Navy SEALS tragedy in Afghanistan chronicled in new film, “Lone Survivors”

Mark Wahlberg in a scene from Lone Survivor.

Patrick Robinson knows about war.

Though born in England, Robinson’s family has deep roots in Ireland, and a great uncle of his even fought in the Easter Rising in 1916.

Nearly 100 years later, Robinson – who lived for over a decade in Ireland before recently moving –  helped Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell tell the unforgettable story that is at the heart of the film "Lone Survivor," which opens on December 27 and stars Mark Wahlberg.

Luttrell was one of four Navy SEALs on a June 2005 mission in Afghanistan’s Kunar province. The mission was compromised and the team came under heavy Taliban fire.

Luttrell’s team included Long Island native and Irish American Lieutenant Mike Murphy, who sacrificed his own life by exposing himself to enemy fire in an effort to radio for help. Murphy was indeed killed, and became the first serviceman in Afghanistan to be awarded the Medal of Honor.

Unfortunately the mission took an even darker turn. A missile struck the helicopter carrying servicemen hoping to save Murphy, Luttrell and the rest of the SEALs, killing all 16 men on board.

The release of "Lone Survivor" is sure to bring renewed attention to Lutrell, Murphy and the bravery and sacrifice of those who fell that day.

Robinson, though, is now out telling a new story of bravery involving Irish Americans. This story’s ending is not as tragic as the one that inspired "Lone Survivor," but the soldiers faced terrible adversity on and off the battlefield.

“It really is a shocking story,” Robinson told me in a phone interview last week.

Robinson explores the saga of Navy SEALs Matthew McCabe and Jonathan Keefe in his new book "Honor and Betrayal," which, according to its sub-title, tells the story “of the Navy SEALs who captured the Butcher of Fallujah – and the shameful ordeal they later endured.”

This story has gotten particularly strong coverage among conservatives, who view it as proof that military brass has become timid during the Obama administration. Maybe, maybe not. But you don’t have to be a Fox-News-loving, Obama-hating right winger to see that what McCabe and Keefe endured is terrible.

This whole saga began, horrifically, on March 31, 2004, in the battle-scarred Iraqi city of Fallujah. On that fateful day, Iraqi insurgents attacked a U.S.-led convoy and eventually killed four private contractors. Video of the attack showed Iraqis triumphantly dragging the victims’ corpses through the streets.

Intelligence suggested the mastermind of the contractors’ murders was Ahmad Hashim Abd al-Isawi, the so-called “Butcher of Fallujah.”

Five years went by before military officials believed they had a chance to apprehend the notorious butcher. Enter Navy SEALs McCabe (who grew up outside of Toledo, Ohio) and Keefe (from Virginia), members of a team charged with conducting a nighttime raid on a house believed to contain al-Isawi.

McCabe led the team into the house and while searching came upon a man matching al-Isawi’s description, who was also reaching for a gun when confronted by McCabe.

Initial reports suggest the apprehension of al-Isawi was “textbook.”  However, al-Isawi later claimed he was beaten and abused, and offered up the blood on his shirt as proof. McCabe and Keefe were eventually courtmartialed.

Robinson and others, however, note that al Qaeda leaders often encourage anyone captured by Americans to claim abuse at the hands of their captors.

A few years back, with the prisoner abuse of Abu Ghraib still fresh in international minds, military officials were apparently nervous about yet another scandal. So Keefe, McCabe and an additional SEAL were encouraged to confess to their own misdeeds.

They refused, arguing they had nothing to confess. Robinson believes the blood was the result of a sore on al-Isawi’s lip.

In the spring of 2010, Keefe and McCabe were found not guilty by a military jury.

As the war on terror drags on, it’s important to remember that the survivor in the Hollywood movie may indeed be “lone.”  However, he is far from alone when it comes to enduring the horrors of war.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.net)

“Philomena’s” story is just one example of the forced adoption of Irish children (VIDEO)

Judi Dench and Steve Coogan in a scene from Philomena.

Critics and audiences are applauding "Philomena," the new film starring Judi Dench and Steve Coogan. It’s about an Irish mother who becomes pregnant and is more or less forced by local nuns to give up the child for adoption.

In the movie, the two main characters take a trip to America to track down Philomena’s long lost son. Such a trip never happened, though it does raise important questions.

The understandable focus on the pain of an Irish mother who never knew her son makes it easy to forget the pain of a son, in the U.S., who never met his mother.

Philomena’s son was born Anthony Lee. He was raised in the U.S. as Michael Hess. He became a mover and shaker in the national Republican Party, ultimately serving as top legal counsel to President George Bush Sr.

But Hess was hiding a secret from his Republican pals. He was gay.

He also longed to be reunited with his Irish mother. As The New York Times noted this week, “As he was dying of AIDS in 1995, he requested that his ashes be buried at the convent [in Ireland where he was put up for adoption], in case his mother should ever come looking for him.”

For a people so passionate about the past, an Irish American’s longing for roots he never knew might seem unusual. But over the course of Irish American history, there are unfortunately many stories of children separated at young ages from their parents and compelled to grow up in strange, sometimes abusive, new surroundings.

And even if they were relocated to loving homes (as Michael Hess seems to have been, raised by a Catholic family in St. Louis), these Irish children were forced to grow up detached from the faith and culture into which they were born.

Perhaps the most prominent and controversial symbol of this was the Children’s Aid Society, which ran so-called “orphan trains” for Irish and other immigrant children in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Supporters argued that large numbers of Irish kids were wandering big city streets homeless, and that relocating them to loving families in the mid-West was a blessing.

Critics, however, note that the children were often exploited for their ability to labor on farms.

“At its worst it was not much better than slavery,” author Christina Baker Kline said in a recent NPR interview.

Earlier this year, Kline did extensive research for her novel "Orphan Train," which features a young Irish girl named Niamh who loses her family in a tenement fire.

Orphan train children “were all between the ages of mostly two — but sometimes as young as babies, baby trains were called ‘mercy trains’ — and up to the age of 14. Those 14-year-old boys, 12- to 14-year-old boys, were the most in demand because obviously they were labor,” Kline said.

It also did not help that Children’s Aid Society founder Charles Loring Brace had an extensive record of anti-Catholic writing, and was open to the charge that he was taking Catholics off the dirty city streets in order to convert them into Protestants.

According to Kline, the extent of the era’s anti-Irish sentiment went to bizarre lengths.

“I came across a newspaper article from The New York Times about how the trains that were being sent were not allowing redheads,” she said.

During a heated exchange of letters in The New York Times back in 2001, Irish American novelist and historian Peter Quinn said the Children’s Aid Society “was not merely a compassionate agent of charitable relief...but an active partner with the courts and Protestant proselytizing societies in seeking to ‘redeem’ Irish Catholic children from a cultural-religious identity considered destructive of personal virtue and moral behavior.”

Of course, many Irish “orphan train” children grew up to live happy and productive lives. But the pervasive sense of dislocation and loss these children must have felt – especially after their own parents endured the trauma and uncertainty of emigration – is a rarely-discussed aspect of the Irish experience in America.

Perhaps the tragic story of Philomena Lee, and her son’s ultimately fruitless quest to reclaim a past he never knew, will help heal the wounds of the past.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Mayor-elect de Blasio blundered by not including Catholic on transition team

New York City Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio.

It's the Battle of the Bills!

In this corner, newly elected New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, who rode a wave of liberal/progressive populism to City Hall.

And in the other corner, Irish American Bill Donahue, who leads the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights, and who blasted de Blasio last week, noting that the new mayor’s 60-person transition team is light on Catholics.

“There are two ministers, two rabbis and one imam on the transition committee. There are no Catholic priests,” fumed Donohue. “Catholics make up 52.5 percent of New York, yet they have no clergy representation.

“This is not an oversight. Every attempt was made to include persons from virtually every sector of New York. This was clearly done by design. Looks like de Blasio’s politics of inclusion has its limits.”

Well, Happy Thanksgiving to you, too.

Look, first things first. This was a blunder on de Blasio’s part.

