Predictions for a wacky New Year

It's that time of year again. Time to look back on the year that was and, more importantly, look ahead to the New Year.

In January of 2011, for example, I suspect that a slew of big-time Hollywood actors and agents are going to relocate from the sun and surf of California to the gritty streets of Boston.

After all, from Good Will Hunting and The Town to Gone, Baby Gone, Mystic River and The Fighter, there is a lot of gold to be found in the triple-decker house and Irish bars of every little Massachusetts burg from Southie to Lowell to Dorchester.

Of course, when all those Hollywood types get there, they may discover there’s not quite that many rugged Irish men and feisty Irish women as there used to be.

And that accent! Where’s that accent? They may feel the need to train the locals to talk more like the Boston Irish do in the movies, because they can’t seem to find that odd inflection anywhere on the actual streets of Boston.

Some of the new movie projects we can expect to come out of the Boston Irish Hollywood machine? A remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, with the Jimmy Stewart character now recast as a bank robber with a mean mother and heroin problem.

In February 2011, we can expect another shocking announcement from Pope Benedict. His holiness raised many eyebrows not long ago when he said that it might be okay for Catholics to use condoms in certain circumstances.

In 2011, look for the Pope to say that birth control, the death penalty, pre-marital sex and harmless white lies are also acceptable under certain circumstances.

The shocking thing about this announcement, of course, is that it puts the Pope in agreement with just about every Roman Catholic on the planet.

Right around St. Patrick’s Day we can expect a flood of new tape recordings from jolly old Richard Nixon. “Tricky Dick” is the gift that just keeps on giving.

This month we heard a bunch of old recordings in which, after bashing the blacks and the Jews and the Italians, Nixon had this to say: "The Irish have certain -- for example, the Irish can't drink. What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean.

“Virtually every Irish I've known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish."

In the new 2011 tapes, Nixon goes on at some length about the distinctions between the “real” Irish and the “fake” Irish. The real Irish, according to Nixon, have lots of freckles and wear Aran sweaters, even in July.

The fake Irish? Well, to Nixon, that’s pretty much anybody named Kennedy. Or with big teeth.

Nixon, of course, was completely drunk at the time he said this.

Politics will also dominate the summer of 2011 when supporters of the DREAM Act introduce a new version of this bill, which presents a path to citizenship for immigrants who came to the U.S. at a young age and are now planning to attend college or enter the military.

Supporters make concessions, saying that these undocumented immigrants will now be required to serve three to five tours of duty in both Iraq and Afghanistan, after which they will be eligible for college financial aid. (Even though they may not survive the combat tours and will probably be in their 40s by the time they return.)
“We don’t want our illegal immigrants in college!” an opponent of the DREAM Act II will snarl.

“They came here knowing they’d be mowing lawns and washing dishes. If we wanted more college students in the U.S. we’d somehow make it more affordable for working class white kids to go to college!”

The DREAM Act II, will fall one vote short in the Senate, when a Democrat switches his vote at the last minute, claiming, “We simply didn’t want to make the Republicans mad.”

Finally, for all of the doom and gloom, the ties between Ireland and America will remain strong in 2011.

Given the terrible state of the economy in both nations, an Internet campaign will link the Irish on both sides of the Atlantic whose homes are currently in foreclosure. This way, Pat from Long Island can spend a few weeks in the home belonging to Danny from Sligo and vice versa. By the time the bank officials come knocking, they’ll both have moved on.

Happy New Year!

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Christmas Bah, Humbug to Fox News and Bill O’Reilly

Both sides are keeping the true Christ out of Christmas

There is an Irish pub in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, called McNellie’s. The owner, Elliot Nelson, notes that his bar’s design was inspired by a semester he spent in Dublin, bending his elbow at watering holes such as Porterhouse and the Stag’s Head.

In case Nelson’s Hibernian chops still seem insufficient, he was a student at Notre Dame University while he was spending a semester in Ireland.

McNellie’s recently played a small role in a large, roiling war. In this sense, McNellie’s is a little bit like all of us who have the fortune to have been born in America, yet the misfortune to share this great nation with opportunists, cranks and loudmouths of all political stripes.

Last week, a kerfuffle broke out in Tulsa because a parade that some people had come to call a Christmas parade was instead officially renamed a “holiday” parade. This brought howls from the “Keep Christ in Christmas” crowd -- a crowd, incidentally, who should thank God (literally) every morning for all of those newfangled atheist groups out there who are just so willing to let you know that they not only don’t believe in God, but kind of loath anybody who does.

But back to McNellie’s. When the Christmas or holiday or whatever parade in Tulsa lost its sponsor, McNellie’s stepped up and sponsored the parade.

Perhaps they should have flexed some of their financial muscle and given the parade a name that would unite believers and non-believers alike. How about the Whiskey Wonderland parade?

Because after listening to all of these holy rollers and unholy atheists, I really need a good stiff hot toddy.
It may be looking a lot like Christmas these days. But amidst all of the holly and garland, there is a ceaseless culture war.

Try driving through the Lincoln Tunnel these days. Outside of the grimy tube which connects New York and New Jersey are competing billboards, one pro-religion, one anti-religion.

Over in Fort Worth, meanwhile, atheists and believers are doing battle by way of advertisements of buses.
All of this might make you wistful for loud ads for that Hess truck for kids, or even that annoying “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” song.

Of course, the usual Irish suspects are right in the thick of all this.

There’s Bill O’Reilly over on Fox News, going on and on yet again about the War on Christmas.

Over there at the Staten Island Ferry terminal is Bill Donahue of the Catholic League for Civil Rights. Some scholar who works at the ferry terminal apparently placed a Baby Jesus in the facility’s multicultural holiday display. Another genius then decided to remove the offending baby Jesus, thus literally taking Christ out of Christmas!

This made Donahue nearly as angry as ecstatic. After all, he could not have scripted a more perfectly horrible symbol of his own righteous cause.

Though Donahue better be careful. While he was slamming the decision to remove Baby Jesus, Donahue consistently stated this was offensive to “Catholics.”

Last time I checked, Protestants -- for whatever they are worth -- also kind of worship Jesus. Which makes Donahue guilty of the kind of exclusion he so often accuses others of.

Ultimately, this is about as much fun as watching Scrooge do battle with the Grinch. It’s really hard to root for anyone.

The atheists can’t possibly allow someone to be comforted by an otherworldly power, even if that otherworldly power has endured some 2,000 years.

As for the Keep Christ in Christmasers, they seem to want to pretend it’s 1832 in America.

They are prepared to accept that non-Christians exist. They just don’t want to, you know, acknowledge them.

By the way, let’s see how they feel when some do-gooder, in the name of Christian charity, suggests that all retail stores open and close at reasonable hours so that folks can spend Christmas with their families.

Stop the spinning holy wheels of capitalism? Humbug!

And so…Merry…I mean Happy…oh…never mind. Let’s just go to McNellie’s.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Christmas bah humbug to Fox News and Bill O’Reilly

Both sides are keeping the true Christ out of Christmas

There is an Irish pub in downtown Tulsa, Oklahoma, called McNellie’s. The owner, Elliot Nelson, notes that his bar’s design was inspired by a semester he spent in Dublin, bending his elbow at watering holes such as Porterhouse and the Stag’s Head.

In case Nelson’s Hibernian chops still seem insufficient, he was a student at Notre Dame University while he was spending a semester in Ireland.

McNellie’s recently played a small role in a large, roiling war. In this sense, McNellie’s is a little bit like all of us who have the fortune to have been born in America, yet the misfortune to share this great nation with opportunists, cranks and loudmouths of all political stripes.

Last week, a kerfuffle broke out in Tulsa because a parade that some people had come to call a Christmas parade was instead officially renamed a “holiday” parade. This brought howls from the “Keep Christ in Christmas” crowd -- a crowd, incidentally, who should thank God (literally) every morning for all of those newfangled atheist groups out there who are just so willing to let you know that they not only don’t believe in God, but kind of loath anybody who does.

But back to McNellie’s. When the Christmas or holiday or whatever parade in Tulsa lost its sponsor, McNellie’s stepped up and sponsored the parade.

Perhaps they should have flexed some of their financial muscle and given the parade a name that would unite believers and non-believers alike. How about the Whiskey Wonderland parade?

