Friday, September 26, 2008
Calling all O'Reilly twins
The Irish Echo would love to hear from any O'Reilly twins (or even triplets) out there. What do you think of John McCain's joke? Being O'Reillys and twins and Irish do you feel triply insulted?
Debate is back on
Apparently Senator John McCain will debate tonight, after all, so it's safe to resume the blog. Meanwhile the president of the Ancient Order of Hibernians who met McCain at the Scranton event on Monday has written him a letter protesting the "O'Reilly twins" joke. For more information click on the comment from Massachusetts on Tuesday's post on the forum.
Crisis
This blog has been suspended because of the severe financial crisis facing the nation, and the weather's not great either.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Irish forum? What? Here?
So finally after 24 years, a Republican candidate has made it to an Irish presidential forum. It happened yesterday in Scranton and you can read editor Ray O’Hanlon’s report from the scene in tomorrow’s Irish Echo. But it would seem that a condition had to be met before this milestone could happen and that was -- the forum could double as a GOP rally.
Several notable Irish figures in the area only learned of the event when contacted by media outlets.
"This is the first I've heard of it," the president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackwanna County John Keeler told the Scranton Times-Tribune. "I wish [John] McCain well, but I'm kind of on the other side. I know Joe Biden and I've met him several times."
Scranton’s Mayor Chris Doherty was not invited either, the paper reported.
Some naysayers might argue that that you can have a forum and you can have a rally, but you can't have both at the same time, even if you call the latter a "townhall" meeting.
Those who did make it, including the national media, were treated to McCain's one Irish joke. The one about the O'Reilly twins. And he told it again later in the day. It's a real knee-slapper involving drunks. But I don't want to spoil it in case you find yourself at a townhall meeting anytime soon.
Several notable Irish figures in the area only learned of the event when contacted by media outlets.
"This is the first I've heard of it," the president of the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick of Lackwanna County John Keeler told the Scranton Times-Tribune. "I wish [John] McCain well, but I'm kind of on the other side. I know Joe Biden and I've met him several times."
Scranton’s Mayor Chris Doherty was not invited either, the paper reported.
Some naysayers might argue that that you can have a forum and you can have a rally, but you can't have both at the same time, even if you call the latter a "townhall" meeting.
Those who did make it, including the national media, were treated to McCain's one Irish joke. The one about the O'Reilly twins. And he told it again later in the day. It's a real knee-slapper involving drunks. But I don't want to spoil it in case you find yourself at a townhall meeting anytime soon.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
City pols are just as qualified
There are some, no doubt, who feel that New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn would make a fine presidential or vice-presidential candidate. Well, why not? In the context of Sarah Palin’s emergence from obscurity, the same could be said of any number of politicians here. Adolfo Carrion Jr., for example, who spoke at the recent Irish Echo event at Museum of the City of New York, has gained considerable executive experience since 2001 as borough president of the Bronx -- which has 1.3 million residents.
The GOP vice-presidential candidate took over as the governor of Alaska in December 2006. That’s no mean achievement in any life story, to be sure. But given that she’s the Republicans’ choice to be Dick Cheney’s successor as vice-president, that aspect of her resume seems more than a little skinny. So, the GOP has made much of her previous experience as a mayor. And the media has been very respectful of that, not wishing to be seen to denigrate small-town America. In his recent interview with Palin, ABC’s Charles Gibson repeatedly referred to Wasilla as a city, which is perhaps technically what it is. But it has a fraction the population of most neighborhoods in New York. And Alaska itself, though a huge landmass with the Russian bear apparently breathing down its neck, has rather less people than four of New York City’s five boroughs.
Wasilla had, according to the last census, just over 5,000 residents, though an estimate in 2007 put that figure at just short of 10,000. Compare that with a few neighborhoods in New York that Irish Echo readers are very familiar with. Woodside, which might be the best known, had in the 2000 census 90,200 (including this writer at the time); Astoria 43,605; Sunnyside 29,808; and Maspeth 35,498. At the tip of Manhattan, that once-solidly Irish enclave Inwood had 9,238 people, roughly what Wasilla is said to have now. We don’t have current population estimates for these neighborhoods, but all saw their star rise considerably during this decade’s property boom.
Can anybody argue that a local politician from Astoria, Sunnyside and Woodside -- which has more than 160,000 souls in the most ethnically diverse patch of land on the planet -- would be any less qualified or better equipped to deal with America’s problems than a small-town mayor?