Of course, we’ve come a long way since New York City mayors had to pay special attention to the three “I”s — Ireland, Italy and Israel. Nevertheless, it’s not like Irish Americans and other white ethnic Catholics have vanished completely from the political landscape. From the northern Bronx to Staten Island to the Rockaways, there are still solidly Irish enclaves across New York City.

Did they vote heavily for de Blasio? Um, no. Even in an election where de Blasio won three out of every four votes, he fared poorly among white Catholics.

As a New York Times report noted, “Mr. de Blasio didn’t fare so well in white Catholic areas in places like Staten Island, Middle Village and Howard Beach, where Mr. Bloomberg won by 3 to 1 in 2009. [Joe] Lhota still managed a margin of 2 to 1.”

In one voting district in the heavily Irish Breezy Point neighborhood in Queens, de Blasio barely got 12 percent of the vote. Ditto central Staten Island.

In another election district in traditionally Irish Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, de Blasio barely got 20 percent of the vote. In one Far Rockaways precinct, de Blasio got exactly 7.4 percent of the vote.

So, theoretically, de Blasio’s camp could argue that since Irish Americans and other white Catholics did not support their campaign, they may need to focus on areas where they received more support.

But that’s lame on two levels. First of all, de Blasio’s administration should reach out to those who voted for Republican candidate Lhota, to perhaps find common ground on various issues.

More importantly, Hispanics – who did vote in large numbers for de Blasio – are Catholic, too. So de Blasio goofed by deciding that, when striving for diversity, Catholics are unimportant.

This reflects a larger problem with liberal and progressive political types. They remain rather uncomfortable with religion in general and Catholicism in particular.

Coming on the heels of the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination, it’s important to note that there is a rich tradition of anti-Catholicism among not only close-minded bigots, but also high-minded progressive intellectual types who tend to view religion as oppressive and corrupt.

But angry conservative Catholics like Donohue should be careful what they wish for.

Here is where de Blasio really screwed up. He does not need to appoint a token Irish Catholic right winger in the mold of Sean Hannity just to prove that he is open minded. If he put any effort into the task at all, de Blasio would have no problem locating a Catholic priest whose views on economic equality and social justice match his own just fine.

As former Bill Thompson campaign adviser Bruce Gyory noted in the Daily News, “(T)he church has been a dependable ally for progressives on other causes, including immigration, fighting hospital and mental-health cuts and preserving social-service spending.”

Sure, de Blasio would have to have an honest debate with such a devout Catholic on issues such as abortion and gay rights.

But isn’t that a debate worth having not only in New York City, but within the entire American Catholic church?

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Kennedy’s greatest legacy: proving that the Irish could be American, too

John F Kennedy greeted by crowds waving American flags in Ireland
(Photo: JFK50Ireland)

PHOTOS - John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Life in Pictures

On November 25, 1963, John F. Kennedy’s young son was famously photographed saluting his father, as the president’s flag-draped coffin passed mourning family members as part of the somber funeral procession through Washington.

What is less well known is that November 25 was also young John F. Kennedy Jr.’s third birthday.
Until his own untimely death in 1999, with the approach of every birthday, JFK Jr. was forced to recall his own father’s violent passing on November 22, 1963, now 50 years ago.

Then again, that date is still so burned into the nation’s psyche that most Americans took note of the assassination anniversary every time late November rolled around. 

Try this quiz.  Ask anyone when JFK was assassinated and it’s a good bet they know the date. 
Then ask when JFK was born.  Good luck with that.

The glut of books, documentaries and other TV specials revolving around the 50th anniversary of JFK’s assassination have looked at the events and people linked with this tragedy from nearly every angle.

However, one important aspect of JFK’s death that has not been discussed much is just how distinctly Irish the somber proceedings were.

Over two dozen Irish Army cadets were invited by JFK’s grieving widow, Jackie Kennedy, to perform a drill that had so impressed Kennedy when he visited Ireland just a few months earlier, in June of 1963.

“How I envied you being in Ireland with him,” Jackie is said to have told Dave Powers and Kenny O’Donnell, advisers who were members of JFK’s so-called Irish Mafia.

Meanwhile, when the funeral procession left the White House, family members made sure that Irish music accompanied the president on his final journey, including “Come Back to Erin” and “The Boys of Wexford,” according to Thomas Maier’s excellent book The Kennedys: America’s Emerald Kings.

Perhaps the most interesting song played, however, was one set to words written by Boston Cardinal William O’Connell, entitled “The Cross and the Flag.” 

When we think of great lyrics, we tend not to think of clergymen.  But O’Connell is said to have written this angry song as a direct rebuke to anti-Irish and anti-Catholic bigots who proudly resurrected the Ku Klux Klan in the 1920s.

“Hail banner of our native land / Great ensign of the free / We love thy glorious stars and stripes / Emblem of liberty,” O’Connell wrote in one section of this song whose purpose was to refute the bigoted idea that Catholic immigrants could never be loyal to the U.S.

“Lift high the Cross / unfurl the flag / May they forever stand / United in our hearts and hopes / God and our native land.”

And if he did nothing else, John F. Kennedy -- the first “minority president” as Thomas Maier calls him -- finally did prove that Irish Catholics could be loyal Americans.

This was no small matter.  Just six years before Kennedy’s election, best-selling author Paul Blanshard published a screed entitled The Irish and Catholic Power, which made the argument that foreigners in general and Irish Catholics in particular should not and could not be trusted by Americans.  A few years earlier, Blanshard made the same arguments about Roman Catholics in his best seller American Freedom and Catholic Power.

So, for proving to bigots that the Irish could be loyal Americans (if not necessarily loyal husbands), we owe JFK a great debt.

What else is there to say about JFK 50 years after his assassination?  Was he a great president?  Hardly.  For those who argue he would have realized his greatness in his second term, it’s just as likely things would have gone horribly wrong.

The fascination with JFK, and all the whacked-out assassination conspiracies, really says more about us as a nation.  Life before November 22, 1963 was hardly a paradise.  But the years that followed, the explosions in war and technology, paranoia and violence, truly were frightening. 

Nostalgic visions of Camelot tend to soothe us. Also soothing -- oddly -- is the belief that vast powers must have been at work to topple this handsome king.  But no, it was just a nut with a gun, as it usually is.

There is one more thing we should know about JFK. He was born on May 29, 1917.

PHOTOS - John Fitzgerald Kennedy: A Life in Pictures


(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

The hypocritical Irish American right-wing anti-immigration reform “Lynch” mob

Dennis Michael Lynch.

You gotta love it when folks named Hannity and Kelly can sit around with a dude named Dennis Michael Lynch and moan about how the damn foreigners are just ruining America.

But this is what the debate over immigration has come to -- a bunch of conservative Irish Americans on Fox News implying that immigrants are to blame for everything from trans fats to terrorism.
And you know what?  This tactic is working.

Movers and shakers in both the Republican and Democratic parties believe the time is now for substantial immigration reform.  Last week, President Obama met with CEOs -- corporate titans, for heaven’s sake -- who were open to immigration reform.

As the Associated Press reported, “Obama said some ‘unlikely bedfellows’ are supporting immigration reform from the liberal and conservative side. The U.S. Chamber is sending 50 small business owners to meet with lawmakers...while the (labor union) AFL-CIO planned...to announce new political actions to push for passage.”

So, it sounds like people on both sides of the aisle are acknowledging that something should be done to secure the borders and bring the undocumented out of the shadows.

Obama -- still bruised by the horrendous roll out of Obamacare -- was hoping the labor unions and CEOs would build momentum for the passage of an immigration bill before Congress left Washington for the year.

Well, that didn’t happen.  Congressional leaders now say there’s not enough time to take up the issue this year.

Why is the debate stalled?  Irish Americans like Dennis Michael Lynch, for starters.

Lynch is a prosperous businessman who was born in Hicksville, Long Island.  In recent years he has reinvented himself as a documentary filmmaker whose two movies, They Come to America One and Two, earned raves from those who believe immigrants are bent on destroying America.

“It’s a must-see,” gushes fellow Irish American and Fox news commentator Sean Hannity.  Lynch has also appeared regularly on Fox with yet another Irish American, Megyn Kelly.