Because after listening to all of these holy rollers and unholy atheists, I really need a good stiff hot toddy.
It may be looking a lot like Christmas these days. But amidst all of the holly and garland, there is a ceaseless culture war.

Try driving through the Lincoln Tunnel these days. Outside of the grimy tube which connects New York and New Jersey are competing billboards, one pro-religion, one anti-religion.

Over in Fort Worth, meanwhile, atheists and believers are doing battle by way of advertisements of buses.
All of this might make you wistful for loud ads for that Hess truck for kids, or even that annoying “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” song.

Of course, the usual Irish suspects are right in the thick of all this.

There’s Bill O’Reilly over on Fox News, going on and on yet again about the War on Christmas.

Over there at the Staten Island Ferry terminal is Bill Donahue of the Catholic League for Civil Rights. Some scholar who works at the ferry terminal apparently placed a Baby Jesus in the facility’s multicultural holiday display. Another genius then decided to remove the offending baby Jesus, thus literally taking Christ out of Christmas!

This made Donahue nearly as angry as ecstatic. After all, he could not have scripted a more perfectly horrible symbol of his own righteous cause.

Though Donahue better be careful. While he was slamming the decision to remove Baby Jesus, Donahue consistently stated this was offensive to “Catholics.”

Last time I checked, Protestants -- for whatever they are worth -- also kind of worship Jesus. Which makes Donahue guilty of the kind of exclusion he so often accuses others of.

Ultimately, this is about as much fun as watching Scrooge do battle with the Grinch. It’s really hard to root for anyone.

The atheists can’t possibly allow someone to be comforted by an otherworldly power, even if that otherworldly power has endured some 2,000 years.

As for the Keep Christ in Christmasers, they seem to want to pretend it’s 1832 in America.

They are prepared to accept that non-Christians exist. They just don’t want to, you know, acknowledge them.

By the way, let’s see how they feel when some do-gooder, in the name of Christian charity, suggests that all retail stores open and close at reasonable hours so that folks can spend Christmas with their families.

Stop the spinning holy wheels of capitalism? Humbug!

And so…Merry…I mean Happy…oh…never mind. Let’s just go to McNellie’s.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Now make a deal for the heroes of 9/11

NYPD officer James Zadroga

Last month, New York Congressman Joe Crowley recalled a light moment from a very dark time. "At the Concert for New York, my cousin, Mike Moran, who is a firefighter at 3 Engine down on 13th Street, told Osama Bin Laden that he can kiss his royal Irish a**," Crowley was quoted as saying.

"I'm not going to say that any senator who doesn't vote for this bill can kiss anything, but I will be thinking it."

Crowley was joined in Washington by New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg as well as New York Senators Charles Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand.

They were drumming up support for the so-called Zadroga Bill, which would deliver some $7 billion in aid to 9/11 first responders and their families.

These include quite a few Irish American families, whose prime years have turned into a nightmare of doctor’s visits and medication and bills, bills, bills, as mysterious illnesses have sapped first responders of time, strength and money.

A handful of Republican senators -- including Scott Brown, who sits in Irish American liberal lion Ted Kennedy’s old Senate seat -- remain undecided on the Zadroga bill.

I consider myself neither Republican nor Democrat. I don’t see any reason to simply throw money at problems.

Yes, Washington should be careful with taxpayer money. This is basically what Republicans have been saying. Which is all well and good.

But when it comes to issues such as the Zadroga bill, it’s hard not to sound like an old-fashioned class warrior.

Billions for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan! Billions to bail out the banks and car makers! Billions for the very people who got us into this economic mess in the first place!

And nothing? Nothing at all for guys who were just trying to clean up the mess in the wake of New York City’s darkest day?

No wonder Gillibrand -- rarely confused with a fiery populist -- slammed Republicans with unusually harsh language this week, saying the GOP was pushing a “pack of lies” about the possible costs of the Zadroga bill.

The news was filled, earlier this week, with much hype regarding a deal struck by President Obama and Republicans which maintained the so-called Bush-era tax cuts for the working class as well as millionaires.

Republicans were gleeful. And you know what? You want to prioritize tax cuts for millionaires? Fine. Whatever.

But if Democrats can strike a deal with Republicans on that issue, then it’s time for a handful of Republicans to reach across the aisle and make a deal which would allow the Zadroga bill to become a reality.

Congressman Peter King, for one, has stuck his own neck out. The GOP lawmaker has more or less berated his own party for refusing to support the Zadroga bill, named after former police officer James Zadroga, whose death was attributed to the time he spent at Ground Zero.

Let’s even pretend for a moment that the Republicans’ worst nightmares about the costs of the Zadroga bill were true. Let’s pretend it might even be an expensive “job killer,” as one Republican-leaning analysis put it.

Isn’t that a monumentally insensitive way to put things? Should we be more concerned about jobs that may or may not die, or people who are actually dying?

Yes, Washington is notorious for wasteful spending. Kudos to the Republicans for trying to tighten the purse strings.

As Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander lamented, “We don’t know what it costs. It isn’t the way we do things around here. It’s not the way I do things.”

Well, no. It doesn’t seem to be how you do things when it comes to this particular bill.

There are plenty of times when the GOP is more than willing to throw money around like the proverbial drunken sailor. More often than not, they want to throw money at people who already have a lot of it, at people who have not performed dangerous, heroic acts, and who are in no way shape or form in peril of dying as a result of those acts.

December 7, this week, was the 69th anniversary of the attack of Pearl Harbor, an event which shook a generation of Americans.

It would be terribly sad if, in the future, we make each and every 9/11 anniversary even more painful because we did nothing about those who are still dying and desperately need some help.

If we worried so much about a “job killer,” that we simply let people keep on dying.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Irish American Muslim converts emerge

Hamza Yusuf Hanson

Hamza Yusuf Hanson believes the Irish Catholic experience in America can tell us something important about how we will continue to deal with Muslim immigrants in the U.S.

Hanson should know. His great-great grandfather, Michael O’Hanson, left Ireland around the time of the Famine.

Along with his wife Bridget, O’Hanson settled in Philadelphia, where it wasn’t easy being Irish Catholic. Not for nothing did Hamza’s distant relative Anglicize his name by dropping the “O.”

These days, despite his Hibernian roots, Hamza Yusuf Hanson identifies himself as an “American Muslim” scholar who recently founded Zaytuna College in Berkley, California. That school is aiming to become the “first accredited Muslim college in the United States.”

As strange as that might sound, it’s probably no stranger than the notion of a “Catholic college” sounded some time ago.

So if we can have the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame, who’s to say deep into the 21st century, we won’t have the Fighting Arabs of Zaytuna, or elsewhere?

Michael and Bridget O’Hanson may or may not be rolling over in their Catholic graves, given the beliefs of their great, great grandson. But Hamza Yusuf Hanson is not the only American of Irish descent who has entered the world of Allah.

The rapper Everlast, formerly of the Irish American hip hop group House of Pain (remember the St. Patrick’s Day scenes in the ‘90s video “Jump Around”?) recently converted to Sunni Islam. Go to Facebook and you can find the aptly named group LIAM, which stands for the League of Irish American Muslims.

Most prominently, a few weeks back, an independent film called The Taqwacores was released.

Based on a book of the same name by Michael Muhammad Knight, the film is set in Buffalo and follows an average American white kid’s journey from angst to Islam. Along the way, he takes up what is probably his most passionate devotion -- punk rock.

By the way, the average punk kid in The Taqwacores was actually born and raised Irish Catholic.

The New York Times once dubbed Knight’s book a “Catcher in the Rye for young Muslims.”

The paper added, “Mr. Muhammad Knight was born an Irish Catholic in upstate New York and converted to Islam as a teenager. He studied at a mosque in Pakistan but became disillusioned with Islam after learning about the sectarian battles after the death of Muhammad.”

In a more recent book, Blue-Eyed Devil: A Road Odyssey Through Islamic America, Knight writes a length about the conflicts of being raised Irish Catholic and converting to Islam.

There’s a scene with his old Irish grandfather, who used to walk young Michael to church “on weekday mornings to sit down and stand up and sit down again and stand up again and kneel on the padded kneeler before a tall bloody Christ.”

There also a tense scene with “an archetypical old Irish fireman,” and reflections on another Irish American who made his own journey to Islam, John Walker Lindh, the so-called “American Taliban” who vowed to kill Americans in the name of Islam.

