The most tragic Irish American Joseph Patrick Kennedy - for better or worse a product of the immigrant experience

Joseph Patrick Kennedy

It is understandable why many people believe John Fitzgerald Kennedy was the most important Irish American.  He was the first Catholic president, a trailblazer who visited his family’s ancestral home in Ireland just months before he was fatally shot in Dallas on November 22, 1963.

But there would have been no JFK without JPK - his father, Joseph Patrick Kennedy of East Boston.
Esteemed historian David Nasaw has just released a 900-page biography of the old man entitled The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy.

Yet another Kennedy book, you say?  More hazy malarkey about Camelot?

Or another rehashing of the extramarital affairs or the assassinations, proof of the existence of some “Kennedy curse”?

Such a reaction is understandable.  And yet the heft of this book is without question justified. 

Joseph Kennedy is not only the most important Irish American.  He is arguably the most important figure in American ethnic history, a symbol of the profound success which can be achieved through ambition and hard work, as well as the tragedy and damage which result from the blind drive to become “an insider.”

Not Eugene O’Neill, not Shakespeare, could have written a life story as complex and tragic as Joseph P. Kennedy’s.  Perhaps the Greeks came closest, particularly in the tale of Icarus, who flew too close to the sun and fell to his death. 

Along the same lines, consider that no fewer than three members of the Kennedy clan - Joseph Jr., his sister Kathleen (known as “Kick”) and JFK Jr. -- fell from the sky, dying in airplanes.

Joseph Kennedy belonged to the first generation of Kennedys born in America who did not live in poverty.  Joe Kennedy’s father, P.J., lost a brother as well his own father, to cholera. 

P.J. left school at 14 to work and help support the family, and he managed to gain a foothold in Boston, running saloons and making friends in political circles.

P.J. was able to send his son, Joe, to Boston Latin School and then Harvard, and there is your first hallmark of immigrant life -- the strive to move up the economic ladder.

But Joe Kennedy’s ladder never seemed to end.  He climbed and climbed - in part because he was maniacally ambitious, in part because American society viewed him and his kind with contempt.

Indeed, while it’s hard to view a Harvard graduate millionaire who was a close advisor to presidents as any kind of victim, the fact is that Joseph P. Kennedy endured subtle, imagined and blatant bigotry throughout his entire career.  Here is another hallmark of the immigrant experience -- disdain from the powers that be.

And this leads us to the most difficult part of all, when that ambition mixes with resentment and produces an emotional volatility that manifests itself in some of the most deplorable behavior in the
American psyche -- paranoia, rage, anti-Semitism. 

The dark side of the American ethnic experience, rarely discussed because it runs counter to our belief that we are a benevolent beacon of hope for immigrants, is that nativist hostility and the drive to succeed take a massive toll on first and second generation Americans. 

Crime, alcoholism, family dysfunction.  These and more scarred Irish American and other ethnic families from New York to San Francisco. 

Kennedy dabbled in all of these - mingling with gangsters, possibly bootlegging, cheating on his wife relentlessly, believing Jews to be the cause of so many phantom problems - as he paved a path to the White House. 

Kennedy himself was going to run for president in 1940, even though he doubted Americans would vote for a Catholic.  FDR’s decision to seek a third term made this a moot point. 

Then it was going to be Joseph Jr., but he was killed in World War II.  And so it was JFK. 

And the old man was able to witness it, even though his powers were diminished by strokes.

This meant he also had to stand by powerlessly as Jack and Bobby were killed.

In the end, Joseph P. Kennedy was admirable and loathsome.  But he most definitely was - for better or worse - a product of the American immigrant experience.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tdeignan@blogspot.com or tomdeignan@earthlink.net)

Will the real GOP stand up? Republican’s stance on immigration is vexing

Republican Peggy Noonan

A few weeks back, when an Irish-born journalist (and we use that term loosely) named Neil Munro heckled President Obama’s immigration policy during a press conference, many people pointed out the obvious irony. Here was an immigrant suggesting that the president get tough with immigrants.

To most people, this made Munro a hypocrite. But at least it was clear where he stood.

And now that President Obama has offered a path to citizenship for certain children of illegal immigrants, his position is fairly clear also.

As for the other side, that’s a lot more complicated.