Lynch, and those who agree with him, generally argue they don’t hate immigrants themselves.  However, they feel America’s borders are wide open, which leaves the country vulnerable to criminals and terrorists.  They also believe immigrants are using up American services and taking jobs.

I guess at this point I should note that I don’t want America to face a hellfire apocalypse.  And yes, I do love my children, even if folks like Lynch might make you feel otherwise, since they generally equate sympathy for immigration with sympathy for rapists and drug lords.

So, yes, of course American law enforcement should do everything they can to keep criminals out.  The trouble for Irish Americans like Lynch is that much of his rhetoric sounds as if it comes right from the anti-Irish Know Nothing playbook.

The idea that only savage criminals and freeloaders are pouring into the U.S. was pushed for decades by anti-Irish bigots who wanted to “save” America.  Yet somehow we survived the 19th century.
Irish Americans have a particular duty to at least be sensible when discussing immigration, mainly because their own grandparents and great-grandparents faced Lynch’s style of manipulative, paranoid nativism.

The fact is, from New York and Boston to tiny little towns across the mid-west, immigrants have generally revitalized local economies.  Do you think the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would support immigration reform if it was bad for business?

As for crime, yes, immigrants have their fair share of bad people. Oh, as opposed to the well-behaved American-born population?

And let’s end this naive idea that all immigrants back in the good old days were legal.  There were no federal immigration laws until the later 19th century, and so many families with immigrant roots have a secret about a grandfather who crossed the Canadian border or uncle who came to the U.S. for a “vacation” and forgot to go home.

Lynch is currently crossing the country, whipping up support for his ideas.  If you’re Irish American, feel free to go hear him speak.

Just don’t mention that your grandfather once probably took a “real” American’s job.  Because Lynch’s grandfather probably did the same.

(Contact “Sidewalks: at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Don’t cheer just yet, Pope appoints new bishop who went after outspoken US nuns

Bishop Leonard P. Blair.

Much attention was paid this week when rumor spread that an Irish academic named Linda Hogan may well become the first female cardinal in Rome.

“She’s married and a feminist to boot, but Irish theologian Linda Hogan is being touted as a candidate to become the first female ‘prince’ of the Catholic Church,” is how the New York Daily News breathlessly reported the rumor.

While canon law says only men can become cardinals, the pope is free to ignore such rules.  A papal spokesperson said, “No nomination of women cardinals are due.”

Nevertheless, the rumor seemed to confirm the feeling that Pope Francis may indeed support radical change within the Vatican.

What did not receive much attention this week was an actual appointment Pope Francis made.  Leonard P. Blair, the bishop of Toledo, was named archbishop of Hartford.

What’s the connection?

Just over a year ago, a group of nuns led by Irish American Pat Farrell were causing some trouble by speaking out on women’s issues and the church.

The group, officially known as the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), challenged fundamental aspects of church theology, raising questions about issues ranging from abortion to the ordination of women into the priesthood.

“I think there are many issues in the Catholic Church right now that could leave the faithful somewhat demoralized,” Sister Pat told NPR earlier this year.

“And I think that the climate of scandal and abuse is one piece of that. The declining membership is another piece. The great and deep spiritual hunger of our time is another issue.”

Sister Pat later added, “In other parts of society the roles for women have expanded. So the places where young women today can experience greater leadership typically are not within the Catholic Church.”

In light of these comments, it is tempting to see the rumor about a female cardinal as a breath of fresh air, a possible step forward, a new beginning for the church and its relationship with women.

Which brings us to our friend Leonard P. Blair, the newly-minted archbishop of Hartford. Blair assumed this position on October 29, just days before the rumor broke that we might have an Irish female cardinal. Pope Francis, of course, appointed Blair to his new position.

Blair is no stranger to the Vatican. He was also charged, a few years back, with investigating a certain nuns’ organization that had been vocally critical of the church and its treatment of women.

That’s right. When the Vatican needed someone to take a close look at pesky Sister Pat and the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, it was Blair who submitted a report that was critical of the organization.

After reviewing the report Blair worked on, the Vatican announced that LCWR had “serious doctrinal problems.”

Blair personally expressed “great disappointment” at LCWR’s leader Sister Pat, who suggested the church may want to consider its blanket opposition to abortion.

More broadly, Blair argued that LCWR should think again about trying to reform the church.

“If by dialogue (LCWR) mean that the doctrines of the church are negotiable and the bishops represent one position and the LCWR presents another position, and somehow we find a middle ground about basic church teaching on faith and morals, then no,” Blair was quoted as saying in 2012.

“I don’t think that is the kind of dialogue that the Holy See would envision.”

It’s not to say that rumored Irish female cardinal Hogan is not a fascinating person. A vice provost of Dublin’s Trinity College, she is also a founding member of the International Association of Catholic Social Thought. She’s also written several books on gender and religion, including "Feminist Catholic Theological Ethics: Conversations in the World Church."

However, while the rumors about a female cardinal may make an interesting story, the elevation to archbishop of Leonard Blair by Pope Francis might actually say a whole lot more about how church big wigs feel about women.

Irish America’s other Halloween, the Ragamuffin’s of Thanksgiving

A little monsters geared up for the Ragamuffin's Parade...not Halloween (Photo: NYDailyNews)

I like to joke with my mother about how rough I had it growing up.  The joke is that I know I had it a whole lot easier than she did growing up in Brooklyn and New Jersey, where sometimes her parents and their five children lived in one- or two-bedroom apartments.

But even I was taken aback when my mom once told me her brothers and sister used to go begging door-to-door -- and it wasn’t even on Halloween!

But it turns out the begging my mother was talking about had nothing to do with poverty.  Though it’s not widely remembered these days, there once was a time when Halloween was not the primary day for dressing up and knocking on doors seeking tricks or treats.

In the first half of the 20th century, particularly in heavily Irish neighborhoods, the best day for begging -- not to mention often violent and dangerous behavior -- was actually Thanksgiving morning.

This was the day kids would dress up in sloppy clothes and transform themselves into little Ragamuffins. They would knock on doors and shout “Anything for Thanksgiving!”  The hope was that the kindly homeowner would offer up tasty treats -- just as millions of kids hope for this week on Halloween.

Ragamuffin activities were particularly popular in Irish neighborhoods, and gave kids a chance to -- shall we say -- try on different identities.

Jack O’Leary, for example, was an Irish American mover and shaker in the New York State Conservative Party.  But in his memoir Playing it Well, O’Leary wrote lovingly of wearing his “mother’s face powder, lipstick and rouge” on Ragamuffin Day.

Indeed, it was very common for young boys to wear makeup or dress up in girls’ clothing on Ragamuffin Day.

Meanwhile, in 1995, a New York Times letter writer named Jim Tierney recalled a particularly Irish spin on Ragamuffin Day.

“On Thanksgiving we dressed as Ragamuffins -- three Irish-American kids -- and went from backyard to backyard, pub to pub, looking for handouts. But with a difference. We played Irish traditional music on the fiddle and flute and sang and danced to it. We sometimes earned $45 for the day. The best money was made playing ‘The Stack of Barley’ and singing ‘A Nation Once Again.’”

What could New Yorkers a century ago expect to see on this Halloween that was not really Halloween?

The streets might be filled with bizarrely dressed boys and girls not-so-gently requesting money or gifts, “amateur beggars” deemed “a plague” by The New York Times as far back as 1907.  At night, children as young as five prowled their neighborhoods dressed as Indians with makeup, greasepaint or burnt cork on their faces.

They also lit huge bonfires, which led to a fair share of tragedies.  In 1913, a six-year-old Bronx boy (wearing his sister’s dress) was badly burned as he danced around a bonfire.

Gunfire and gang fights broke out in Brooklyn as packs of Ragamuffins crossed each other’s paths in 1906 and 1907.  Even less explicitly violent behavior created tension.

In the classic novel "A Tree Grows in Brooklyn," Betty Smith writes, “Most children brought up in Brooklyn before the First World War remember Thanksgiving Day…children went around ‘Ragamuffin’ or ‘slamming gates’ wearing costumes topped off by a penny mask.”

