Helen Gahagan Douglas – the original movie star politician

These days they seem even more tired than a cliché – celebrity politicians.

You’ve got second-generation pro wrestling titan Linda McMahon running for public office in Connecticut. You’ve got comedian Al Franken serving in the U.S. Senate from Minnesota, the same state which – speaking of wrestling – once elected Jesse “The Body” Ventura as governor.

Of course, there’s also Arnold Schwarzenegger. And every few months it seems as if whispers surface that movie stars from George Clooney to Alec Baldwin are going to make the leap from the big screen to the political world.

Finally, there’s the former actor who seemed to blaze the trail for onetime movie stars who want to break into politics – Ronald Reagan.

But around the same time young Reagan was making films such as Bedtime for Bonzo, another former actor was making waves in Washington. As a woman entering political life back in the 1940s, she knew a thing or two about being a trailblazer.

And little did she know her future held an infamous showdown with a rising political star named Richard Nixon, and a love affair with yet another congressman with a future named Lyndon Johnson.

Not bad for a Jersey girl whose father was born in Ireland.

Her name was Helen Gahagan Douglas. A newly-published book, The Pink Lady: The Many Lives of Helen Gahagan Douglas (Bloomsbury Press) has resurrected interest in the long, complicated life of this actress-turned-politician.

She was born in New Jersey but raised in Brooklyn. Her father, an engineer, was not exactly interested in artistic pursuits.

Nevertheless, Helen pursued a career on the stage. But she was always cultivating political opinions -- including Irish ones.

As part of an oral history project in the 1970s, Gahagan said this about her days as a schoolgirl, “The one issue that I was passionate about was the independence of Ireland. Absolutely passionate about it.”

The interviewer then asks, “Did you have a lot of other Irish there who were on your side?”

Douglass replied, “No, no, no.”

By the 1920s, Gahagan was a Broadway star. In 1931, she married leading man Melvyn Douglas.

Her only Hollywood role was in the film She, which is about a woman with the power to tame tribes in the wilds of Africa.

It was in 1944 that Douglas became the first woman Democrat elected to the House of Representatives. Not surprisingly, Douglas represented California which, decades later, would elect the likes of Sonny Bono, Reagan and Schwarzenegger to public office.

Douglas was an unabashed liberal who, according to Lyndon Johnson’s most acclaimed biographer Robert Caro, had a love affair with the future president in the 1940s.

It was in 1950 that Douglas chased history and ran for the U.S. Senate seat. She was up against an ambitious fellow congressman named Richard Nixon.

Already, Nixon had learned that whipping up anti-Communist hysteria was a good way to score political points. So, he famously referred to Douglas as the “Pink Lady.” The suggestion was that Douglas may not be a Commie “Red,” but she was very close to it.

Nixon knew what he was doing. He won the election easily.

For what it is worth, Douglas earned a measure of revenge. It is believed that she coined the famous phrase “Tricky Dick,” referring to Nixon.

Memories of the Douglas-Nixon battle did not die easily. When Nixon was embroiled in the Watergate controversy in the 1970s, bumper stickers which read “Don’t Blame Me, I Voted for Helen Gahagan Douglas” were popular items.

Douglas lived another 30 years before she died in 1980 (yes, the year Reagan was elected).

Next time you hear a celebrity spouting off about politics, and running for office, think about Helen Gahagan Douglas.

You may want to give her credit or blame her for creating this mess. But, at the very least, think of her.

(Tom Deignan will be discussing “Twenty Books Every Irish American Should Read” at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, March 11. Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

The Irish Catholic Church's 'Tea Party'

Given the problems he’s faced with these days -- health care, Iraq and now the exodus of Democrats such as Patrick Kennedy and Evan Bayh from the House and Senate -- President Obama probably looks back fondly on the days when the biggest problem in his life was a bunch of angry Irish Catholics at Notre Dame.

Last year, Obama was invited to give the commencement speech at the Catholic university famous for its Fighting Irish sports teams. Some people applauded the invite, since colleges are supposed to be a forum for debate.

Others, however, were outraged.

Ralph McInerney, an Irish American professor at the college, wrote, “Barack Hussein Obama, enabler in chief of abortion, has agreed to speak at the 2009 commencement and to receive an honorary doctorate of law. That abortion and its advocacy violate a primary precept of natural law reinforced by the Catholic Church’s explicit doctrine is a mere bagatelle.

“Wackos of all kinds will kick up a fuss, of course, but their protest will go unnoticed in South Bend. The pell-mell pursuit of warm and fuzzy Catholicism will continue.”

McInerny died last month at the age of 80. He was also a popular novelist who inspired the Father Dowling TV series, starring Tom Bosley, in the 1980s.

It might seem tempting, if a little disrespectful, to see this passing as symbolic -- yet another old school Catholic moving on to what is hoped to be a better place, leaving the church down here slightly more tolerant and open-minded.

But that’s a simple-minded way to see things, even if you disagree with the likes of McInerny. When it comes to religion -- among the Irish and Irish Americans in particular -- things are a lot more complex.

You might even say there is a Tea Party of sorts going on within the American Catholic Church.

For many of us, yes, the abuse scandals and the outdated sexual rules have made the Catholic Church as it exists today a dinosaur. It is slouching towards extinction, and if it doesn’t reform itself, it may stay that way, at least in the U.S.