To some, these fine Irish Catholics converting to Islam are surely proof that we are too lenient or too secular or not nearly rigid enough in our Catholicism.

I would suggest that it’s mainly a product of living in America, where cultural collisions are at least as much of a rule as they are an exception.

Now, that does not mean this will be easy. Hamza Yusuf Hanson wrote in a recent Christian Science Monitor article, “The mid-19th century struggle of Irish-Catholics to be fully accepted as Americans should give today’s Muslims hope that their efforts to weather the storms of controversy and mistrust will bear fruit.”

Maybe. On the other hand, though it was not hard to find 19th century Protestants and Catholics literally clubbing each other in the name of religion, things are different today.

Elements of Islam have declared war on America, while that was not the case with Catholics back in the 1800s.

In the end, however, terrorism is not how most Americans -- Catholic or Muslim or whatever -- are going to experience good old-fashioned American culture clash.

Mostly, there will be intermarriage and earnest conversions, and some of those marriages will be successful and some won’t. Some of those conversions will be permanent and some will not.

One thing we can be sure of is that they will continue to happen.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Painful portrait of the changing face of New York City

The unused convent at St. Margaret Mary that a Muslim group wished to buy earlier this year.

As the battle over the “Ground Zero mosque” reached a boiling point over the summer, a similar debate raged on a much more quiet patch of New York City real estate.

Though it didn’t get nearly as much attention, the way this story unfolded probably tells us more about the future of New York City than the more sensationalistic saga in downtown Manhattan.

This painful story began in the summer, but it returned to the headlines this week when the New York Archdiocese announced that still more Catholic schools and churches will be closing or consolidated.
One of the schools slated for closure was St. Margaret Mary elementary school on Staten Island.

St. Margaret Mary parish is nestled in the seaside neighborhood of Midland Beach. The streets are lined with trees, bungalows and single-family homes, located not far from a sandy stretch of beach and boardwalk which once attracted the city’s elite.

These days, St. Margaret Mary parish is a solid middle class neighborhood, filled with the cops, firefighters, teachers and other city workers you can find in many outer borough white ethnic neighborhoods.

Not surprisingly, the corner on which the church is located is named in honor of an Irish American former resident and hero of 9/11, FDNY captain Martin J. Egan.

So, it’s not exactly a surprise that many parish residents objected when the Muslim American Society struck a deal with St. Margaret Mary parish pastor Father Keith Fennesy to purchase an unused convent for almost $1 million. The proceeds from the sale would reportedly have gone to the parish itself.

June and July were filled with debates and protests focused on whether or not the Muslim American Society should be setting up a mosque and school in the neighborhood.

New York Archdiocese spokesman Joe Zwilling said local Catholics should not have objected to the deal.
“I’ve not heard anything that says this is a terrorist organization,” Zwilling was quoted as saying in the Staten Island Advance newspaper.

“So I would hate to even use a word like that when that word only serves to inflame people’s emotions.”
Still, this wasn’t merely bigotry or lingering 9/11 anger. The Muslim American Society did have questionable links to groups which support violence.

Locals also grumbled that the deal was struck without community input. In the end, the deal was nullified.
Fast forward to this week, when it was announced that St. Margaret Mary elementary school was targeted for closure. Published reports indicate that the K-8 school has only 74 students.

How Catholic parishes can survive in the 21st century is too complex to get into here. One thing that is clear is that St. Margaret Mary certainly could have used that million bucks.

What’s also clear is that St. Margaret Mary parish -- with new immigrants coming in, and with school enrollment dropping among the second and third generation Irish and Italians -- is changing.

Parish residents who were angry about Muslims setting up shop in their neighborhood may have -- if you can excuse the metaphor -- won the battle.

But there is a longer-term issue at work here. New York City is changing rapidly, and the only consolation is that New York has been in a constant state of flux pretty much since the 1600s. That’s true even in quiet, outer borough enclaves such as Midland Beach. No one welcomed the Irish -- or the Italians or the Jews
or any other group -- with open arms. This did not keep them from coming.

The same is surely going to be true for Muslim immigrants from the Middle East.

If you want proof of that, take the 10 minute drive from Midland Beach, along Father Capodanno Boulevard, over the Verrazano Bridge into Bay Ridge, Brooklyn.

The onetime Irish and Norwegian stronghold now has a large Muslim presence. You don’t have to like the new Bay Ridge, though it must be added the neighborhood didn’t fall apart when Muslims moved in.

Irish Catholics weren’t exactly embraced in every corner of the city. The city, of course, survived that momentous change, too.

It is a blessing and a curse that New York City changes so relentlessly. This is what gives the city its energy and vitality.

It is also what makes this such an unsettling, downright scary, place to live sometimes.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Christmas comes early on west side

Christmas came a little early this year for Tom Dwyer.

In fact, to numerous Irish business owners on the West Side of Manhattan, New Jersey Governor Chris Christie suddenly looks a lot like Santa Claus, and not just because the Garden State leader could stand to lose a few pounds.

Tom Dwyer is the owner of the Blarney Rock pub on West 33rd Street.  Dwyer, whose parents were Irish immigrants, had spent the last several years facing his own demise. 

As with dozens of other businesses on the West Side of Manhattan, the Blarney Rock was in the bull’s eye of a massive transportation project which was designed to ease the flow of commuter traffic into New York City from New Jersey.

By and large, everyone from unions to politicians to suburbanites are in favor of such massive projects.  They create jobs, improve commuting time and give elected officials an opportunity to claim they have done something.

There’s just one problem. Businesses which have been around for decades have to be torn down to make way for this kind of progress.

The Blarney Rock, as well as another Irish bar on the block, Hickey’s, were just such businesses.
“I didn’t think we had a chance,” said Dwyer.

Under a messy process called eminent domain, local governments can essentially seize private property in the name of municipal improvements, such as tunnels designed to link two states.

The property owners are generally reimbursed, at market rate, for their losses.  The problem is, often, this does not change the fact that the property owners did not want to give up their homes or businesses.

Dwyer was one such business owner.  So when officials announced the New York and New Jersey tunnel, Dwyer fought back.

“I gave it my best shot.  I figured, if I was going to go down, that’s how I wanted to go down,” said Dwyer, whose Sligo-born father opened up the Blarney Rock in 1969.

Dwyer and many other Irish-born, Irish American and other immigrant business owners attended community board meetings and made their case that the New York/New Jersey tunnel should not be built.  Some, however, eventually threw in the towel. 

They chose not to renew leases, figuring there was no point.  The process of razing certain structures eventually began, all in the name of getting this massive construction project started.

Did Dwyer ever think he had a chance of winning this battle?

“No,” Dwyer admitted.  “I was resigned to it.”

And that’s when Christie -- Governor Santa Claus, at least to certain West Side business owners -- stepped in.

In late October, Christie announced that he was scrapping New Jersey’s participation in the tunnel project.  The fiscally conservative Christie -- whose confrontational image has already earned him whispers as a GOP presidential candidate for 2012 -- cited potential cost overruns.

But this initial joy was short-lived.

Though Christie earned plaudits from some corners, others were critical of the governor for being short-sighted.

Such critics included members of the Obama administration, who met with Christie in an attempt to get him to change his mind. 

Christie even stated that he would be willing to reconsider the project, which put West Side businesses owners back into the line of fire.

In the end, however, it appears that the Blarney Rock and Hickey’s and numerous other Irish businesses in the Madison Square Garden area are here to stay.

“We’re alive and well and we’re gonna live forever,” said Dwyer.

This is only fitting.  These Irish pubs survived 40 years of change in New York, from shifting neighborhoods to violent crime to skyrocketing real estate costs.  Would it have been fair to survive all that only to be felled by eminent domain?

In the end, Manhattan needs joints like the Blarney Rock, if only because the latest gaudy, trendsetting watering holes tend to attract vapid patrons willing to spend $12 on a pint -- if the place offers pints at all.

When asked for the secret to the Blarney Rock’s success, Dwyer says, “We always leave the customer with a smile on his face.”

Of course, given Christie’s announcement, it is Dwyer and many other Irish business owners on the West Side who are smiling these days.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

A spy left out in the cold: Irish immigrant who worked for Colin Powell accused of being a Russian spy

When you think of Russian spies you don’t necessarily think of twentysomething girls in bikinis -- or for that matter Irish immigrants.