Smith’s main character Francie Nolan buys a “yellow Chinaman [mask] with a sleazy rope mandarin mustache.”  Her brother Neely wears one of his mother’s old dresses with “stuffed wadded newspapers in the front to make an enormous bust.”

The streets are “jammed with masked and costumed children making a deafening din with their penny tin horns.”  Some storekeepers lock their doors to keep the noisy panhandlers out while others unleash “profane lectures on the evils of begging.”

Police and school officials regularly cracked down on Ragamuffins and begging. The ascension of Halloween and calls for more orderly Thanksgiving celebrations seemed to hasten the demise of the Ragamuffin traditions.

But the tradition has not completely vanished.  Every October, community organizers in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, host a Ragamuffin parade.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Why all Irish Americans are not all white any more

Cuban-American writer Oscar Hijuelos.

Every Saturday I have the privilege to teach a class at the New York City College of Technology in downtown Brooklyn. The students are highly-motivated high school juniors and seniors who are reading, writing and earning college credits when they could, instead, be sleeping in on Saturday morning.

I’ve been teaching this class for a number of years, and while there are many immigrants and children of immigrants, it’s probably no surprise that I have yet to come across anyone from Ireland or even a student with identifiable Irish roots.

Suffice it to say, if you come across a Murphy or an O’Neal in my classroom, they look like actor Eddie Murphy or basketball legend Shaquille O’Neal.

So it was a surprise on a recent Saturday when a student — after asking about some of the Irish writing I’ve done — enthusiastically replied that she, too, has Irish roots. You couldn’t tell it by her name or by looking at her.

And yet, to some degree, isn’t that increasingly what it means to be Irish American in the 21st century?

This occurred to me after I read about the untimely passing of the great Cuban-American writer Oscar Hijuelos at the age of 62.  Hijuelos is best known for his novel "The Mambo Kings Play Songs of Love," which was made into a fine movie starring Antonia Banderas.

But one of Hijuelos’ lesser-knows novels also has one of the great melting pot titles of all time — "The Fourteen Sisters of Emilio Montez O’Brien."

In that 1993 book, Hijuelos took a close look at a Pennsylvania family whose roots lie deep in Cuba as well as Ireland.

Critics praised the sympathy with which Hijuelos explored this family with a split ethnic identity, which you might also more simply call an “American” family.

It should not be surprising to learn that Hijuleos’ own family tree was tinged with green. A great-great grandfather on Hijelous’ father’s side was Irish, hence this Cuban’s fair skin and light hair. (One critic once joked that at Hijuelos readings, attendants expected a suave Ricky Ricardo-type and were shocked to see someone who looked more like nebbishy George Costanza from Seinfeld.)

Of course, there is a temptation to say that Hijuelos isn’t “really” Irish. There is a temptation to say that being so liberal with Irish identity threatens to water it down. That if it can mean anything to be Irish, it might also mean nothing.

This is understandable. One need only look at the much-hyped initiative in Ireland known as The Gathering.

Aimed at the 70 or so million people abroad who claim Irish ancestry, organizers argue that it is a celebration of the Irish diaspora. However, it can also look like the most important shade of green here is the money tourists from all over brought with them to spend on the Emerald Isle.

These are all valid points.  And yet, certain realities are unavoidable, especially when we talk about Irish identity in America.

Assimilation is a fact of life, and as their Irish immigrant roots grow more distant Irish Americans will need to ask themselves what, exactly, it is that makes them Irish? And not just on March 17.

The model offered by Oscar Hijuelos is an important one. Embracing one aspect of your identity need not necessarily mean ignoring all others.

It means understanding what the Irish did when they got here and how they forever changed America — and that includes (I would argue) believing religion, government and continued immigration should play a key role in America’s future.

The future of Irish America, to some degree, depends on Irish Americans willing to (if you will) locate and celebrate their green heritage within a broader, colorful rainbow.

The same week Oscar Hijuelos died, a priest from the Bronx also passed away.

Father John Grange was “a Spanish-speaking son of Irish Americans who helped rebuild the impoverished South Bronx parish where he was raised into a more hospitable and promising place for Hispanic immigrants,” according to The New York Times.

Grange was so immersed in the lives of his immigrant parishioners he once claimed, “I think I’ve lost my Irish identity.”

That’s not what I think. I think he found a new way to express his Irish identity which was a perfect fit for the 21st century.

Read more: Everyday is St Patrick’s Day, what would we be if not Irish

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Irish mafia takes another hit with death of JFK aide Ralph Dungan

Ralph Dungan.  Source: jfklibrary.org

On February 17, 1961, Life magazine ran a lengthy article about newly-inaugurated President John F. Kennedy’s new cabinet, entitled “Kennedy’s Best Men Move Into Power.” At one point, Life staff writer Robert Coughlan profiles Kennedy’s inner circle of trusted advisors.

“Lawrence O’Brien, Kenneth O’Donnell and Ralph Dungan are often referred to in Washington as the I.R.A. (Irish Republican Army), a term they don’t think is very funny,” Coughlan writes.

This Hibernian trio (along with Richard “Dick” Donahue and Dave Powers, whose parents were from Cork) were more commonly known as Kennedy’s Irish Mafia -- or “Murphia,” as Jackie Kennedy was known to quip.

With the 50th anniversary of that terrible day in November looming, JFK’s Irish Mafia lost another member this week.

Dungan, a Kennedy aide who specialized in Latin American affairs and later revamped New Jersey’s higher education system, died at the age of 90.

That leaves Richard K. Donahue, currently serving as a vice chairperson of the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, as the last surviving member of Kennedy’s Irish Army.

O’Donnell -- who took the deaths of Jack and Bobby very hard -- died in 1977, when he was just 54 years old.

Powers, meanwhile, became a driving force behind the JFK Library and Museum in Boston and served as curator when it opened in 1979. He died in 1998 at the age of 85.

Finally, O’Brien -- who served as chairman of the Democratic National Committee and later became commissioner of the National Basketball Association -- died in 1990 at the age of 73.

And now Ralph Anthony Dungan is gone. He was born in Philadelphia. His own father (also Ralph) was a lawyer who was a mover and shaker in local political circles.

As JFK also did, Dungan served in the Navy during World War II. Dungan was a pilot and flight instructor, and attended St. Joseph’s College in Philadelphia after the war on the G.I. Bill.

He met his future wife, the former Mary Theresa Rowley, while at St. Joseph’s. The couple would eventually marry and have eight children. (One died in infancy.)

Dungan’s Washington career began in the early 1950s, after he graduated from Princeton with a Master’s Degree in Public Administration. He served as an analyst for the obscure Bureau of the Budget.

However, in 1956, he was tapped to work as a legislative assistant in the office of upstart Senator John F. Kennedy. Not only was JFK headed for a landslide Senate re-election in 1958, but all political insiders knew that Kennedy also had his eyes on the White House in 1960.

Kennedy had already made a run for the Vice Presidential slot in 1956, narrowly losing out to Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver, who was a household name at the time thanks to his chairmanship of an organized crime commission whose hearings drew huge TV ratings.

So when Dungan joined Kennedy’s office, he must have known he had a shot at making history, joining the first Irish Catholic in the White House. And he did just that.

After working on the campaign, Dungan joined JFK’s staff. As Life magazine described him in February 1961, “Dungan has spent most of his time so far on the talent hunt, and on setting up the White House staff machinery.”

Dungan quickly became a member of Kennedy’s inner circle. His specialties were recruiting talent as well as foreign affairs, particularly in Latin America.

After JFK’s assassination, Dungan stayed on to assist President Johnson’s transition. LBJ later named Dungan as ambassador to Chile, a post he served for three tumultuous years in the mid-1960s.

Things didn’t get any easier for Dungan in the 1970s when he became Chancellor for New Jersey higher education, doing battle with professors and university presidents, radically overhauling education in the Garden State.

Dungan was “a man of integrity and intelligence, a good liberal who was sensitive to the crosscurrents in our relations in Latin America,” presidential historian Robert Dallek told The New York Times this week. “He was a man of consequence to both Kennedy and Johnson.”