Some Republicans grasp that immigration is a boon to at least some state economies. Some sentimentalize immigrants, while others (I’m thinking Mitt Romney here) are flummoxed to the point of silence.

Which is at least better than echoing the hard-right, anti-immigrant Republican line which was present at the party’s founding.

After all, the party of Lincoln was also the party of anti-Catholic, anti-Irish sentiment in the mid-19th Century.

I’m not demonizing conservatives here. Former Reagan White House operative and Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan – whose name is as Hibernian as it gets - penned a fine column celebrating the immigrant spirit to mark Independence Day last week.

“The old hatreds,” Noonan wrote. “They dissipate here. In Ireland, Catholics and Protestants could be at each other’s throats for centuries, but the minute they moved here they were in the Kiwanis Club together.”

Again, kudos to Noonan for celebrating America’s immigrant heritage, and perhaps upsetting some fellow conservatives. But really?

“The minute” Irish Catholics and Protestants came to America things were just awesome and cool? I’m not Peggy Noonan for a scholarly dissertation on, say, the hanging of Irish Catholics such as Goody Glover in the 17th century colonies, or the 1870s riots that lefts dozens of Catholics and Protestants dead on the streets of New York.

But a little realism never hurt anybody, even on the Fourth of July.

Noonan’s sentimental approach to immigration is something to which Irish Americans are particularly prone. There is so much emphasis put on the contribution of the well-behaved immigrants of the past, there is an implication that today’s immigrants are, well, different.

Prior to 9/11, it was believed by some that today’s immigrants were simply not as hard-working, or as patriotic, or were gang members, or came here for the welfare benefits. And even if they were hard-working, that was a problem because they were taking jobs, or were simply illegal, which is a fairly unambiguous term.

All the more so in a post-9/11 world where illegal immigrants can be out to kill us all. Nevertheless, there remains a deep, scary and downright un-American strain of nativism out there in America.

And being sentimental or selective about immigration is not much better than being outright hostile to it. Back in 2006, none other than Noonan wrote this, “There are a variety of things driving American anxiety about illegal immigration and we all know them -- economic arguments, the danger of porous borders in the age of terrorism, with anyone able to come in. But there's another thing.

“(We) are not assimilating our immigrants patriotically. And if you don't do that, you'll lose it all. We used to do it. We loved our country with full-throated love, we had no ambivalence.”

Does it really need to be pointed out that, back in the good old days, there was massive ambivalence on the sides of both native-born Americans and immigrants?

We fought not one but two wars against a nation which gave us millions of immigrants (Germany) and we held members of two large immigrant groups (Japanese and Italians) in detention camps during World War II. Meanwhile, how do you think a lot of Americans felt about Ireland being diplomatically neutral during World War II?

All of this is simply meant to point out that immigration has always been vexing.

For now, we know where Obama and the Democrats stand. And even if they’re just after votes, isn’t that partly what our system is all about?

Currently, the Republican Party is made up of historical revisionist sentimentalists like Noonan, neo-nativists like Munro, and confused bumblers like Romney.

By November, will the real GOP stand up?

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

Tough time to be a patriot - musing on the belief 'from many one'

Congressman Richie Neal

I hate to say I told you so, but…

Last week, I wrote about ongoing tensions at the 9/11 Memorial in downtown Manhattan.  I suggested that factions had to come together because, to many younger New Yorkers, the events of September 11 are as hazy as the events of

Pearl Harbor or Guadalcanal or Lexington and Concord.

If the process for planning the memorial drags on, or does not tell the story of 9/11 accurately and vividly, future generations might not grasp the magnitude of that terrible day.

Lo and behold, what happened this week? A bunch of middle school kids took a field trip to the 9/11 Memorial and trashed the place.

But what’s the answer?  More museums?  Better memorials? More severe punishments for misbehaving kids?

With the Fourth of July once again upon us, it is a fair time to raise these questions.  If the loutish behavior of these kids at the 9/11 Memorial proves that some don’t know what it means to be a real New Yorker, it’s also pretty clear we still don’t know what it means to be a real American.

Every Fourth of July, for example, we hear about a ceremony in which 100 or 1,000 immigrants are officially declared U.S. citizens.  This will be comforting, in part because the U.S. Supreme Court on

Monday upheld a key provision of an Arizona law allowing local police officers to investigate the immigration status of suspects detained for other alleged crimes.

