty-faced ruddy red-haired type. no, i don't know if that's demographically correct and, of course, here the irish intermarried with germans and even (horrors!) english. they are difficult apoplectic people but they have a funny bitter sense of humor and, if you beg, are not mean.
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@maureenodonnell -- what about the black Irish?
You are right, it is generally suggested that red hair in Ireland is not Celtic but a Viking admixture (Celts have typically brown hair.) There is another phenotype known as the "Black Irish" found in Kerry, West Cork and up the Western Seaboard who are variously said to be descendents of Spanish seamen and traders, or Moorish pirates, take your pick.
The extreme nationalists in Ireland have at times clung to an idea of racial purity which is pretty debatable -- most surprising is how upset they get, when citing the Irish diaspora to the Americas, Australia and elsewhere to be reminded that the largest chunk actually went to England and Scotland -- it does not play well with their views of the ould enemy.
David Sugarman, the psychological shock of the famine lasted a long time for the Irish - in part because its consequences, physical and economic, were visible until a scant 20 years ago. Even today you can walk across the mountains in Connemara and see traces of villages a "lazy beds" abandoned at the time of the famine, as well as the stone-posts that coffins were rested on. The famine did not become history so to speak, until it actually was history. The same issue applied in Northern Ireland -- until the consequences of the plantation of Ulster, and the sectarian strife is gone for long enough, it is not history.
You could say the same problem applies in the Israeli/Palestinian situation -- AIPAC may mock Palestinian families that still have the keys to their old homes, now in Israel, or ask why they are not living in other Arab countries. Nonetheless, for them the history of their loss, the loss of their farms, homes and livelihoods, their life 50 years later still in camps, means that whatever you see as the rights and wrongs of the situation, 1949 and events thereafter are not history for them, but their present. Until it can become their past, peace cannot be found.