And so, as we look somberly to November 22, Camelot’s Irish Mafia is down to its last member.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Irish political machine solution for Washington’s mess

Frank Hague.

They may have been corrupt, cigar-chomping crooks and even -- as one new book calls them -- “dictators.”  But they also knew how to cut deals and compromise and, you know, keep the government functioning.

Who would have guessed we would get to the point where we would look back at notorious Irish American political machines for lessons about good government?  Or at least working government.

“One thing about the political machines of the early 20th century — they were run by pragmatic politicians who understood the importance of consensus,” notes Irish American author Terry Golway, whose new book Machine Made: Tammany Hall and the Creation of American Politics, will be published in March by W.W. Norton.

“Yes, they rammed through legislation on occasion. In fact, famed Republican boss Tom Platt rammed through the consolidation of Greater New York City in the 1890s when the GOP was riding high in the state. But they would never have shut down the government to achieve a legislative or ideological goal.”

Of course, there’s lots of blame to go around for the stalemate in Washington.  Democrats were handed this gift by loony-bin Republicans, yet they keep allowing themselves to get dragged into this debate as if there were...well, something to actually debate.

Last I heard, the time for debate over Obamacare was, you know, before the bill actually passed through Congress and was signed by the president.
These right wing types revere the Constitution, yet they are apparently anxious to fiddle with that document by allotting time to debate a bill after its passage as well as before.

Either way, conservatives seem downright gleeful because they consider the federal government pointless -- at least when it’s not funneling money to military bases in their districts.

Of course, I wouldn’t dare mention food stamps.  Republicans, apparently, never go hungry. (Even though, as The Atlantic recently noted, “When most House Republicans talk about cutting food stamps, they’re saying that they’re okay with the idea that at least one out of every 10 households in their district will have a tougher time putting food on the table, and will have less money to spend on local businesses.”)

Anyway, what we are missing, at this point, are solutions.  That’s where Irish American machine politicians come in.

For all of their flaws, today’s Washington politicians could learn a thing of two from these Hibernian denizens of smoke-filled backrooms.

Steven Hart, a New Jersey-based author, has just released a new book called American Dictators: Frank Hague, Nucky Johnson and the Perfection of the Urban Political Machine (Rivergate).

Johnson is the basis for Steve Buscemi’s character on Boardwalk Empire.  Hague, meanwhile, was born in Jersey City in 1876.

He was one of eight children born to immigrants from Cavan. This put the Hagues in the minority, since their section of Jersey City’s Second Ward was often referred to as “Cork Row.”

Hague served an astonishing 30 years as Jersey City mayor and was a powerhouse in regional as well as national Democratic circles.  He was also not shy about wielding his power.  He was known for proclaiming “I am the law.”

You may not have liked what Hague got done.  You may not have liked how Hague got things done.  But he did get things done.

“One of Frank Hague’s most striking qualities as a political boss was his ability to wield power and achieve his goals even though, as a Democratic Party leader, he was officially persona non grata with the Republican-dominated legislature,” Steven Hart told me this week.

“His ability to cut deals with cooperative Republicans, and even throw elections to Republican candidates he thought he could work with, was a constant source of frustration to the GOP leadership, who denounced ‘Hagueism’ as a blotch on civic life.  One of the sternest critics of Hagueism was Walter Edge, who benefited from Hagueism to win his first term as governor, then denounced it to win his second.”

It may be a stretch to say the machines resided over the good old days.  But at least they presided over something.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Why BBC America’s New York Irish 'Copper' will be missed (VIDEO)

The cast of BBC America's "Copper."

Copper was not a perfect television show.  Let’s start with the obvious — the BBC is not exactly the ideal company to produce an epic drama of the Irish.

So, when news broke last week that Copper had been cancelled despite being one of its network’s highest-rated shows, it was a little more than tempting to see the Union Jack maneuvering to sink the green, white and gold yet again.

But to give credit where credit is due, there were more than a few explicit denunciations of the Brits on the show.  Irish characters regularly laid blame for the Great Hunger, and for centuries of oppression, at the feet of the Brits.

Oh sure, there were still critics.  Some were aghast that the lead character was played by a Brit/Welshman, Tom Weston-Jones.  Others objected to the show’s depictions of the Irish.

As I noted in a column last summer, a sign hanging in the window of the Old Town bar on East 18th Street read, “As usual, BBC depicts the New York Irish as a collection of tramps, idlers and thieves.”

Nevertheless, the (flawed) hero of the show was an Irish immigrant, even if his accent tended to shift like the breeze off of the Atlantic in downtown Manhattan, not far from the Five Points neighborhood where the show was set.

If you want to tell the story of the Famine Irish without confronting crime and drink, well, good luck with that.

Meanwhile, though Tammany corruption was central to the show (especially in the just-completed season two), the most corrupt characters on the show were native-born Americans, many of whom were clearly anti-Irish and anti-Catholic.

Ultimately, Copper was a solid drama.  It never rose to the elite heights of cable drama occupied by the likes of Breaking Bad and Mad Men.  Copper tended to lack the psychological depth and complexity which made these shows so compelling.

That all being said, Copper was a damn fine show.  And an important one.

As we continue to stumble our way through immigration reform, too many people still believe America has only had to confront issues of immigration and assimilation since around 1960 or so.
Copper challenged that misconception.  TV generally shies away from dense, complicated, historical realism.  Bravo to Copper for informing, as well as entertaining.

Copper boldly drew comparisons between our past and present, and contained important lessons for people who consider themselves both liberal and conservative on the issue of immigration.

Here’s what liberals could learn from Copper — the Irish were discriminated against, probably much more virulently than anything today’s immigrants face.  And religion was central to their ability to lift themselves up from abject poverty.

Here’s what conservatives could learn from Copper — government (even when it’s as corrupt as Tammany) can help those in need.

Furthermore, if rural Irish Catholics could (eventually) assimilate in 19th century New York, then today’s immigrants will probably have no problem doing the same.

Copper also helped undermine misconceptions peddled by smart folks who should know better.
Michael Barone, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, has a new book out this week called Shaping Our Nation: How Surges of Migration Transformed America and Its Politics (Crown Forum).

Barone has some interesting insights on the Irish.  But then he offers this up.

“The Irish also had a knack for politics. They made their way upward in the nascent urban political machines, just as their more verbally skilled men and women made their way upward through the hierarchy of the Catholic Church.”

A “knack”?  As in, it just came naturally?

As Copper made very clear, the Irish turned to politics because they’d had every other door slammed in their face.  And this “knack” for politics was developed only after years of great struggle against nativists.

So, will Copper be missed?  Perhaps not. As Deadline.com reported this week, Copper “may get a second life on the big screen.... (C)o-creator/executive producer Tom Fontana and fellow (producers) Barry Levinson and Tom Kelly are considering a movie version.”

TV is really the ideal forum for a long-form immigrant saga.  But, as the Irish in Copper know all too well, you have to take what you can get.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Here's the trailer for Season 2:

The shocking views Orson Welles had about the Irish

Orson Welles. Source: Google Images

There was a kerfuffle recently in the race to become the next governor of Virginia.  Apparently Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe – always proud of his Irish roots -- made a joke about how he’d use the persuasive power of drink to prod folks who might disagree with him.

Republican candidate Ken Cuccinelli accused McAuliffe of dabbling in stereotypes.

“Terry McAuliffe insults Irish Americans,” Cuccinelli campaign adviser Chris LaCivita said via Twitter.

You could argue people are being a bit sensitive when it comes to all this.  Because if you really want to hear some nasty things about the Irish, you should book a lunch with legendary filmmaker Orson Welles.

Welles, of course, is dead.  But a new book, My Lunches with Orson, by Henry Jaglom, based on taped conversations, presents Welles’ views on anything and everything.

And boy, did this talented gasbag have a lot to say about the Irish.

Considering that Ireland played a central role in young Orson’s formation, perhaps it would have been better if the Citizen Kane director and famed shill for Paul Masson wine had just politely said, “Thank you.”