Liberal Catholics from Susan Sarandon to Kerry Kennedy espouse beliefs similar to this. But there is another wing of Catholics is the U.S. You might call them Tea Party Catholics.

Whatever you think of the current Tea Party wing of the Republican party, we can agree they didn’t throw their hands up in disgust and walk away from the debate. They got angry and they organized.

McInerney was one such Irish Catholic. Tom Monaghan, the Domino’s Pizza founder, who donates millions to conservative Catholic causes, is another.

Patrick Reilly, founder of the Cardinal Newman Society, which promotes “authentic” Catholic college education is still another.

These thinkers don’t agree on everything. But rather than seek the spotlight, they have found solace in medieval philosophy and refuse to believe such a worldview is irrelevant in the 21st century.

When not churning out best-selling mystery books, McInerny founded a magazine called Crisis, which sought reform in the Catholic Church, but not Kennedy-style reform. The church was not intolerant, but too tolerant, McInerny and his followers believed.

I think it is even fair to say these guys would not have a problem if such changes forced, say, half of the Catholic Church’s current members to abandon the faith. This, I think they believe, would be a fair price to pay for spiritual purity.

Such thinkers may not seem popular or glamorous. But they are now so influential that a New York Times Magazine cover story last December reported that their philosophy “has found support among a group of Catholic bishops who have become some of the most persistent critics of President Obama.”

The article continued, “Alarmed at the liberal takeover of Washington and an apparent leadership vacuum among the Christian right, the group had come together to warn the country’s secular powers that the culture wars had not ended. (They) promised resistance to the point of civil disobedience.”

You say you want a revolution? Well, we just might have one. Where it stops, nobody knows.



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

The real problem with stereotypes, Irish or otherwise

British comedian Ricky Gervais caused a bit of trouble a few weeks back when he cracked a joke about body hair, Colin Farrell and alcoholism at the Globes.

It’s worth adding, however, that Gervais was not doing a solo performance. He was very much part of a loud and plentiful chorus.

Last Sunday night I caught a rerun of the Fox sitcom ‘Til Death, starring former Everybody Loves Raymond star Brad Garrett.

In the show Garrett (as best as I can tell) plays some kind of teacher who did not have to go to work because there was an outbreak of head lice.

“Thank God for the Irish,” Garrett quipped.

Then, I caught a Simpsons re-run in which good ol’ Homer was being nagged by Marge. She wanted to make sure Homer attended a special event honoring their daughter Lisa.

But she didn’t just want Homer to show up. She wanted him to show up sober.

“American sober?” Homer responded. “Or Irish sober?”

This all happened the same week an independent movie from a well-known TV producer hit theaters. The movie is entitled White Irish Drinkers.

And in the same month that a Los Angeles Times blogger, mocking the blasphemy laws recently passed in Ireland, wrote, “As my Irish mother would put it, ‘Mother of God! They might as well outlaw alcoholism.’"

Yeesh. What is this, vaudeville circa 1919?

However, let’s not have the same old argument about whether or not these jokes are offensive. True, Farrell reportedly did not look pleased after Gervais’ quip at the Golden Globes. Perhaps a British actor should have known better.

On the other hand, half of Gervais’ joke was based on the premise that the Irish are as hairy as they are alcoholic, which is either absurd or hilarious, and probably a bit of both.

I have not seen the movie White Irish Drinkers, a personal project written and directed by John Gray (a force behind the TV hit The Ghost Whisperer), but it sounds like a gritty, emotional coming-of-age Brooklyn Irish story.

The title may bother you. But the real thing to worry about is when people stop telling distinctly Irish American stories such as this.

A few lame jokes about drink is a small price to pay for us fighting -- not to mention hairy -- Irish.

Another thing people object to is that the Irish are “the only group it’s still okay to make fun of.”

Anyone seen Jersey Shore on MTV? Proud, self-proclaimed Italian American “guidos” are featured on the show.

And guess what? Some Italian Americans hate the show because they feel that it’s the Italians who are the only group left that it is okay to make fun of.

The Jersey Shore cast members, incidentally, are laughing all the way to the bank. Reports suggest they just worked out a new contract worth a cool $10,000 an episode. Obviously, it pays to ridicule yourself!

The worst thing about a debate like this is that it inevitably descends into a shouting match among so-called advocates for the Irish and Italians and African Americans and Jews and other ethnic groups.

People on one side say ethnic jokes are harmless, and people on the other side say, “Not after our traumatic history!” or “Not if our group is the only one that gets made fun on!”

First of all, give a listen to comedians ranging from Kathy Griffin and Stephen Colbert to George Lopez and Howard Stern. Trust me, every ethnic group is adequately mocked.

Chris Rock has joked that if you have money that you want to hide from African American criminals, hide it in a book. Because books “are like kryptonite” to African Americans.

Makes all those Irish drunk jokes seem pretty tame, doesn’t it?

Also, at least one obvious group gets excluded from this debate -- wealthy WASPs!

You can imagine a few of these genteel, privileged folks looking on as the lower classes bicker about what is and isn’t proper to say. You can imagine them shaking their heads and saying, “Maybe grandmum and grandpup were right. Maybe we should never have let any of these people into this great country.”

We don’t need fewer Irish jokes. We need more people mocking these rich, powerful pinheads!

(Contact Tom Deignan at tomdeignan@earthlink.net)