Do you have your papers?  Great!  Happy Fourth of July to you, too!

Of course, it’s silly to believe anything so staid and quaint as a museum will douse the longstanding suspicions many Americans have about immigration.  Still, such institutions do play an important role. 

At their best, they remind us of the ideal contained in the immortal phrase E Pluribus Unum.  That motto (“from many..one”) might as well be the alternative name for the

National Museum for the American People, a proposed Washington D.C. museum that would attempt to tell the stories of all immigrant groups (among other groups). 

This might ultimately help visitors see just how “American” so many of these stories really are.

Congressman Richard Neal and the Congressional Friends of Ireland Caucus have already signed on as supporters of the National Museum of the American People.

“The genesis for the idea to build a new national museum occurred more than 10 years ago as I walked by the Agriculture Department headquarters building along the National Mall in Washington,” Sam Eskenazi has explained. 

Eskenazi is spearheading the effort to construct the National Museum of the American People.

“I asked myself, ‘If this were a museum, what kind of museum could it be?’ The answer -- a museum that would tell the stories of all of the peoples coming to this land.

“I came up with a name for the museum on the spot. It is a testament to the need for the museum that many people, when told about the proposal, were surprised that such a museum doesn't already exist.”

Such a proposed museum would serve as a testament to both the unique stories of all immigrant communities, as well as their common obstacles and goals.

Some have even dubbed Eskenazi’s proposal the National Immigration Museum or the “Melting Pot” Museum.

Of course, things are not so simple. 

For example, there is currently a proposal to build a separate Irish American museum in Washington D.C. Indeed, many ethnic groups already have their own, or want to build their own, museums.

And let’s not forget the bumpy road of the American Catholic Museum, which finally closed in 2012.

Several Hispanic heritage groups have also chosen not to support the National Museum concept.  They and others understandably feel their stories are so unique and powerful they need to be told individually, rather than as part of a broader narrative.

Eskenazi has years of experience working at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, not to mention leading a U.S. Army platoon in Vietnam.  He looks like the right man to lead the cause of the National Museum of the American People.

But, for now, we remain a nation split between the “pluribus” and the “unum.” Happy Fourth of July!

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

State rights and wrongs on immigration- know-nothing laws and shrivelling economies

John Kavanagh

On June 24, 1875, the steamship Ethiopia sailed into New York harbor, after a long journey from Glasgow, Scotland.  Little is known about the ship’s passengers, other than the fact that many were looking to start new lives in New York or other states, or perhaps even Canada. 

Suffice to say, the odds that there were Irish passengers on board the Ethiopia are very high.

After all, the Irish had been coming in great numbers to thriving ports for many reasons, one of them being that cities from New York to Boston to New Orleans had established systems for accepting (and sometimes rejecting) immigrants. 

And while they had to deal with problems created by immigration – from crime to rabid nativist movements – they also reaped the benefits and became thriving, first-class cities.

The ship masters of the Ethiopia well knew that once they docked in New York, they were required, by local laws, to report the name, birthplace, last residence and occupation of every emigrant on board the ship.  They also had to pay a fee for each emigrant, or issue a bond, which could hold the ship masters financially responsible for the emigrants down the road.

The ship masters were fed up with this system.  So they took the mayor of New York City to court.

Ultimately, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously decided that the hodge-podge of local statutes which made up American immigration law were unconstitutional. 

Following the decision in Henderson vs. the Mayor of the City of New York, states would no longer oversee immigration law.  Instead, the federal government was now in charge.

Now, we may be turning back the clock.  Hostility towards the federal government is fierce.  Immigration may be another issue that falls under a renewed “states' rights” movement.
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To those states – and anti-immigrant activists – hoping to relieve the federal government of its duties related to immigration, I would say this -- be careful what you wish for.

This week, the Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments about Arizona’s infamous immigration laws, which, among other things, empower local police officers to inquire about a person’s immigration status and detain those suspected of being undocumented.

The Obama administration has criticized the laws.  A supporter of the Arizona laws is an Irish American, a Queens-born, former Port Authority cop turned Arizona lawmaker named John Kavanagh.