Famed actor Spencer Tracy? Welles dismissed him as “one of those bitchy Irishmen.”

Another time Welles added, “Look, I love Ireland, I love Irish literature, I love everything they do.  But the Irish Americans have invented an imitation Ireland which is unspeakable. The wearin’ o’ the green. Oh my God! To vomit!”

Irish Americans, he said, were “a new and terrible race.”

And if there are Irish-born folks out there feeling all superior to Irish Americans, well, Welles had some nasty things to say about you too.
His sociological take on Ireland amounted to an impoverished land in which the women were sexually frustrated and the men simply liked to slug it out.

“It was a culture,” said Welles, “where nobody got married until they were 35 because they were always dreaming of emigrating, and they didn’t want to be stuck with the kids, financially. So all these poor virgin ladies sat around waiting to get married, and the guys are all swinging at each other, reverting to the bestiality of the male.”

And guess who was always there to entertain these frustrated Irish lasses?  You guessed it, suave old Orson.

“I could hardly draw a breath when I visited the Aran Islands,” Welles said. “And these great, marvelous girls in their white petticoats, they’d grab me. Off the petticoats would go. It was as close to male rape as you could imagine.”

Welles even claimed that the women then ran to their local priests to confess.

“I had another confession this morning. When are you leaving?” an exasperated priest once supposedly said to Welles.  “He was protecting the virtue of his flock,” Welles added.

Overall, centuries of colonialism and repression left the Irish with a “passive meanness and cunning,” said Welles.

How did Welles come to, uh, learn so much about Ireland?

He was actually taken there at the ripe old age of 16, with his mind set on becoming a painter.  Never lacking confidence, Welles liked to say he swiftly duped the directors of Dublin’s Gate Theatre into believing he was actually a seasoned American actor.

Welles is also said to have later wooed Wicklow-born Hollywood star Geraldine Fitzgerald, and even fathered her child, Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

One of Welles’ biographers even thinks that Ireland was so important to Welles that he proposed making it the inspiration for Citizen Kane, if a movie were ever to be made about Welles’ life.

“On the wild west coast of Ireland, (Welles) meets a glorious Irish girl -- his first true love,” David Thomson once wrote. “He is tempted to stay there, and she is likely pregnant. But she urges him to continue with his travels -- be all he can be. If there is a child, she says, she will name it Rosebud, after his pretty mouth.”

Thomson further describes the imaginary movie, “(T)he Irish love affair should hang over the whole thing -- along with the notion that he may have left a child there. I think there could even be a return to Ireland, in an attempt to find them -- but the girl has vanished, and thus the sense of loss inspires him in coming towards Citizen Kane and its theme of lost childhood.”

All I can say, Orson, is: “You’re welcome.”

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Writing about the contemporary Catholic Church the right way

Archbishop Diarmuid Martin. Source: Politicsdaily.com

J.F. Powers is often referred to -- if anyone still refers to him, that is -- as a “Catholic writer.”

This is understandable.  His short stories, as well as his highly-praised novels Wheat that Springeth Green (1988) and Morte D’Urban (which won 1963’s National Book Award, are about priests as well as the rewards and challenges of a spiritual life.

But there is much more to Powers’ Catholicism than his meticulous descriptions of parish life in the Midwest.

Powers, whose grandfather came to the U.S. from Waterford, refused to serve in the American military during World War II and spent over a year in prison.

Powers had been drawn to a strain of pacifist Catholicism known as “Detachment.”  He “approved of...its criticism of American materialism and militarism, and its rebuke to complacent middle-class Catholics, who, for all their manifest religiosity, put ‘business sense’ first,” writes Katherine A. Powers (J.F.’s daughter) in a new book called Suitable Accommodations: An Autobiographical Story of Family Life: The Letters of J.F. Powers, 1942-1963.

I thought of Powers when I read that Irish Archbishop Diarmuid Martin leveled some criticism at Catholic writers last weekend at a conference in Kilkenny.

Martin was more concerned with what he called the "growing tendency" towards “tabloidism” in sectors of the Catholic media.

Still, such criticism does raise broader, important questions about what -- if anything -- it means to be a Catholic writer in the 21st century.

Lord knows it’s a good time if you love reading writers who explore Catholic life.  The great Alice McDermott has a new novel out entitled Someone. From Colum McCann and Colm Toibin to Junot Diaz, there are some great Catholic reads out there.

But such a diverse array of writers makes it tempting to say that there really is no point identifying what it is that makes a writer Catholic, since their styles and attitudes vary so widely.

But that’s a bit of a cop out.  To be raised Catholic and write about Catholicism means you are standing up and saying something about the church.  And it need not always be positive.

Nor, however, should a Catholic writer be relentlessly negative, a tempting apple most of us have sampled from time to time.

Consider the great Chicago Irish American writer James T. Farrell.  He is arguably the greatest chronicler of pre-World War II Irish America, particularly in his mammoth Studs Lonigan trilogy.

Too often, however, Farrell (who renounced his own faith) depicts the world of Catholicism as so oppressive and grim that it sometimes undermines his powerful observations.

The best Catholic writers understand that the church and its people and traditions should be explored with subtlety and mystery.

Are there times and issues that demand sharp criticism?  Of course.

As the editor of the Irish Catholic newspaper Michael Kelly told the Irish Independent, "I think many church leaders struggle to understand the role of an independent Catholic press –- loyal to the church while unafraid to point out and highlight what is wrong."

I would add that -- even in the wake of the sex abuse horrors and the insistence that women remain second class citizens within the church hierarchy -- the Catholic Church can remain inspiring for independent-minded writers in the 21st century.

First and foremost, though often offered up as a pillar of conformity, the church, in many ways, remains a countercultural institution.

Let’s return to J.F. Powers.  You may not agree with his pacifism -- in fact, mainstream church leaders didn’t.  Nevertheless, the strength of his convictions is admirable.

More broadly, then and now, it is hard to find voices in America arguing that in the rush to collect material goodies, something deep and profound is lost.  As breathtaking narcissism becomes increasingly normal, how many institutions remain deeply committed to others, to uplifting the down and out?
The church’s own leaders often make it difficult to concentrate on this aspect of the church’s mission.

Perhaps it’s up to the writers to spread the word.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

New York’s big time mayor the always interesting Michael O’Dwyer

The last Irish-born mayor of New York William O'Dwyer

A bunch of people just ran to become New York City’s next mayor.  And you’d need to put all of these decent but bland folks together to come up with a figure as compelling and complex as William O’Dwyer, New York’s last Irish-born mayor who served from 1946-1950.

O’Dwyer -- and all of his inspiring achievements and shady connections -- serves as the inspiration for the character Charlie O’Kane in Kevin Baker’s big, new historical novel The Big Crowd.

Dubbed the literary world’s “sharpest chronicler of New York’s past” by Rolling Stone, this is Baker’s latest exploration of how the Irish have used ambition, politics, religion and occasionally murder to make a permanent mark on New York City.

“O’Dwyer’s story was fascinating to me,” said Baker, seated (appropriately) in the Dead Rabbit, a downtown Manhattan bar heavily inspired by 19th century Irish pubs.

The pub has the kind of look (albeit shiny and scrubbed) familiar to any of the Irish immigrants in Baker’s brilliant 2002 novel Paradise Alley, which features wrenching scenes aboard a Famine-era coffin ship, and which culminates in the New York City Draft Riots.

In The Big Crowd Baker fast forwards nearly a century, to explore how a poor boy from Mayo and his devoted brother reached the height of political power in post-World War II New York, only to see their lives unravel because of romantic entanglements and possible connections to one of New York’s great unsolved crimes.

“O’Dwyer always seemed to be like something Tammany Hall created,” adds Baker with a laugh. 
Who could resist a political run by a poor kid who grew up in a big Mayo family, came to the U.S. at the age of 20, put himself through Fordham and later served honorably in the Army during World War II, rising to the rank of brigadier general?

The famed Irish-dominated political machine Tammany Hall was still riding high in the forties when O’Dwyer first ran for mayor in 1941, losing to the legendary Fiorello LaGuardia.

