Stephen Colbert’s “Rock me like a Herman Cain” serious joke - VIDEO

Stephen Colbert

So Comedy Central fake news anchor Stephen Colbert’s efforts to make waves in the South Carolina primary didn’t really work. 

Hoping to laugh all the way to the ballot box, Colbert told followers in his native South Carolina to show their support by voting for Herman Cain.  The project -- tongue planted firmly in cheek -- was called “Rock Me Like a Herman Cain!”

In the end, Colbert/Cain received only about 6,000 votes in South Carolina, or about 1%.

But Colbert -- one of 11 children, who never misses a chance to reference his Irish Catholic roots -- can rest easy. 

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He is well on his way to making an impact of truly historic proportions. 

And he is using that trusty Irish tool -- satire -- to do so.

Colbert has created a Super PAC (Political Action Committee) called Americans for a Better
Tomorrow, Tomorrow.  And he has shown that for all of the time and effort put into creating intricate rules to regulate the influence of money in the political process, it is laughably easy to subvert those rules.

If you were yawning by the time you read the end of that sentence, this is understandable.  The precise reason political financing rules are so easily subverted is because they are such a tiresomely boring topic.

But Colbert may finally succeed where so many others have failed -- by exposing this absurdity.

It should be noted that this is not Colbert’s first foray into the real world of politics.

In 2010, he went before Congress (as his right-wing character), and spoke out against illegal immigration.  He said that his great-grandfather did not come from Ireland to see America "overrun by immigrants."

Indeed, Colbert has always been vocal about his Irish roots.

When he spoke to Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates as part of the Faces of America project (this time speaking as his humble self), he spoke at length about his ancestors from Tyrone and Roscommon, and how his great-grandfather came over on boat he knew as “the noble Dundee,” to work on the Erie Canal.

“Part of being Irish is hating the English in America,” Colbert added.  “They probably got over it better over there than we did over here.”

Colbert’s latest satirical crusade takes aim at political fundraising.  Money in politics is a topic people like to complain about, but which is also so murky that it’s difficult to blast the system in anything other than the most bland, generic terms.

For me personally, money in politics is not inherently evil.  To believe money can be separated from politics is hopelessly naïve.

What is disturbing is that so many rules were set up to create the illusion of fairness, and that no one really talks about the obvious ways to subvert these rules.

Colbert is not only talking about it. He’s showing it.

As a recent New York Times Magazine profile of Colbert put it, “Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow…is entitled to raise and spend unlimited amounts of soft money in support of candidates as long as it doesn’t ‘coordinate’ with them, whatever that means. Of such Super PAC efforts, Colbert said, ‘This is 100 percent legal and at least 10 percent ethical.’”

Super PACs these days play a huge role in elections.  Perhaps you’ve noticed that almost every time you see a political attack ad, it is not paid for by the candidate but some group with a weird name. 

Such as “Winning Our Future.” This is a Super PAC which supports Newt Gingrich, even though Gingrich is technically not allowed to be in contact with them. This even though Winning Our Future is run by a bunch of Gingrich pals.

Everyone’s got one of these PACs. Everyone knows the rules are a joke. And yet, they play a key role.
Colbert has since made his own pal Jon Stewart the head of his Super PAC. Colbert and Stewart simply can’t “coordinate.” 

In case you miss the point, this illustrates just how farcical this all is.

Colbert is currently accomplishing what hordes of journalists and activists could not -- shedding light on a complicated yet vital topic.

He may not get many votes for president.  But Colbert may well spur significant changes in the electoral process.

Somewhere, Irish satirist Jonathan Swift must be smiling.

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

Here, watch the video of Stephen Colbert at the Herman Cain rally at the College of Charleston:

Mitt Romney’s troubling immigration pal Kris Kobach

Mitt Romney (REUTERS/Chris Keane)

The movement to make sure that anti-Irish, anti-Catholic cartoonist Thomas Nast is not enshrined in the New Jersey Hall of Fame continues to gain momentum. 

A wide range of groups, and not just Irish ones, have come out against Nast, who was famous for inventing our image of Santa Claus, but also made Catholics look like scheming villains and the Irish look like apes.

And yet, even as this very sensible opposition to nativism and anti-immigrant ideas makes itself heard, there is troubling news on the horizon. This only proves yet again that we are a schizophrenic nation when it comes to immigration.

Barring a major catastrophe, we can expect that Mitt Romney will emerge from this weekend’s South Carolina primary as the Republican candidate for president.
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And so, even though the general election in still 10 months away, it is probably not too early to start thinking about how certain key issues will play out.

News reports that Romney was hitting the campaign trail with a man by the name of Kris Kobach suggests we can expect a bitter campaign on the immigration front.

Who is Kris Kobach?

Though he is little-known outside of political circles, Kobach is a tremendously influential -- and divisive -- figure.

By day, Kobach serves as the Kansas secretary of state. But he is also a lawyer and outspoken activist against illegal immigration and is one of the driving forces behind controversial anti-immigration measures in a number of states, most notably Arizona.

Arizona, of course, is where an Irish American and former Port Authority police officer named John Kavanagh -- who serves as a state senator -- has been spearheading a movement that some critics call anti-immigrant or nativist.