But these days, when it seems as if the Cold War is back with a vengeance, that’s what you get when you hear about Russian spy scandals.

Perhaps this craze for the Cold War is just nostalgia, a longing for the days when the Soviets and Americans would engage in all sorts of skullduggery, but in the end, no one would get hurt.  These days, in the back of our minds, we seem to know that any day can turn out to be as tragic as that one back in September of 2001.

First came the saga of Anna Chapman, whose naked body seemed to be shown every day last summer somewhere inside the New York Post.  Chapman was one of 10 Russians living in New York and New Jersey who were recently deported, having been accused of spying on the U.S.

This past week, yet another bikini-clad Russian, Kristina Svechinskaya, was in the newspapers.  She was part of a cyber-hacking ring which earned her the name “the next Anna Chapman” in certain circles.

Well, there are no bikini-clad lasses in the saga of an Irish immigrant who has been accused of spying for Russia.  Perhaps that’s why many people haven’t yet heard of the case.

Nevertheless, the saga of John C. Dullahan is strange trip back in time to the hottest days of the Cold War, when “Russian handlers” and polygraph tests gave people the cold sweats, the way the phrase “ties to Al Qaeda” does today.

Dullahan was born in Ireland and joined the U.S. Army in the late 1960s.  He served in Vietnam and became a U.S. citizen.  He rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel before retiring.

Later, however, he became an officer in the Defense Intelligence Agency.  Dullahan eventually became a trusted aide to Colin Powell, the revered former general and head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Dullahan’s beat was Eastern Europe, where his job was to advise military leaders about the state of affairs in that former bloc of Soviet-run nations.

Trouble began to arise for Dullahan last year, when, following an investigation, Dullahan failed a polygraph exam -- the infamous “lie detector test” seen in thousands of smoke-filled rooms in tense scenes from thriller flicks.

“The polygraph examiner accused Dullahan of meeting ‘Soviet handlers’ when he had visited -- 20 years earlier -- East Germany in the early 1980s, during his UN assignment in Syria, and on his numerous official trips to Europe while on the Joint Staff, including trips with General Powell,” said Dullahan’s complaint, which was first filed in January of 2009.

The Washington Post “Spy Talk” blog, written in August by Jeff Stein, added, “The examiners accused Dullahan, whose job as Powell’s political-military adviser for Eastern Europe required him to be in contact with counterparts from former communist countries, of having been under the control of Soviet intelligence.”
Dullahan denied all the charges and has since filed a lawsuit.

“The fundamental questions, among others presented in this lawsuit…,” Dullahan’s attorney was quoted in the Post as saying, “are whether the Executive Branch can lawfully act to strip an American citizen of his security clearance or employment without affording that individual any semblance of due process, and to what extent those separate actions can be reviewed by the Judicial Branch.”

The Post added, “Dullahan, like others before him, faces an uphill fight.”

The Supreme Court noted has ruled that lie detector tests are too unreliable to be used in court.  However, the court has also said that “no one has a ‘right’ to a security clearance.”

For now, perhaps the most fascinating aspect of all of this is that, two decades after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, we are still waging the Cold War.

Perhaps if Dullahan wore a bikini his case would get the kind of coverage it deserves.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

What’s next for Commissioner of the New York City Police Department, Ray Kelly?

Almost 13 million viewers tuned in to see Tom Selleck’s return to a network TV drama last Friday. The CBS show Blue Bloods features Selleck as the Irish American police commissioner of New York City.

Selleck, thus far, has received solid reviews for his commanding performance, though some folks noted that he has been seen wearing the blues of the NYPD uniform. This even though actual New York police commissioners -- such as the current Irish American one, Ray Kelly -- prefer snazzy suit jackets and ties.

This, of course, is only a small detail. Especially when there is a much bigger question to be asked when it comes to police commissioners who may or may not be seen on TV a lot in the near future.

More and more people are starting to wonder not about what Ray Kelly happens to be wearing, but where he will be wearing it.

The big question is this -- is Kelly going to try and become the first New York City mayor with an Irish name since Bill O’Dwyer back in the 1950s?

Just this week, The New York Observer, which fancies itself the ultimate insider chronicler of New York, ran a long profile of one of Kelly’s most trusted advisors, NYPD Deputy Commissioner for Public Affairs Paul Browne.

Browne, as the article notes, “grew up in a small apartment in the Bedford Park section of the Bronx, one of four children of Irish immigrants.”

Browne, the article also notes, “is a former newspaper reporter who has become…a loyal friend and an adviser to Police Commissioner Ray Kelly. If you compare their resumes side by side, you will find that for most of the past two decades, wherever Mr. Kelly has gone, Mr. Browne has sat in the seat right behind him, if not next to him.”

In short, it seems as if Kelly does decide to make a run for City Hall in 2013, he will have a fellow Irishman by his side.

However, even though one longtime friend of Kelly notes that the top cop is an “attractive candidate,” there are some obstacles.

“I don’t think New York City will ever be able to say thank you enough to Ray Kelly for the job he’s done,” says Tom Kelly (no relation), who, aside from being a friend of the commish’s, also happens to be a writer and co-producer on Blue Bloods.

Kelly adds that it is “literally unprecedented” for an Irish American top cop to have such high approval ratings not just across the five boroughs, but also in African American neighborhoods where tension between residents and law enforcement can run high.

However, Kelly also notes that the commish would have to raise a lot of money at a time when many millionaires and even billionaires (Mike Bloomberg anyone?) can fund their own campaigns. In addition, the minefield of mayoral politics may simply not interest Kelly.

There is also the matter of whether or not the commissioner would run as a Republican or Democrat. The latter field, as always, is very crowded.

This summer, New York Daily News political analyst Joshua Greenman sized the race up this way: “Look at the lineup of likely (mayoral) contenders: Bill de Blasio, the city's public advocate; John Liu, the controller; Christine Quinn, the City Council speaker; Scott Stringer, the Manhattan borough president; Anthony Weiner, a U.S. representative. Some have talent…but they've got one glaring thing in common. All served in the City Council.”

Some feel this makes these possible candidates tired and compromised in the public eye. Kelly, on the other hand, “is an obvious heir to the three-term mayor and beloved as the driver of the most far-reaching transformation of city life in the last decade -- the continued, miraculous decline in crime, an especially impressive accomplishment given declining personnel and the ongoing terror threat. Plus, the guy seems to have innate charm.”

There is always the private sector where Kelly could make plenty of money. Some have said he might go to Washington to run the FBI.

There is, of course, one other option. Kelly, who is 70 years old, could sit back and let someone else take over City Hall, and wait to be offered the job of top cop yet again.

“They would be a half-wit not to offer him the job,” Tom Kelly concluded.

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Boardwalk Empire: Fighting the ‘empire’ of demon drink

That great philosopher Homer -- Simpson, that is -- once had this to say about Prohibition: “They tried that in the movies and it didn’t work.”

Well, now they are trying it on cable TV. On Sunday, Boardwalk Empire, the new mini-series from America’s greatest director Martin Scorsese, will make its debut on HBO.

Dubbed the “best TV show” of the season by many critics, Boardwalk Empire is about the creation of gambling Mecca Atlantic City -- which happened to come at roughly the same time as alcohol was banned in America.

In fact, a central character in Boardwalk Empire is an Irish immigrant who -- saints preserve us! -- supports prohibition.

Scottish actress Kelly McDonald plays Margaret, a member of a temperance organization who is also in an unhappy marriage. Margaret is befriend by “Nucky” Johnson (Steve Buscemi). Why this powerful, shadowy gangster-type is assisting such a lonely lass is one question that will surely be answered as the show unfolds.

Is there any historical truth here? After all, bad stereotypes aside, it’s a well-established fact that most American supporters of the alcohol ban were small-town or rural Protestants who (to be generous) were suspicious of the Irish and other ethnic groups huddled in big cities.

But as it turns out, Scorsese and the Boardwalk Empire crew have history on their side. There was indeed a vibrant Irish American temperance movement. As Ripley might say, believe it or not.

Now, let’s be clear. The temperance movement was led mainly by WASPs who were suspicious of America’s move towards a more diverse, urban society in the 1920s.

In fact, even the Ku Klux Klan “supported prohibition as a weapon against immigrants,” Daniel Okrent notes in his new best-selling book Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

In fact, Okrent also notes that some “dry” Americans (as the prohibition forces were known) faced a problem when their anti-Catholic feelings ran up against their anti-alcohol impulses.