Let’s forget, for a moment, whether or not Irish Americans in general should be more supportive of a sane, tolerant immigration policy, given their own history in this country.  When asked where his own people came from, Kavanagh – and many like him – proudly say two things: “from Ireland” and “legally.”

Of course, it is ludicrous to believe undocumented immigrants are some kind of 20th century invention.  Nevertheless, they are at the heart of the current battle being waged by Kavanagh and his crowd. 

The term “states’ rights” in the U.S. rightly makes people nervous.  To some, it means local hotheads and bigots can pass nasty laws and the federal government can do nothing about it. 
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However, there is a theory going around now that even pro-immigrant activists should hope these states get exactly what they want.

“Laws like Arizona’s are such bad policy that, left to their own devices, they will die a natural death — and their supporters will suffer the political consequences,” Peter J. Spiro wrote in The New York Times this week, arguing that anti-immigrant laws choke a state’s economy.

It’s no mistake that today, as well as when the steamship Ethiopia sailed into New York, states that had sane immigration policies also had vibrant economies.  Those that target immigrants, um, don’t.

So, let the Kavanaghs of Arizona have their know-nothing laws and watch their economies shrivel.

There’s only one problem with this. How many immigrants -- or U.S. citizens for that matter -- will get trapped in an immigration nightmare in the meantime?

Immigration, so intimately tied to the economy, may be the hot issue of this looming election.  The Supreme Court may well cool things off – or throw gasoline on the fire.

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

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)

Give Presidential hopeful Newt Gingrich credit on immigration views

Newt Gringrich

Imagine you are political advisor to Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich. 

For months, your campaign has floundered.  Your guy was once one of the most powerful men in Washington, the speaker of the House and a man famous for his intellectual power. 

But then he fell from power and more or less vanished from the Washington scene.  So much so that when Gingrich announced he was running for president, one was tempted to say, “1996 called, they want Newt Gingrich back.”

But the only thing weaker than Gingrich seemed to be, well, every other GOP candidate. 

Herman Cain has his woman problems and Michele Bachmann’s kook factor is just a bit too high and, finally, Mitt Romney has, well, a Mitt Romney problem.  In that, he can’t convince anyone that he is anybody other than Mitt Romney and, thus, simply a lackluster political candidate.

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And lo and behold, in recent weeks, Gingrich has surged.  And so, you can imagine how his political advisors must have felt when Gingrich, finally in the lead, went ahead and made some crazy comments 

about immigration last week.

"If you've been here 25 years and you got three kids and two grandkids, you've been paying taxes and obeying the law, you belong to a local church, I don't think we're going to separate you from your family, uproot you forcefully, and kick you out."

Huh?  What was Gingrich, Mr. Conservative, actually saying?  Was he suggesting that not all immigrants are filthy freeloaders?

He continued, "I don't see how the party that says it's the party of the family is going to adopt an immigration policy which destroys families that have been here a quarter-century. And I'm prepared to take the heat for saying, ‘Let's be humane.’"

Humane?

That’s not a word that has been associated with Republican immigration policy since, well, since Rick Perry suggested it was heartless for candidates to bash immigrants.

Then again, we see how well Rick Perry’s candidacy is going these days.  And that’s why you must feel bad for Gingrich’s advisors.  But it’s also why Gingrich deserves credit for reframing the Republican debate over this contentious issue.

Needless to say, Gingrich’s opponents pounced on him, bashing his ideas as “amnesty” for illegal immigrants.

They did this, in large part, because they believe that Republican primary voters in general – and Tea 

Party backers in particular – are hungry for a hard-liner when it comes to immigration.

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And they may be right.  After all, Perry’s thinking-outside-the-box did not exactly help him. 

Furthermore, as John Heilemann noted in this week’s New York magazine, there is disturbing evidence that elements in the Republican Party have anti-immigrant tendencies on their GOP wish list.

“In a landmark book-length study being published this month, the Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol… --  on the basis of copious, careful, and not unsympathetic field reporting” found that an “animus against ‘freeloaders’…unifies the tea-partiers across the nation, with illegal immigrants preeminent in that category.”

That a group of people accused of working so hard that they steal American jobs can also be seen as 

freeloaders is another question for another time. 

As for Gingrich, perhaps he is simply hoping to make it through the Republican primaries and win some Hispanic votes in the November 2012. 