Back is 2010, Kavanagh, who was born in Queens, confronted just such a protester, who demanded to know where his own ancestors came from originally.

After touting his Irish (as well as German) roots, Kavanagh went on to stress that his ancestors came to the U.S. “legally.”

This, of course, may be true. 

But it’s not like illegal immigration was just  recently invented.  Millions of Americans not only have
immigrant roots, they also have illegal immigrant roots.

Sensible people, of course, can disagree over immigration. But Kavanagh and Kobach have catered to some hardline thoughts on this topic.  And now they are taking aim at the U.S. Constitution.

Earlier this month, a New York Times story about a looming immigration battle featured both Kobach and Kavanagh, and it’s not the first time the duo has been paired in the press.

“The next big immigration battle centers on illegal immigrants’ offspring, who are granted automatic citizenship like all other babies born on American soil,” the Times noted.  “Arguing for an end to the policy, which is rooted in the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, immigration hardliners describe a wave of migrants…stepping across the border in the advanced stages of pregnancy to have what are dismissively called ‘anchor babies.’”

With the latest news that Romney has been endorsed by, and campaigning with, the likes of Kobach, we can be sure to expect lots of nasty talk about immigrants on the campaign trail.

Not that we should be surprised.  Everyone knows that Romney, though likely to win the nomination, also has very soft support among conservatives.  All along he has been taking a hard-line stance on immigration, playing to voters fears. 

This even as conservatives such as New Gingrich and Rick Perry have made shocking statements suggesting that we not scapegoat immigrants for the country’s woes.

This, of course, plays right into Romney’s hands.

The problem is that such tactics generally poison the atmosphere and accomplish nothing in terms of some our real problems relating to immigration, the economy and jobs.

Furthermore, President Obama will be in no position to stand up for a sensible immigration policy during the election.

So, expect lots of nasty talk about immigrants in the coming months.  Thomas Nast would be proud.

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

New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan - much power but little glory

Archbishop Timothy Dolan (AP Photo/Louis Lanzano)

“Could Cardinal Dolan Become Pope?”

The question jumped out at me from the CBS News website and made me chuckle for several reasons.

First of all, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan will not even get his red hat until February 18.  Yet here they are speculating that the guy might become Pope.

And then there’s the prospect of an Irish American pope in Rome.  That made me chuckle even more mightily.

Still, it was quite a week for Irish American power. First, there were reports that First Lady Michelle Obama once griped about the power wielded by just three Irish Catholic clans in Chicago -- the Daley, Madigan and Hynes families.

Then there was the elevation of Dolan, as well as Bronx native and fellow Irish American Edwin O’Brien, to cardinal.

That means for over 170 years now an Irish American has ruled the biggest, most visible diocese in North America.  And all but one, in that time, has made it to Rome as a cardinal.

This got me thinking about what Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan wrote in his book Beyond the Melting Pot back in the 1960s.

“The Irish didn’t know what to do with power once they got it. …[T]he very parochialism and bureaucracy that enabled them to succeed in local politics prevented them from doing much else.
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“In all these 60 or 70 years in which they could have done almost anything they wanted in politics, they did very little. Of all those candidates and all those campaigns, what remains?”

What remains, of course, is power. Still.  To this day.  In 2012.

Moynihan’s point seems to be that after the Irish scrapped and battled their way from the bottom of the social heap to the corridors of power in Boston, New York, Philly and Chicago, they seemed content simply to be powerful and influential.

And one is tempted to ask who can blame them?

It’s particularly interesting to read Moynihan’s lines in the first month of 2012, decades after the Irish finally had to begin sharing power with other ethnic groups, as they moved out to the suburbs and began inter-marrying in great numbers.

Oh sure, it’s hard to find a Hibernian trace of Tammany Hall these days, even if two of the most likely candidates for New York City mayor in 2013 are named Kelly and Quinn.

And the rank-and-file of the unions are nearly as diverse as the city, though the cops and teachers and firefighters have union leaders named Lynch and  Cassidy and Mulgrew.

Yes, the historically Irish Transit Workers union leader is named John Samuelson.  But even he has a son named Jack Duggan Samuelson, thanks to the old Irish ballad.

Moynihan and many others have suggested the Irish could have done more with the power they accumulated.  Others still suggest that had the Irish shared their power they might have made a more just society.

In an important new book to be published in March, entitled The Irish Way, Professor James R. Barrett writes about the Irish in America: “Their most common impulse was to exclude: to bar more recent immigrants, women and people of color from jobs and unions, to discriminate against women and minorities, and to fight more radical groups in the labor movement.”

If this is not excusable, is it at least understandable?  Given what the Irish went through?

There are, of course, plenty of harsh things to say about the Irish influence on the American Catholic Church.

But imagine if you had told “Dagger” John Hughes that the Irish would rule Catholic New York for nearly 200 years?  It would have sent his head spinning.

Yes, they should face the reality of the changing times and the changing faces in the pews.

Yes, the church was a force social mobility, but at a high price when it came to conformity and sexuality.

But maybe for this week, just this week, we should acknowledge this amazing fete.  That the Irish in
America obtained and maintain influence, not for its own sake, or in the name of making the world a
better place.

The amazing thing is that it happened in the first place.

Could they have done more?  Of course.

Let’s not forget the biggest miracle -- that they did it at all.

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