When New York’s own Al Smith ran for president in 1928 -- with his thick New York accent, Tammany Hall background and Irish roots -- he was the first Catholic to make a serious run for the White House.

This did not sit well with the likes of Rev. Bob Jones, who said, “I would rather see a saloon on every corner than a Catholic in the White House.”

Jones even said that, rather than a Catholic, he’d prefer a black president, though he used a word much more offensive than “black.”

That all being said, Boardwalk Empire’s Margaret has several historical ancestors -- which is to say, Irish American women who sought to end the pernicious influence of “the demon rum.”

There was even a Catholic Prohibition League of America, though its membership rolls were never exactly flush.

A history of the Catholic Total Abstinence League, meanwhile, was published in 1951, entitled The Hibernian Crusade, though good luck finding a copy of that tome (by Joan Bland) these days.
Leonora Barry, for example, was born in Cork and came to America and is best known as a trailblazing union organizer, most notably with the Knights of Labor.

But Barry was also a well-known proponent of prohibition. The same with Limerick native Charlotte Grace O’Brien.

These women, and many others, linked prohibition with the uplifting of the Irish race in America.
They also linked the anti-alcohol movement with labor organizing, Irish independence and other progressive causes.

This should not be surprising because, as scholar Deirdre M. Moloney has written, Irish American reformers were inspired by events in Ireland itself.

They “drew extensively from Father Theobold Matthew’s mid-19th century Irish temperance campaign in forming an American Catholic movement,” according to Moloney, who added that “temperance became an Irish issue.”

Not quite for everyone, of course. But give Boardwalk Empire credit for showing us another side of the Irish American experience.

However, to paraphrase Homer Simpson: “Temperance. Psh. They tried that in Ireland and it didn’t work.”

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

The 9th Anniversary of 9/11: a million reasons to be hopeful

With the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks upon us, it’s hard to avoid the sense that there is an angry edge to what had, in the past, been a somber, solemn occasion.

Yes, a big part of this is the roiling debate over the proposed mosque near Ground Zero. This debate shows no signs of going away any time soon.

Whatever you happen to believe about the mosque proposal, most decent folks agree that September 11 is a day to set aside such differences and remember the sacrifices made in lower Manhattan on that sad day.

Trouble is, it’s getting harder and harder to focus only on the acts of bravery and valiance.
You’ve got hate preachers such as Bill Keller traveling to Ground Zero to put on an ugly show.

You’ve got ailing first responders still suffering from the effects of the work they did at the pile.

And you’ve got all manner of conspiracy theorists still trying to figure out whether it was President Bush or the United Nations or some other evil genius who actually toppled the buildings that day, rather than al-Qaeda.

In short, it’s increasingly difficult to follow the noble example of service and sacrifice set on that terrible day nine years ago.

Thankfully, we have the Lynch family to remind us.

“We always knew we wanted to make something good out of evil,” Jack Lynch said in an interview this past weekend.

Lynch, a Kerry native, is the father of Michael Francis Lynch, a Bronx-born firefighter who had been assigned to a firehouse in his native borough. On September 11, 2001, however, Michael had been rotated to a Manhattan house. He was one of a dozen firefighters to die from that house when the towers fell.

“Even before we found Michael,” Jack Lynch added, “we knew we wanted to do something positive.”

It was not until March 2002 that Michael’s remains were identified, in part because of the green Celtic Cross on his shoulder. It was said that Michael’s remains were intertwined with that of another person, indicating he’d been assisting this person at the time of the collapse.

In the weeks and months which followed 9/11, the Lynch family -- Jack and his Sligo-born wife, Kathleen, raised 10 children -- decided to start a college scholarship fund in Michael’s name. To date, the Michael Lynch Memorial has granted well over $1 million in scholarship money to children of FDNY families, as well as victims of 9/11, or other fires or disasters.

“It’s actually closer to a million and a half now,” Lynch notes with understandable pride.

Kaitlyn Hurley, one of the recipients of a grant from the Michael Lynch Foundation, recently said, “My family and I are extremely grateful to receive this award. This grant will aid in the pursuit of my nursing education. I only hope that I can make a difference by helping others like Michael Lynch and the FDNY have.”

In this sense, despite the terrible loss they have endured, the Lynches have done something so many of us have been unable to do. They have risen above the day-to-day squabbles which inevitably distract us in this post-9/11 world and continued to set an example of service and dedication and sacrifice.

Indeed, the Michael Lynch Foundation (www.mlynch.org) is very much a family affair, with each of Mike’s brothers and sisters playing integral roles.

For example, the ninth annual Lynch Foundation golf outing will be held on September 17 at Pelham Bay Golf Course in the Bronx. That event, along with many others throughout the year, is organized by Michael’s brother Thomas.

Other family members handle the scholarship application process, the foundation’s legal business, its website and more.

All of this volunteer work is crucial, Jack Lynch notes, because running the memorial “is a lot work.”

But he also notes, “The other thing that I think is really important is that 98% of the money we receive goes directly to the students. I think that’s appealing to a lot of people.”

This September 11, we should not only remember the valiant sacrifices of Michael Lynch and his fallen comrades.

We should also strive to emulate the Lynch family, who remind us that the most noble thing we can do is simply try to make the world a better place.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Why Irish Catholics are no different from Muslims

Last Monday, George Marlin published an article in The New York Post entitled “Catholics' lessons for U.S. Muslims.”

Marlin is an interesting thinker who writes often about overlooked aspects of Irish American and Catholic American history.

“In earlier times,” Marlin wrote on Monday, “tens of millions who came through Ellis Island quickly embraced their new nation and what it stood for and refuted the charge that there was a conflict between their religious or ethnic loyalty and patriotism."

I have interviewed George Marlin in the past and found him to be genial and well-informed. So it is with respect that I disagree with his very charitable look back at the how the Irish and other Catholic immigrants assimilated.

In fact, it could be argued that Catholic efforts to assimilate into the American mainstream were more similar than different from current Muslim efforts.

I’d go so far as to say that the Irish took part in more so-called “un-American activities” than today’s immigrants. Imagine, for example, if 20,000 Middle Eastern immigrants congregated at Madison Square Garden to rally for the cause of, say, Palestinian independence.

Well, that’s just what many New York Irish Catholics did in 1916 after the Easter Rising in Dublin, which aimed to achieve Irish independence.

By 1917, America entered into World War I alongside the Brits, much to the chagrin of Irish nationalists in America such as John Devoy. Indeed, some factions in the Irish community were more than willing to undermine America’s allies (the Brits) and ponder alliances with America’s enemies (the Germans) in the name of a free Ireland.

This may have been a small slice of Irish America. But it is far too simplistic to suggest that Irish Americans in particular and immigrant Catholics in general came to the U.S. and forgot about their homelands. Not for nothing did President Woodrow Wilson lament “hyphenated Americans.” His comments may have been tinged with xenophobia, but Wilson was right on one thing: many ethnic Americans did have dual allegiances.

Even on the eve of World War II, Irish Catholic members of extremist groups such as the Christian Mobilizers found common ground with the Bund and other groups linked to Hitler’s Germany.

Then again, should we be so surprised? Seventy years before Devoy and so many Irish in America proved they were willing to negotiate with America’s enemies, Galway native John Patrick Riley and about 200 other Irish and Catholic immigrants fought against America itself in the Mexican-American war.

Back then they were executed as traitors loyal to Rome. Today, The Chieftains sing songs about the St. Patricio Brigade.

None of this changes the fact that a majority of Irish Catholics were willing to become patriotic Americans. Just as some immigrants were launching a crusade for Irish independence from U.S. soil, many others went off to fight alongside the Brits for their new nation.

As George Marlin notes: “During World War I, more than 1.1 million immigrant Catholics … joined the US Armed Forces. More than 20 percent of the troops who served in the war were Church members, and many served with distinction. Col. ‘Wild Bill’ Donovan, who led the famed ‘Fighting Irish’ 69th Regiment from New York, was awarded the Medal of Honor.”