Also that year (right around Election Day, in fact), a man was found dead outside of the Half-Moon Hotel in Coney Island.  The dead man turned out to be famed Murder Inc. hitman Abe Reles.

Reles managed to fall -- or be pushed -- out the hotel window despite the presence of police officers charged with protecting the onetime hitman, who’d turned snitch and was helping prosecutors jail other reputed members of Murder Inc.

Through the character Charlie O’Kane (whose devoted brother Tommy is loosely based on O’Dwyer’s fiery politician/activist brother Paul), Baker explores O’Dwyer’s possible ties to the Reles killing and broader police corruption scandals, which ultimately compelled O’Dwyer to resign (though he cited health reasons), following his reelection in 1950.

In the end, The Big Crowd is reminiscent of Peter Quinn’s excellent detective story The Man Who Never Returned.  Whereas Quinn laid out a theory for the long-unsolved disappearance of Judge Crater, Baker sets out a theory for Reles’ death.

Along the way, Baker takes us on a vivid tour of New York’s Irish underbelly, particularly the docks made famous in the film classic On the Waterfront. 

Baker’s cast of characters includes colorful figures such as “King” Joe Ryan, president of the longshoreman’s union, waterfront enforcer William McCormack, Murder Inc. hitman Lepke Buchalter and “American Pope” Francis Joseph Cardinal Spellman.

For all of its ties to reality, Baker stresses that while the O’Kane brothers are similar to the O’Dwyers, he’s also added his own twists.

“In the end, this is fiction,” says Baker, born in New Jersey and raised in Massachusetts, whose own family tree includes Murphys from the Bronx.

Ultimately, Baker came away from his extensive research admiring O’Dwyer’s accomplishments, but also feeling he’d become too lax when it came to corruption as well as the broader management of the city.

What is clear is that they don’t make mayoral candidates like William O’Dwyer any more.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan0@gmail.com)

Digging Seamus Heaney in my Brooklyn classroom and around the world

Seamus Heaney

Seamus Heaney died in a Dublin hospital last week at the age of 74, but he will live on for generations in thousands of classrooms, including my own.  I have been teaching Heaney’s poetry to inner city kids from Brooklyn for 10 years now.

True, there are a lot of rural and religious images in Heaney’s poetry that might not be accessible or interesting to 21st century teens in general and Brooklyn kids in particular.

Nevertheless, the Heaney poem “Digging” has played a central role in my teaching.  It is a poem I usually teach the first week of classes.

It is simple and mysterious.  Quiet, and yet a call to arms.  It has some unfamiliar vocabulary words to challenge the students, and employs many of the literary elements (simile, metaphor, repetition) which (unfortunately) have been drained of all their beauty by the bureaucrats who write state examinations.

Ultimately, one of the many messages in “Digging” is a message so important to teenagers. It can be summed up by what were reportedly Heaney’s final words: “Do not be afraid.”

Now, “Digging” is not a perfect poem to teach.  As with many Heaney poems, it begins with agricultural imagery, in this case, the poet’s father digging for potatoes.  Brooklyn kids don’t do much farming these days.

Plus, in the poem’s fifth line, Heaney uses the word “rump,” which inevitably produces giggles from a teenaged crowd.  Heck, even the word “spade” (the shovel used by Heaney’s father) can create problems because it has been used as a racial insult in the past.

But those problems are all beside the point once we take apart the second line, in which Heaney declares that his pen fits in his hand as “snug as a gun.”

Why would he compare a pen to a gun?  Is it possible those things can be similar in any way?

This poem has become so important in my classroom because answering these questions leads to much more fundamental questions. Why do we even bother to teach writing? Why do students need to improve their writing?
In short: Why write?

If you think these are silly questions with self-evident answers, well, you’ve never been in a classroom with resistant students, teenagers whose writing skills haven’t developed much past 4th or 5th grade levels.

They don’t enjoy doing something they can’t do well.  Who does?

It’s my job to not only teach them how to write well, but -- more importantly -- to teach them why it is important to write well.

It’s a job made easier by Seamus Heaney’s “Digging.”  The poem’s speaker observes his father “Stooping in rhythm through potato drills / Where he was digging.”

He later adds, “By God, the old man could handle a spade/Just like his old man.”
So, how does the speaker in the poem feel about his father?  And who is this other “old man?”

Suddenly, this is a multi-generational poem.  Is it important to think about the generations that came before us?  Why?  What do you know about the generations that came before you?

It is around here where students begin making their own connections, how exploring your own family history is a from of “digging.”

I’ll never forget the first time a student’s eyes lit up and noted how the word “roots” matches this poem so perfectly, even before the poem’s speaker mentions “the curt cuts of an edge /Through living roots awaken in my head.”

Then the poem takes its final, radical turn.

“I’ve no spade to follow men like them/Between my finger and my thumb/The squat pen rests/I’ll dig with it.”

Should children do what their parents do?  Why or why not?  And how do you “dig” with a pen anyway?  What can you unearth?

A secret.  A better job.  A lover.  Anything and everything.  Good and bad.
Because a pen is not only like a shovel, but, don’t forget, it is also like a gun.  And there are usually skeptical comments here, because these kids come from tough neighborhoods, and they’ll wonder what this farm boy in the poem knows about guns.

And then I may tell them a little bit about Irish history.  And then they’ll write a little about their own history.

The first day of school in New York City is September 9.  We will continue digging. We will not be afraid.

More to 1963 then John F Kennedy, the Irish Catholic’s USA experience

President John F. Kennedy.

By one count, nearly 50 books about President John F. Kennedy are slated for release this fall, when the 50th anniversary of the first Catholic president’s assassination is upon us.

But for the Irish in America, there is a whole lot more to 1963 then November 22 in Dallas, as traumatic as that event was.

A few weeks back, I finally caught a movie I’d been meaning to watch called The Cardinal.  It was released in 1963 and chronicles the life of an Irish immigrant’s son in Boston, who goes on to become -- you guessed it -- a cardinal.

The movie has some familiar names in it.  Burgess Merideth plays an ailing priest while John Huston steals the show as a wily cardinal.

The film was directed by the great Otto Preminger (Anatomy of a Murder) and featured tragic New York-born Irish American Maggie McNamara (once an Academy Award Best Actress nominee) in her last role. She committed suicide at the age of 49.

The Cardinal earned numerous Academy Award nods and won the Golden Globe for Best Drama.  The three-hour film tackles immigration, assimilation, the Jim Crow south and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

Given this historical sweep, you might think The Cardinal is a near-classic.  But if you’ve long known about this film you’re a more dedicated movie lover than me, because it took a long time before I’d ever heard of it.

The movie is far from perfect.  To say that star Tom Tryon, as ambitious priest Stephen Fermoyle, is wooden would probably be an insult to trees.

But The Cardinal reveals important things about the Catholic experience in America.  In some ways it is the perfect movie for the Kennedy era -- it illustrates how far Irish Catholics had come, as well as problems that would haunt them into the 21st century.

The film confronts abortion in a way that seems striking in 2013, much less 1963.  Fermoyle’s sister (spoiler alert!) becomes pregnant around the time of World War I but there are health complications.  As the family priest, Fermoyle is the one tasked with making a choice that will haunt him forever.
The film also confronts the question of religious diversity, since Fermoyle’s sister wants to marry a Jewish man who very capably debates the priest on theological questions.

The Jim Crow plotline ranges from stereotypical to ridiculous, though to Fermoyle’s credit he forces indifferent southern church leaders to confront the sin of racism before their eyes.

But as one southern Catholic puts it, “We’re a minority down here, too.”  It’s not a great comparison, but it is true that reactionary forces in the U.S. still viewed the church as foreign and threatening.

Were The Cardinal truly bold it would have looked to northern parishes, where there was also plenty of racism, as 1960s and 1970s clashes in Chicago, Boston and elsewhere would show.

Ultimately, The Cardinal is about Irish Catholic triumph in America, but simmering underneath the film are burning questions about the high price paid for that triumph.  The Kennedy family would know a little bit about that, wouldn’t they?

Meanwhile, one reason it took so long for Catholics to assimilate in America was the feeling that they could never leave the bosom of the parish, that they would always be intellectually narrow.