The GOP vice-presidential candidate took over as the governor of Alaska in December 2006. That’s no mean achievement in any life story, to be sure. But given that she’s the Republicans’ choice to be Dick Cheney’s successor as vice-president, that aspect of her resume seems more than a little skinny. So, the GOP has made much of her previous experience as a mayor. And the media has been very respectful of that, not wishing to be seen to denigrate small-town America. In his recent interview with Palin, ABC’s Charles Gibson repeatedly referred to Wasilla as a city, which is perhaps technically what it is. But it has a fraction the population of most neighborhoods in New York. And Alaska itself, though a huge landmass with the Russian bear apparently breathing down its neck, has rather less people than four of New York City’s five boroughs.
Wasilla had, according to the last census, just over 5,000 residents, though an estimate in 2007 put that figure at just short of 10,000. Compare that with a few neighborhoods in New York that Irish Echo readers are very familiar with. Woodside, which might be the best known, had in the 2000 census 90,200 (including this writer at the time); Astoria 43,605; Sunnyside 29,808; and Maspeth 35,498. At the tip of Manhattan, that once-solidly Irish enclave Inwood had 9,238 people, roughly what Wasilla is said to have now. We don’t have current population estimates for these neighborhoods, but all saw their star rise considerably during this decade’s property boom.
Can anybody argue that a local politician from Astoria, Sunnyside and Woodside -- which has more than 160,000 souls in the most ethnically diverse patch of land on the planet -- would be any less qualified or better equipped to deal with America’s problems than a small-town mayor?
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Gov. Swiftboat should apologize
The Sun, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, was sued in the early 1990s by one of Britain's most durable actors for daring to suggest that he was dull.
The article quoted someone saying that William Roache was as boring in real life as Ken Barlow, the mild-mannered character he'd been playing for decades, and still plays, on the TV soap “Coronation Street.” It seems ludicrous, but he won his libel case and was awarded £50,000 in damages. (But because Roache had turned down that same amount in a proposed out-of-court settlement, he had to pay costs. He later declared bankruptcy.)
People in this country have a lot more leeway about what they can and cannot say about a public figure and that’s often held up as an example of America’s freedom. Come election time, though, the use of character assassination is habitual and often quite shocking.
And if it seems to be getting worse, that’s because it is. The Orwellian endeavors of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, for example, could not have had the same impact in a less technologically sophisticated age.
See what happened during last week’s “lipstick” flap. Former acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift condemned the Democratic candidate’s “disgraceful comments comparing our vice-presidential nominee, Governor Palin, to a pig.”
She demanded that Barack Obama apologize to Sarah Palin. Actually, given that her ridiculous comments were heard in newscasts on scores of TV stations and reprinted in hundreds of newspapers nationwide, it’s the former acting governor who should apologize to the Illinois senator and his family.
Obama has been surrounded by strong women throughout his life and is married to a confident and accomplished woman with whom he is raising two daughters. He has acted with decorum and grace throughout a long grueling campaign. So to baldly state that he would refer to a woman, or indeed anybody, as a pig is nothing short of character assassination.
Come to think of it, why would one jump to that conclusion about any politician without first investigating the circumstances? Nobody criticized John McCain when he used the same phrase about Hillary Clinton’s health-care policy; nor did anyone bat an eyelid when some of Hillary’s own supporters chanted it after party bosses hammered out a compromise on the placing of Michigan and Florida convention delegates.
Swift began to backtrack the following day – something that, unsurprisingly, was not widely reported. "I can't know if it was aimed at Governor Palin," she said on MSNBC on day 2 of the controversy, but continued to assert that Obama was responsible for words that might be misconstrued. (Obama, who is preoccupied with other things, might have seen Palin’s RNC speech once, but Republicans seem to think that her zingers were roiling around in his head like a tune he couldn’t get rid of. So when he said “lipstick,” well…it was too much of coincidence, wasn’t it? At the weekend, Dr. Karl Rove, that well-known Freudian psychologist, said it was “unconscious.”)
Swift, a member of the McCain’s “Palin Truth Squad,” said in that MSNBC interview that she “used to be” in politics. At least when she was in electoral politics, she was accountable to the voters. During her short reign in Massachusetts (2001-2003) her approval ratings sank below 10 percent at one stage, making her the most unpopular person ever to hold the office.
In Swift’s new role in the Republican propaganda machine, there are no negative consequences for her personally nor is there any real accountability. As long as she’s helping to deflect people from the actual issues, then she’s doing a fine job.