And yet, the very existence of a “Fighting Irish” regiment proves that ethnic allegiances were not set aside so easily. Imagine if today’s military allowed a “Fighting Dominican” or “Fighting Pakistani” brigade? And don’t give me this business that today’s immigrants don’t fight in the military. Check the names of those wounded and slain in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In the end, I would argue that while the Irish and other Catholics did embrace America, they also changed America, for the better. It might have been smart for Famine immigrants to convert in the face of 19th Century anti-Catholicism. But the Irish held onto their beliefs and eventually convinced Americans to accept Catholicism and other minority religions.

Immigrant union leaders, meanwhile, changed the way Americans thought about working conditions and – yes – nationalists figured out a way to harness Irish American power to bring peace to the homeland.

The Irish were the first large-scale immigrant group to do this. Despite what some say, I suspect they will not be the last.

Is there an Irish New York Accent?

Peter Quinn is a Bronx-born and raised Irish American. He was a speechwriter for New York governors Mario Cuomo and Hugh Carey and, in recent years, has become a well-known essayist and novelist. He even has a new novel out, entitled The Man Who Never Returned, about the legendarily vanished New York judge Joseph Crater.

But that’s not all Quinn has. According to one observer, Quinn also has -- if you will -- the “quin”-tessential New York Irish accent.

But this observation raises a larger question? Is there really an Irish variation on the world famous New York accent?

Another Irish American with roots in the Bronx named Heather Quinlan has embarked on a journey to answer just that question.

“I’ve always been interested in language and accents,” said Quinlan, in a recent interview with “Sidewalks.”

Quinlan was laid off from her job earlier this year. She decided, then, to devote herself full-time to what had been a part-time obsession -- making a documentary film about the “Noo Yawk” accent. The title is If These Knishes Could Talk: A New York Accent Film.

“The thing that fueled the idea,” Quinlan said, “was that my father died in 1996.”

She recalls her youth, listening to stories told by her father and grandparents in thick New York accents.

“It’s one of the things I miss about them,” Quinlan added. “It’s something good to celebrate.”

By now, of course, the New York accent has become something cartoonish. In fact, this was the case six or so decades ago, when that famous cartoon rabbit Bugs Bunny was causing mayhem on the streets of New York with an accent thicker than molasses, singing about Rosie O’Grady, that “regular old fashioned goil.”

In recent decades, however, something strange has happened. The New York accent -- or a wildly exaggerated version of it -- has become more and more popular in films. At the same time it has become less prominent on certain New York streets.

As Quinlan noted, Manhattan tends to be filled with migrants from across America as well as newly-arrived immigrants. This generally means that it is possible to spend a whole day in Manhattan without actually hearing the beloved New York accent. Unless, that is, you wander into an OTB or a Blarney Stone.

But there are also misguided folks who believe the New York accent is not only dead, but died roughly around the same time The Honeymooners left the airwaves.

This is generally the opinion of folks who fancy themselves New York experts, who, nevertheless, couldn’t find their way to ethnic enclaves in Brooklyn or the Bronx or Staten Island with a Metro Card, a map or a GPS app.

Indeed, Quinlan said the title of her New York accent film was inspired by a snack her dad bought for her during a youthful trip to the Staten Island zoo.

“A New York/Jewish food introduced to me by my Irish father in an Italian borough. That’s about as New York as it gets,” Quinlan notes on her website.

But how is the Irish New York accent different from, say, the Italian New York accent?
“The Irish New York accent is more like Jimmy Cagney. It’s very rat-tat-tat. Very Tommy Gun,” Quinlan says, noting that Quinn is a current expert practitioner.

The New York Irish accent is more subtle than, say, the Italian New York inflection which tends to be more broad -- what people tend to talk about, Quinlan notes, when they vaguely refer to a “typical Brooklyn accent.”

Quinlan’s own ancestors came to the Bronx from Tipperary and she spent her youth in several New York boroughs as well as New Jersey.

She did eventually make contact with cousins in Tipperary and made a trip to Ireland, where she saw the Quinlan homestead, which is still standing -- “barely.”

While shooting her film, Quinlan also came across the work of the late Irish language scholar Daniel Cassidy, who showed how the Irish language deeply influenced New York slang.
“It was mind-blowing,” Quinlan said.

Quinlan is continuing to shoot footage for If These Knishes Could Talk. She has already talked to the likes of Pete Hamill, and is aiming to have the film completed next year, in time to put it on the film festival circuit.

While raising money for this project, she has also seen an outpouring of generosity from many people.

“I think that speaks to New Yorkers love of the accent,” Quinlan says. “It’s as much a part of Americana as apple pie.”

(Contact Sidewalks at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

The Philadelphia Freedom Trail, Irish style

If you think it’s been hot so far this summer, you should have been in Philadelphia 234 years ago.

Not only did the temperatures soar into the 90s during the summer of 1776, it was, of course, also the year Washington, Franklin, Jefferson and even one (but only one) Irish Catholic revolutionary faced some serious heat from the British.

Earlier this month, I drove my wife and four kids to the City of Brotherly Love to walk those very same (and still hot!) streets where independence was declared over two centuries ago.

What I discovered is that Philadelphia remains a city of mysteries. Forget about why the famous Liberty Bell is cracked. It’s difficult to figure out precisely how many Irish-born people actually signed the Declaration of Independence, or even when that famous document was actually signed.

We first got our Irish up at the National Liberty Museum, a more modern and international take on the themes of freedom and resistance which have made Philly as famous as its cheese steaks.

Alongside American stalwarts of freedom and democracy such as Martin Luther King, you can also see exhibits and displays featuring John Hume and David Trimble, the Nobel Prize winners credited with bringing peace to Northern Ireland.

Folks with a strong sense of Irish history, however, might also find it curious that Winston Churchill -- who negotiated on behalf of England with Michael Collins over Ireland’s future -- is also included in this display, which is entitled “Peacemakers.”

Less famous, but no less fascinating, is a section on U.S. Medal of Honor winners which includes the brave exploits of Father Joseph Timothy O’Callahan, a Boston native who was serving as chaplain aboard the USS Franklin in the Pacific when, on March 19, 1945, Japanese forces launched an attack.

O'Callahan bravely ministered to the wounded and assisted as sailors dumped bombs over the sides of the ship. He is believed to have helped save the lives of over 700 crewmen.

Among the artifacts at the National Liberty Museum are White House dishes from the Kennedy administration, which are festooned with shamrocks, while a display entitled “Coming to America” explores the impact of immigrants throughout American society.

This exhibit does, however, contain at least one error. New York Governor Al Smith did face intense bigotry when he became the first Roman Catholic to run for president in 1928, but he was not the “child of Irish immigrants.” His father was of mixed European ancestry.

The real mysteries of Philly began with the famous Liberty Bell. It remains unclear how or even when the famous crack appeared in the bell, which still draws long lines of visitors.

Meanwhile, after you cross Market Street and visit Independence Hall, you really start asking some questions. July 4 is considered America’s birthday, since it is the date the Declaration of Independence was announced from these very steps.

However, it remains unclear when exactly those 56 famous people actually signed the document. Some of them were not even in Philly in July of 1776!

In fact, some historians believe only the famously ostentatious John Hancock and Derry-born Charles Thomson signed the first version of the document. And yet, Thomson the Irishman is not considered among the 56 famous signatories because he served as a record keeper rather than delegate.

Meanwhile, there might not have been a Declaration to sign if not for Tyrone native John Dunlap, the printer who produced the first copies of the document.

Three Irish-born revolutionaries did sign the Declaration -- Matthew Thornton, George Taylor and James Smith. All of these men, however, were Presbyterians.

Only one Catholic signed the Declaration, Charles Carroll, whose family had been persecuted for religious reasons in Ireland, England and the U.S.

Don’t weep too strongly for the Carrolls, however. They were the Kennedys of their day, a multi-generational political dynasty with humble beginnings who eventually amassed a huge fortune.

At the end of this stroll through the historical streets of Philly, I was, first of all, very hot, but also amazed that great events unfolded in these very buildings. I was amazed, further, that we are still working on pinning down the details of precisely how those great events unfolded.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

Remembering a True Hell's Kitchen ‘Gentleman’

I never met Mickey Spillane, the so-called "gentleman" gangster who ran the infamous Westies for decades. But I did have the privilege and pleasure of knowing his son, Bobby Spillane, who died this past weekend following what by most accounts was a terrible accident on the Hell's Kitchen Manhattan streets he knew so well.

According to police, Bobby had been leaning out the sixth floor window of an apartment building, perhaps calling after his brother Michael, when the screen gave way. Family members have noted that Bobby had been wearing a sling. This may have prevented him from properly balancing himself.