If so, maybe he has looked at past immigration voting patterns.  The Irish, for example, voted 

Democratic for over 100 years not only because local ward bosses, though often corrupt, were also responsive to their needs. 

It did not hurt that Republicans harbored some strong anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant candidates.  Then again, so did certain elements of the Democratic party in the south and Mid-West. 

And even then the Republicans could not sway significant numbers of white ethnic Catholics until the 1970s and 1980s.

There’s much talk among conservatives about the 11 million illegal immigrants in America.  They focus on the term “illegal” in that sentence. 

Perhaps Gingrich has realized that someone should focus on “11 million” and try and win some of those or their children’s’ votes.

(Contact “Sidewalks” at tomdeignan@earthlink.net or Facebook.com/tomdeignan)
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Losing our immigrant values - little coverage of John McCarthy as Steve Jobs mourning continues

Computer scientist - John McCarthy RIP

The world is still reeling from the death of Apple computer whiz Steve Jobs, who died October 5 at the age of 56.

Jobs was recognized as perhaps the foremost pioneer in a field that defined the end of the 20th century, and will surely dominate the early decades of our current century.

It is interesting, then, that not nearly as much attention was paid a few weeks later when a computer scientist named John McCarthy died at the age of 84.

Though not nearly as well known as Jobs, McCarthy was a certified prophet of our current e-world.

According to The New York Times, McCarthy “helped design the foundation of today’s Internet-based computing and…is widely credited with coining the term…artificial intelligence.”

Nearly four decades ago, meanwhile, McCarthy “presented a paper in France on buying and selling by computer, what is now called electronic commerce,” Internet security expert Whitfield Diffie noted in the Times.

There’s no need to belabor the Jobs-McCarthy comparison.  The latter was a secular saint who made Apple one of the hippest and most profitable corporations in the world.

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McCarthy was one of several people who played a key role in formulating the technological world we live in today.

There is, however, one more key similarity. Both Jobs and McCarthy were the children of immigrants.

Jobs’ father was born Abdulfattah Jandali in Syria. He goes by the name of John and famously gave Jobs up for adoption.  

McCarthy, meanwhile, was the son of an Irish immigrant labor organizer in Boston. McCarthy’s dad was a member of the Communist Party, as was his wife, a Lithuanian immigrant active in the women’s suffrage movement.

It’s important to think of McCarthy and Jobs as we slog through yet another depressing chapter in America’s immigration debate.

Lawmakers in Alabama recently passed what is believed to be the most severe immigration law in the U.S., targeting undocumented immigrants.

Over a dozen nations from Latin America and the Caribbean, meanwhile, have joined in the Justice Department's lawsuit against a controversial South Carolina law that would require police officers to contact federal officials if they believe someone is in the country illegally.

Just to make things really interesting, the South Carolina law was signed by Republican Governor Nikki Haley, herself the daughter of immigrants from India.

It is very easy to bash the Republicans and point out that this is the latest battle in a deeply schizophrenic country, where a deep nativist streak does battle with America’s inherent pride in its immigrant tradition.

It is easy -- but necessary.  

We lose something profound when we decide that now, finally, is the time to build walls and seal the borders.  When we convince ourselves that there were absolutely no illegal immigrants back when it was mostly the Irish and Italians and Poles and Jews who were streaming into America.

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But conservatives like Haley, as well as Alabama governor Robert Bentley, are right about one thing.  The federal government has dropped the ball on immigration.  

As a Haley spokesperson put it, “If the feds were doing their job, we wouldn’t have had to address illegal immigration reform at the state level.”

And, yes, we do need to think about criminals and terrorists when we think about immigration.  

But you know what else we need to think about?  What kind of country America is going to be in the 21st century.

And do you what else we need to think about? The next John McCarthy or the next Steve Jobs. 

Again, let’s not pretend we live in a time unlike any other.  Immigrants have always been a lightning rod for controversy.  

Consider McCarthy’s parents, immigrant Communists in Brahmin Boston.  A Catholic and a Jew.  

Surely had you asked a select group of Bostonians what to do with such a couple, they would have told you something about cramming these radicals back into steerage and sending them back to Ireland or Lithuania.

But consider what we would have lost.  Is that sentimental view of immigration?  

Perhaps.  But that doesn’t necessarily make it wrong.

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