But in 1963, author J.F. Powers won the National Book Award for his novel Morte D’Urban.  (A book about priests, no less!)  Powers, who lived in Ireland for years and is the subject of a new book edited by his daughter called Suitable Accommodations, had already made a name for himself with his short stories.  As Paul Elie recently wrote in Harper’s, “For Catholics, having Powers in The New Yorker was like having Kennedy in The White House.  He had gained entry into the sophisticated world the magazine represented.”

Other Catholics such as Flannery O’Connor, Walker Percy and Katherine Anne Porter received literary awards around 1963, prompting O’Connor herself to say, “(T)his should be some kind of answer to the people who are saying we don’t contribute to the arts.”

When November 22 rolls around, by all means, read some of the JFK books.

But then watch The Cardinal or read some J.F. Powers.  They, too, are central to understanding the Irish Catholic experience in America.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan.blogspot.com)

Irish Catholic Chris Christie's big problem is the Republican Party

Chris Christie

Earlier this summer, Baltimore governor and possible 2016 presidential candidate Martin O’Malley played a concert with his Celtic Rock band O’Malley’s March.  At the show, held in Germantown, Maryland, the Irish American O’Malley discussed a recent trip to Ireland.

But then O’Malley went all New Jersey on the crowd.  That’s when things got interesting.
One of the songs O’Malley performed that night was an angry, Celtic-infused Bruce Springsteen song called “Death to My Hometown.”

After performing the tune, O’Malley said that he hopes Springsteen “doesn’t fall into that Chris Christie crap.”

The New Jersey governor, of course, is a huge (if you will) Springsteen fan.  This even though Christie is a Republican and Springsteen has made no secret of his disdain for the right side of the political spectrum.

Christie and Springsteen, nevertheless, have been cordial in public.  Perhaps they will eventually become close pals -- or mortal enemies.  Who knows?

What I do know is that if Christie really does have his eyes on the White House, if he wants to become America’s second Roman Catholic president with Irish roots, he’s got a very big problem.  And it is not his weight.

Chris Christie’s big problem is his own Republican Party.

Christie never misses a chance to announce that he is the “son of an Irish father and a Sicilian mother.”  That is usually a punchline used to explain his famously fierce temper.

That temper was on display earlier this month when Christie got into a war of words with Republican Senator Rand Paul.

Paul is one of those Republicans who is so opposed to taxes and federal spending that he voted against relief for Hurricane Sandy victims.

Which is all well and good if you believe all such spending is bad.  But there’s a dirty little secret about Republicans like this, and Christie exposed it.

"I find it interesting that Senator Paul is accusing us of having a gimme, gimme, gimme attitude toward federal spending when in fact New Jersey is a donor state.  We get 61 cents back on every dollar we send to Washington. And interestingly Kentucky gets $1.51 on every dollar they sent to Washington,” he said.

“So if Senator Paul wants to start looking at where he's going to start to cut spending ... maybe he should start cutting the pork barrel spending that he brings home to Kentucky."

And that pretty much says it all.  States like Kentucky, Alabama, West Virginia, Mississippi and Alaska all receive a whole lot more in services than they pay in tax dollars.

You might think this would make these states vote heavily for Democratic Party, which is, of course, the tax and spend party.

But no.  All those states voted for Mitt Romney in 2012 and John McCain in 2008 and George W. Bush in 2004.

These states are loaded with voters who love to bash Washington, even as they enjoy services -- from food stamps to military bases -- paid for by tax dollars provided by “donor states” such as New York and New Jersey.

It is fitting, then, that in this upside-world, the darling of the anti-Washington, anti-tax crowd, Sarah Palin, declared that she supported Paul in his fight Chris Christie.  Palin is the former governor of Alaska, whose heavily Republican voters also receive way more in services than they pay in taxes.

These would be the voters Christie would have to win over in a Republican primary.  They are rabidly opposed to taxing and spending, though apparently not accepting the services that such taxing and spending pays for.

They are also stridently opposed to abortion, gay marriage and gun restrictions of any kind.  Christie has tried to toe the Republican line on these issues, but he doesn’t come off as a true believer the way the Palins and Pauls of the Republican Party do.

That’s a compliment, by the way.

I have a lot of problems with Christie.  But I welcome the debate he has initiated within the Republican Party.

The only trouble is that it’s a debate he is going to lose.  Badly.

Until Republican voters acknowledge that they are hypocrites when it comes to taxing and spending they will continue to live in blissful ignorance, voting for radically anti-government candidates, even as they live a life significantly funded by the government they claim to hate so much.

Contact Sidewalks at http://tdeignan.blogspot.com/

Catholic parishioners revolt against sexual predators but will it kill the Church?

Archbishop John J Myers

Daniel O’Toole had enough.

O’Toole, and other parishioners at St. Joseph’s Church in Oradell, New Jersey, part of the Archdiocese of Newark, have spent the past week up in arms.  They have been handing out leaflets before and after Mass. 

And on Wednesday, July 31, St. Joseph’s pastor, Reverend Thomas Iwanowski, will step down, following what Iwanowski has described as a series of disagreements over his leadership style.

However, O’Toole told the Bergen Record that there is just one reason it became necessary for Iwanowski to step down.

“The reason he was removed, as best as I can understand it, was because he was harboring a priest with a known history for sexual predation,” O’Toole said.

And so it goes.

Even prior to this latest allegation, their had been calls for the resignation of Newark Archbishop John J. Myers.  Earlier this month, New York Archbishop Timothy Dolan also came under fire, accused of shielding church finances even as known abusers remained in the priesthood for years.

And so, it seems as if parishioners have realized that they must take action into their own hands.  This has been part of a quiet revolution across the Catholic Church, especially since the extent of abuse allegations has become painfully clear in the past decade.

Or painfully clear to the people in the pews, anyway.

Parish and diocesan officials, on the other hand, have proven time and time again that they still don’t grasp the depth and seriousness of the sexual abuse crisis plaguing the Catholic Church.  It has left thousands of sex abuse victims scarred for life.  It has sickened parishioners to such a great extent that many have abandoned the church completely. 

This crisis has also, it should be noted, taken attention away from the charitable works the church still admirably performs, and the many dedicated priests who are a source of comfort to their parishioners.

The latest bit of abhorrent news on this front came from the leafy, north Jersey borough of Oradell.
Attorney Daniel O’Toole is among the more active parishioners at St. Joseph’s, even funding scholarships for local students. 

But late last year, parishioners noticed a new priest who was spending nights in the St. Joseph’s rectory.  It turned out to have been Reverend Robert Chabak, whose home in Toms River, New Jersey, had been damaged by Superstorm Sandy.


It also turns out that in 2004, Chabak had been removed from the ministry, when church officials discovered that there was evidence that Chabak had molested a teenaged boy decades earlier. A second allegation has also since come to light, according to the Star Ledger newspaper.

Despite this, the Newark Archdiocese approved of Chabak staying at the St. Joseph’s rectory, which is located right near St. Joseph’s grammar school.

Iwanowski has said offering shelter to Chabak was an act of compassion and that the archdiocese approved the move solely because Chabak was instructed to do no priestly work whatsoever. 

Furthermore, they note that once allegations about Chabak’s sordid past came to light, he was promptly relocated.

Nevertheless, Chabak was spotted once again at St. Joseph’s. 

This is also the same archdiocese that has been under fire over its handling of another priest, Reverend Michael J. Fugee, who had been accused of touching a 13-year-old while at another Jersey church. 

And yet, earlier this year, Fugee still managed to attend youth retreats and interact with children, in a case that led to the demotion of the Newark Archdiocese’s vicar general John Doran, and spurred calls for Archbishop Meyers’ resignation.

Once again, this week, parishioners had to hear about how Newark Archdiocese officials approved the placement of a priest with a dark past in a local parish.  Church higher-ups better listen to the calls for change coming from the pews. 

If they continue to ignore them, sure, those calls for change might eventually go away.

But that’s only because the pews will be empty.

(Contact Sidewalks at tdeignan.blogspot.com)