Spillane fell out of the window and was later pronounced dead. He was just 45 years old.
Looking at this unjust turn of events, there is a temptation to simply note that another member of one of the most infamous Irish clans in New York history is gone. There is a temptation to note that another slice of Irish Hell's kitchen has been lost.

There is even, for me, a great sense of exasperation because some people have confused Bobby's crime boss dad with the famous crime writer Mickey Spillane.

But what must be said, first and foremost, is that Bobby Spillane was as much of a gentleman as anyone else you will ever meet. This even though it was not always easy growing up in the Spillane household.

"I was born in 1964," Spillane wrote in a 2002 Daily News front page article about his father. "My father, Michael John Spillane, a man the papers would later refer to as the last Gentleman Gangster, was at this time boss of the Midtown rackets. Dark Irish and movie-star handsome, he had already been shot and stabbed and had served three years at Sing Sing by the time I arrived."

Bobby recalled playing in a park with his dad when he got into an argument with another boy. In the end, Bobby's father confronted the boy's dad, who himself was left laying on the ground.
When Bobby later wondered about his Dad's job, all Mickey Spillane said was, "Son, I'll answer all your questions when you get older."

That day never came. The Westies -- the gangsters who claimed they had to be crazier than everyone else because they were Irish -- had ruled the West Side for decades, but the times were a'changing.

Rival gangsters with a stake in the West Side declared Mickey Spillane's day had come and gone. One evening, Bobby has recalled, the intercom box in his apartment buzzed.
Mickey Spillane went out into the Hell's Kitchen night and was later gunned down by a killer who is still unknown. Bobby was 12 years old.

He could have spent the following years struggling to match his father's exploits, injuring himself and others along the way. He could have exploited the political connections on his mother's side of the family, the famous West Side McManus political clan.

But Bobby Spillane became a Teamster and also was bitten by the writing and acting bug.
He appeared in numerous movies and TV shows, from The Thomas Crown Affair to Rescue Me. He also wrote an off-Broadway farce entitled All Dolled Up about a cross-dressing mobster.

“You have to keep it wild," Spillane told me when we talked about the play a few years back.
Most importantly, along the way, Spillane made friends. Among them, fellow New York Irish comic and actor Colin Quinn, with whom Spillane was working on another show at the time of his death.

The show's status is up in the air now. Which is sad because we need personal New York stories like these now more than ever.

Why? Because some people are so ignorant of New York's recent past they confused Bobby's Dad with the famous writer of the Mike Hammer crime stories.

One L.A. Times reader commented: "Identifying author Mickey Spillane...as a notorious New York mobster is like calling James Joyce a famous Irish terrorist."

Then again, as Spillane friend and Westies historian T.J. English noted in his book Paddy Whacked, Bobby himself once excitedly ran home with a copy of a Mickey Spillane book.

"Hey Pop...Have you read his stuff?" Bobby asked.

"I tried," Bobby's Dad replied. "Too much sex."

With Bobby's death, we have been robbed of so many more memories as funny, poignant, ironic and tragic as these.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

An Irish Bernie Madoff

Quinn's horse Grey Swallow won the Irish Derby

Before Bernie Madoff, there was Thomas F. Quinn.

Who was also known as Robert Dzigi, Pele Lechien, Tasos Douros, among other aliases quite exotic for an Irish kid from Brooklyn.

Back in November of 2009, just four months after the world famous Madoff was sentenced to 150 years in prison, Thomas Quinn was spending time in Ireland. This was not unusual. Quinn, after all, owned a racing horse named Grey Swallow, which won the 2004 Irish Derby (pictured above). When he flew into JFK airport last November, federal authorities greeted Quinn.

They were charging him with crimes related to a telecommunications fraud ring which may have fattened Quinn’s bank account by as much as $50 million.

Believe it or not, for the 72 year-old Quinn, these charges were fairly minor. During a career that international authorities claim has spanned decades, conservative estimates suggest that Quinn has swindled people out of hundreds of millions of dollars.

“During his swindling career, Mr. Quinn helped run a giant boiler-room operation out of a villa overlooking the French Riviera, had a champion racehorse and was alleged to have helped former financier Martin Frankel pull off one of history's largest insurance frauds,” The Wall Street Journal noted in a March report.

“U.S. authorities say he stole an estimated $500 million total.”

The Journal added that Quinn’s record “includes three SEC injunctions and two federal criminal convictions,” adding that a federal judge once called Quinn "incorrigible" and that his professional life appeared “to be devoted exclusively to securities fraud."

However, while Bernie Madoff caught the attention of the world and was sentenced to a century and a half in prison, Quinn, thus far, has remained out of the public eye. He has also served only about six years in prison.

Following his arrest after his trip to Ireland, Quinn was taken to a prison near Dallas where he is awaiting a trial which is slated to begin in February 2011.

Quinn could face up to 20 years in prison. Given his colorful career, it should not be surprising that Quinn has pleaded not guilty. Quinn’s life of (alleged) international crime is all the more astonishing given his humble blue collar Irish American upbringing. He grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940s and 1950s. “The only son of an Irish-American truck driver,” as The Wall Street Journal put it.

Quinn attended Catholic grammar schools and eventually moved onto St. John’s University. This is the same path an entire generation of outer-borough Irish Catholics used to become upwardly mobile lawyers, politicians or other movers and shakers. Quinn was clearly ambitious, not to mention accomplished.

So, whereas many of Quinn’s fellow Irish Americans would have moved onto careers with the New York City police or fire departments, Quinn seemed interested in something on a much more grand scale. Quinn was admitted to the New York bar in 1962.

Within a few years, according to the Wall Street Journal, the Securities and Exchange Commission was looking into Quinn’s investment schemes. By the 1980s, Quinn was wheeling and dealing from a posh French villa complete with a waterfall and view of the Mediterranean Sea.

Authorities allege he was selling worthless stocks to naïve investors.
By 1985, Forbes Magazine was reporting that Quinn “was behind a scam” which brought “worthless companies public” in the Unites States and sold shares to “Europeans who can be as transfixed as we are by the American dream.”

French authorities arrested Quinn in 1988. A year later, The Economist magazine dubbed Quinn “the billion dollar brain.” It seemed like the end of the ride for Quinn. A 1993 conviction, however, resulted in no additional jail time beyond the time he’d already spent in French prison. In the 1990s, Quinn’s name was once again was linked to various fraudulent schemes, including the notorious case of Martin Frankel, a Connecticut businessman who “ran one of the biggest insurance schemes in history,” according to the New York Times.

Now, again in prison and awaiting trial, authorities must be wondering if this, finally, is the end of the road for Thomas F. Quinn. It is not the first time people have believed this. Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.

The Long Journey of Denis Leary's 'Rescue Me'

This may not be what you’d expect from a comic whose latest stand-up tour includes a goofy Irish drinking song which takes swipes at Michael Flatley and the Catholic Church. But Denis Leary’s Rescue Me is one of the most important Irish American cultural artifacts of recent decades, right up there with Angela’s Ashes, and, yes, even Riverdance.

Anyone interested in telling the history of Irish Catholics in 21st Century America could not possibly ignore all of the crucial themes – family, the church, 9/11 – the show has explored, at times with brutal honesty, dark humor and occasionally, with a bit too much goofiness.

Indeed, now we just have to hope that the show, which had its season premiere on the FX cable channel this week, goes out with a bang rather than a whimper.

Leary and the rest of the Rescue Me crew are officially done creating the show. The current season, the sixth, will wrap up later this year. The show will take a break from the airwaves before it returns with its seventh and final season, which will wrap up in September 2011 – which, of course, coincides with the tenth anniversary of the terror attacks which still haunt the firefighters in Tommy Gavin’s firehouse, and inspired Rescue Me in the first place.

The question, now is this: Why is Rescue Me more than just an entertaining television show? Well, for those with an interest in all things Irish, Rescue Me right now is the most prominent slice of popular culture which deals with the Irish American experience.

Movies from The Gangs of New York to The Brothers McMullen get a lot of attention for how they portray the Irish in America. But a movie is never much longer than two hours. For six years, now, Leary’s show has mined the deep, dark soul of Irish America. The view is not always pretty.

