Veep roots

Historian Mary Lee Dunn has a very interesting opinion piece in this week's Echo -- it's available on the web site homepage and on the page 8 of the print and digital editions. Dunn is the author of "Ballykilcline Rising: From Famine Ireland to Immigrant America," published over the summer by the University of Massachusetts Press. It's been referred to as a companion book to Robert Scally's "The End of Hidden Ireland." about the same part of the world, around Strokestown, Co. Roscommon. The area is well served by recent Famine literature. Last year, Peter Duffy's "The Killing of Major Denis Mahon" was published to fine reviews.

Dunn's research and article makes the case for placing Sarah Palin's Irish ancestors, via her Sheeran grandmother, in Kilglass, which is adjacent to Ballykilcline. This is rather troubling for me, as my paternal grandmother was from that corner of County Roscommon, and my grandfather was born just a few miles away. So if Dunn is correct, then it's likely I'm much more closely related to her than the average Alaskan voter.

Joe Biden, who debated Palin in St. Louis last night, has long identified as Irish American. It puts him in a rather different category to both Palin and Obama, whose Irish roots while verifiable, are still remote and mostly a curiosity.

Biden, being Catholic for one thing, is much more a product of white ethnic America. And like many in that category, he consciously emphasizes one aspect of a mixed heritage (English is the other one that's usually cited in his case).

This is a phenomenon that was studied some years back by Harvard sociologist Mary Waters who interviewed 3rd-, 4th- and 5th-generation American Catholics for her book "Ethnic Options." She was interested in how and why they played up certain aspects of their ethnic background and minimized others.

The Democratic Party vice-presidential nominee always refers to himself as Irish Catholic -- just Al Smith was always seen as Irish, though he was very much a mix of ethnicities. Biden alluded to his Irishness by introducing his mother, Catherine Eugenia Finnegan Biden, at his convention speech. He didn't mention her name in last night's debate when referring to her, but I think you were supposed to know she was Irish when he quoted her saying: "God love him, but he's wrong."