The article quoted someone saying that William Roache was as boring in real life as Ken Barlow, the mild-mannered character he'd been playing for decades, and still plays, on the TV soap “Coronation Street.” It seems ludicrous, but he won his libel case and was awarded £50,000 in damages. (But because Roache had turned down that same amount in a proposed out-of-court settlement, he had to pay costs. He later declared bankruptcy.)
People in this country have a lot more leeway about what they can and cannot say about a public figure and that’s often held up as an example of America’s freedom. Come election time, though, the use of character assassination is habitual and often quite shocking.
And if it seems to be getting worse, that’s because it is. The Orwellian endeavors of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, for example, could not have had the same impact in a less technologically sophisticated age.
See what happened during last week’s “lipstick” flap. Former acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift condemned the Democratic candidate’s “disgraceful comments comparing our vice-presidential nominee, Governor Palin, to a pig.”
She demanded that Barack Obama apologize to Sarah Palin. Actually, given that her ridiculous comments were heard in newscasts on scores of TV stations and reprinted in hundreds of newspapers nationwide, it’s the former acting governor who should apologize to the Illinois senator and his family.
Obama has been surrounded by strong women throughout his life and is married to a confident and accomplished woman with whom he is raising two daughters. He has acted with decorum and grace throughout a long grueling campaign. So to baldly state that he would refer to a woman, or indeed anybody, as a pig is nothing short of character assassination.
Come to think of it, why would one jump to that conclusion about any politician without first investigating the circumstances? Nobody criticized John McCain when he used the same phrase about Hillary Clinton’s health-care policy; nor did anyone bat an eyelid when some of Hillary’s own supporters chanted it after party bosses hammered out a compromise on the placing of Michigan and Florida convention delegates.
Swift began to backtrack the following day – something that, unsurprisingly, was not widely reported. "I can't know if it was aimed at Governor Palin," she said on MSNBC on day 2 of the controversy, but continued to assert that Obama was responsible for words that might be misconstrued. (Obama, who is preoccupied with other things, might have seen Palin’s RNC speech once, but Republicans seem to think that her zingers were roiling around in his head like a tune he couldn’t get rid of. So when he said “lipstick,” well…it was too much of coincidence, wasn’t it? At the weekend, Dr. Karl Rove, that well-known Freudian psychologist, said it was “unconscious.”)
Swift, a member of the McCain’s “Palin Truth Squad,” said in that MSNBC interview that she “used to be” in politics. At least when she was in electoral politics, she was accountable to the voters. During her short reign in Massachusetts (2001-2003) her approval ratings sank below 10 percent at one stage, making her the most unpopular person ever to hold the office.
In Swift’s new role in the Republican propaganda machine, there are no negative consequences for her personally nor is there any real accountability. As long as she’s helping to deflect people from the actual issues, then she’s doing a fine job.
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Palin quoted writer who wanted FDR and Bobby Kennedy dead
Thomas Frank, the author of “What's the Matter with Kansas?” and currently a Wall Street Journal columnist, has spotted that Palin's speechwriters quoted a notorious right-wing journalist in her convention address. She said: "A writer observed: 'We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity, and dignity.'"
The writer in fact was Westbrook Pegler who once said he was sorry that an assassin had missed Franklin Roosevelt (in Miami in 1933) and killed instead the mayor of Chicago who was sitting beside him.
Click here for Frank's column in in the WSJ.
However, he doesn’t mention that Pegler said something even worse about Robert Kennedy before his assassination. Thurston Clarke reported in an article in Vanity Fair earlier this year that Westbrook Pegler "welcomed the possibility that, as he put it, 'some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his [Kennedy's] spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies..."
This is a reminder, perhaps, that the extolling of small-town virtues often goes hand in hand with right-wing populism and indeed right-wing extremism.
The writer in fact was Westbrook Pegler who once said he was sorry that an assassin had missed Franklin Roosevelt (in Miami in 1933) and killed instead the mayor of Chicago who was sitting beside him.
Click here for Frank's column in in the WSJ.
However, he doesn’t mention that Pegler said something even worse about Robert Kennedy before his assassination. Thurston Clarke reported in an article in Vanity Fair earlier this year that Westbrook Pegler "welcomed the possibility that, as he put it, 'some white patriot of the Southern tier will spatter his [Kennedy's] spoonful of brains in public premises before the snow flies..."
This is a reminder, perhaps, that the extolling of small-town virtues often goes hand in hand with right-wing populism and indeed right-wing extremism.
Scary Spice joins fray
I like to think there are lots of Republicans whose idea of the perfect ticket is Jerry Ford and Bob Dole (which it was in '76). There are certainly a few who’ve come out squarely for Barack Obama, like President Eisenhower’s granddaughter, a speaker at the Democratic Convention. Maybe a few more of that type will emerge, unhappy with the 2008 GOP ticket, which seems like one half of an edition of the reality show “Wife Swap.” Most of America, I’m sure, would tune into to see the other end of that episode: Cindy McCain hanging out with Todd Palin up in Wasilla. Certainly so far, the ratings for this drama have been very good. Polls have revealed a significant shift amongst white women in favor of the Republican ticket. That was the first of two interesting items of Palin-related news that emerged yesterday (well three if you count the revelation that the Alaska governor has claimed travel expenses while at home).
Nobody can seriously argue that McCain’s choice wasn’t reckless and irresponsible, not least because this so-called “maverick” (I haven’t seen anybody point out yet that mavericks generally aren’t leaders) has sold his soul to the most reactionary wing of his party. If he’s elected, he'll owe them.
Now the duo’s handlers are using the Richard Nixon playbook by having as little unscripted interaction with the media as is possible. Nixon –- who was one of most intelligent men to occupy the White House and also, at least in the view of many, a paranoiac thug -- refused to have regular press conferences, which had been the practice over the previous 40 years.
Openness, of course, and talk about the freedom of the press, is essentially “elitist.” Have you noticed that elitists in this version of reality don’t live in gated communities; they don’t own seven houses, or sail in yachts, or fly private airplanes? Most of them don’t even come from millionaire families. No. Rather they’re the type that brood about people’s rights, and read books, some of which have bad words, and maybe shouldn’t be in libraries, whatever about bookstores. They’re elitist because they want to impose their egalitarian notions upon all of us. A couple of decades ago, one of those weirdly egalitarian and elitist ideas was the notion of the “career woman” who could “have it all.”
If there is a “genius” to McCain’s pick, it's its tapping into the resentments of the moment, particularly of those who are neither rich nor poor. That’s always a good place to begin any counterrevolution, and Gov. Palin may well be the perfect counterrevolutionary to oppose Obama’s revolution of hope.
The other important piece of news yesterday was the endorsement of Senator Obama by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who backed George W. Bush’s reelection bid in 2004. Koch called Palin “scary.” Koch’s position, it's believed, might boost the Democratic candidate’s hopes in two swing states where Jewish voters can make a difference – Pennsylvania and Florida. But does Palin scare only Jews? What about the mainline Protestant and Catholics who would regard the thought of creationism being taught in our schools with horror?
Nobody can seriously argue that McCain’s choice wasn’t reckless and irresponsible, not least because this so-called “maverick” (I haven’t seen anybody point out yet that mavericks generally aren’t leaders) has sold his soul to the most reactionary wing of his party. If he’s elected, he'll owe them.
Now the duo’s handlers are using the Richard Nixon playbook by having as little unscripted interaction with the media as is possible. Nixon –- who was one of most intelligent men to occupy the White House and also, at least in the view of many, a paranoiac thug -- refused to have regular press conferences, which had been the practice over the previous 40 years.
Openness, of course, and talk about the freedom of the press, is essentially “elitist.” Have you noticed that elitists in this version of reality don’t live in gated communities; they don’t own seven houses, or sail in yachts, or fly private airplanes? Most of them don’t even come from millionaire families. No. Rather they’re the type that brood about people’s rights, and read books, some of which have bad words, and maybe shouldn’t be in libraries, whatever about bookstores. They’re elitist because they want to impose their egalitarian notions upon all of us. A couple of decades ago, one of those weirdly egalitarian and elitist ideas was the notion of the “career woman” who could “have it all.”
If there is a “genius” to McCain’s pick, it's its tapping into the resentments of the moment, particularly of those who are neither rich nor poor. That’s always a good place to begin any counterrevolution, and Gov. Palin may well be the perfect counterrevolutionary to oppose Obama’s revolution of hope.
The other important piece of news yesterday was the endorsement of Senator Obama by former New York City Mayor Ed Koch, who backed George W. Bush’s reelection bid in 2004. Koch called Palin “scary.” Koch’s position, it's believed, might boost the Democratic candidate’s hopes in two swing states where Jewish voters can make a difference – Pennsylvania and Florida. But does Palin scare only Jews? What about the mainline Protestant and Catholics who would regard the thought of creationism being taught in our schools with horror?
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