Family, for example, is a crucial aspect of Rescue Me as well as the Irish American experience. Well, suffice it to say, the Gavin family is more than a little bit dysfunctional. As this season opens, Tommy Gavin is shot by his uncle following a long evening of cathartic boozing. Talk about a long day’s journey into night.

Which raises an inevitable question: Does Rescue Me dabble in stereotypes? Of course it does. It’s hard to find any book, movie or TV show about ethnic life which doesn’t.

After all, Frank McCourt’s dad was a drunk and Pete Hamill’s gleaming memoir was even entitled A Drinking Life. Does this make these books any less brilliant?

But moreso than the crazy uncles and excessive drinking, perhaps the most important part of Rescue Me is Tommy Gavin’s struggle with religion. It is here that Rescue Me most painfully mirrors Irish America’s broader struggles to reconcile its Catholic heritage with a harsh, modern world. Gavin pretty much has no use for religion. Which doesn’t matter because he still struggles to comprehend the ways of God, and why bad things – such as 9/11 – seem to happen to (relatively) good people. Season six even opens with Tommy’s vision of the afterlife. That this vision is grim and frightening rather than soothing matters little. Tommy is televised proof that there is no such thing as a lapsed Catholic. Even if Tommy Gavin – like not a few Irish Americans – is skeptical about religion, it is still in your cultural DNA.

In a recent interview, Leary discussed bringing Rescue Me to a close and he said he is aware that viewers will watch the show’s end with much scrutiny. After all, The Sopranos ending was one of the most analyzed moments in TV history.

Leary would not say much about the show’s ending, but did add that right before it concludes there is an important twist.

This sounds troubling to me. After all, Rescue Me is a very good TV show but over the years it has had its share of off notes. So, here’s some old fashioned Irish advice for Denis Leary: Don’t try anything too fancy! Stick to what you do best. After all, this has produced an unforgettable look into the Irish American soul right up there with Frank McCourt, Pete Hamill and even Eugene O’Neill.

Fighting Wrong Battle of the Sexes

Does Ireland have a set of laws that assist men, because women are becoming so successful? And should America copy these Irish laws?

You might think so, if you believe what you see on TV and in cyberspace these days.

Let’s start at the beginning. The cover of the latest edition of the Atlantic Monthly declares that “The End of Men” in near.

The accompanying article, written by Atlantic editor Hanna Rosin, explores “how women are taking control of everything.”

Yikes! Not only does this seem like a frightening scenario that puts me and my fellow brothers on the express lane to obsolescence.

It’s also a rapid change from the days not too long ago when it was men, rather than women, dominating the world. So much so that serious people used to believe that various kinds of special programs, such as affirmative action, were needed to level the playing field for women.
Affirmative action basically encourages, without quite forcing, businesses and governments to hire folks who face distinct cultural challenges such as racism or sexism.

Rosin discussed her Atlantic article “The End of Men” last week on the comedy-news show The Colbert Report. When the host suggested we might now need “affirmative action for men,” Rosin said this may not be such a bad idea.

She went on to say, “In places like Australia and Ireland, they actually have affirmative action for men.”

Swiftly the blogosphere ran with this Irish angle on this gender debate. A blog about women’s issues at George Washington University commented upon Rosin’s appearance on The Colbert Report and added, “They also discussed that in Australia and Ireland they have affirmative action for men to help lift them up. Could this come to America?”

Is Ireland, like the U.S., also entering an age where men are irrelevant?

This seems unlikely. Just last year the Irish Independent published a report finding that gender inequality was “rife” in Ireland.

“Women in Ireland work less and earn less,” the newspaper noted, later adding, “Men, on the other hand, are over-represented in the Dail (Parliament) and Seanad (Senate).”

This hardly sounds like a society in which women are so successful that men need legally-mandated advantages to give them a fair shake. It appears the people debating this issue have confused some very important matters.
The only well-known affirmative action program on the island of Ireland is actually on the books in Northern Ireland. As a recent report by four professors from the University of Oxford noted, “Historically, Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland were typically highly segregated from each other in employment, with Catholics being concentrated in particular sectors of the labor market, and in particular firms, and suffering unemployment rates two to three times as high as those of Protestants.

“But for the last 20 years, Northern Ireland’s program of affirmative action has used detailed monitoring for firms’ composition plus agreed action plans, where necessary, to ensure for both groups ‘fair participation’ in employment, avoiding the setting of quotas.”

In the end, it is very dodgy to compare anything that is happening in Northern Ireland to anything happening in the U.S.

As Rosin makes clear in her article, there is indeed a crisis unfolding when it comes to men in America. Certain male-dominated jobs were decimated by recession in the 1990s as well as the 2000s.

Women now dominate U.S. college campuses, where just 40% of students these days are men.
But this is a very different context when compared to Northern Ireland. There you had a very clear pattern of historic discrimination based on numerous factors, including class, religion, political affiliation and even geography.

Whatever troubles (if you can pardon that phrase) facing American men these days, they are different from those that traditionally faced the Catholic men (and women) of Northern Ireland.

(Contact at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)

Great state of union (bashing) for workers around the country

When Michael Mulgrew became head of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) this year, he was entering some uncharted territory. As Harold Myserson noted in an August 2009 article about the waning influence of the Irish in the labor movement, the ascension of the Irish American Mulgrew ended “a 50-year succession of Jewish UFT presidents.”

This Wednesday, June 16, Mulgrew turned up the heat in the UFT’s ongoing battle with New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg by spearheading a rally against education cuts at City Hall.

Mulgrew’s rise to the top of the UFT came around the same time Mary Kay Henry was named leader of the West Coast-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents over two million workers.

Henry, 52, was described by the Los Angeles Times as “the eldest girl among 10 siblings in an Irish-Catholic family in suburban Detroit.”

So if, as Harold Myerson suggested, Irish influence in organized labor is dwindling, it’s not going away anytime soon.

There’s one catch, however. These jobs might as well come with a bull’s eye, because unions have become a handy target for angry people and politicians in recent months.

Full disclosure -- I am a member of the UFT. So naturally, I am a little sensitive about some of the criticism aimed at New York City teachers by Bloomberg and schools chancellor Joel Klein.
I should add, though, that no one is more frustrated by ineffective teachers than teachers themselves. So it’s not that the UFT is above criticism.

The bigger problem is that, in tough economic times, members of nearly any union have come to be viewed as members of an elite class who are paid lavishly while doing little work.

An article in this past Sunday’s New York Post explored the “long lines” of applicant’s seeking the “cushiest gigs” at a number of local unions. These jobs included spots at Local 246 of the aforementioned SEIU, which represents auto mechanics. There were also applicants seeking jobs with Ironworkers Local 361.

Boy, talk about cushy gigs! What could be easier than learning how an automobile functions from top to bottom and getting the thing fixed.

Or how about those ironworkers! All they have to do from time to time is slice steel with a flaming torch, often several thousand feet above the bustling streets.

I remember less than a month after 9/11 talking to Jack Doyle, head of the heavily-Irish Ironworkers Local 40. Doyle had actually helped build the Twin Towers in the early 1970s, and was vowing to help build again at Ground Zero.

But only after the ironworkers completed the very dangerous task of clearing out the debris. What a cushy gig!

The king of union bashing these days is New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. His stump speech for a long time was that New Jersey has “two classes” of citizens, -- “those who enjoy rich public benefits and those who pay for them."

Wow. We’ve certainly come a long way.

In the past, thundering populists and brainy prophets have warned that America was indeed split into two societies -- black vs. white, or the obscenely rich vs. the desperately poor.

Now, according to Christie, the only thing we have to worry about are the folks who dare to have a pension and a little stability. It seems to me we might want to work to get that for more people, not fewer.

Look, I understand that state governments are going broke. Taxpayers have a right to know their money is being invested in sound, productive employees. Unions should roll up their sleeves and help produce solutions.

But there is an ugly side to this. As much as anyone else, the Irish built the American labor movement with blood, sweat and tears. This was no “cushy” task.

Politicians know there is a deep insecurity in America right now. So rather than devise bold ways to alleviate that insecurity, they target “elite” union members and their “cushy” jobs.

Meanwhile, children need to be educated. Cars need to be repaired. Steel must be sliced.

The vast majority of people doing these jobs now do them happily and effectively. Smearing these workers may make the next generation think twice about entering the profession.
But it doesn’t make the work itself any less vital or necessary.

(Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan)