Irish gangsters are back in vogue in 2010

Later this year, we will receive two more heaping platefuls of Irish gangsterism. In September, Martin Scorsese presents a new HBO mini-series called "Boardwalk Empire," about the creation of gambling mecca Atlantic City, featuring numerous Irish underworld characters.

Also, "The Irishman" is expected to hit the big screen in late 2010. Starring Christopher Walken, the film explores the rise and fall of Cleveland killer Danny Greene, the Celtic-obsessed gangster who challenged Cleveland’s high-level Italian American mob.

But if your appetite for Irish crime lords is such that your can’t wait, stroll over to St. Mark’s Place on the Lower East Side where the Museum of the American Gangster is about to open. Located in a former speak-easy, the museum is currently conducting preview tours.

When renovations are completed in the coming weeks, viewers will be able to explore the entire facility, where it is said Frank Sinatra (no stranger to the underworld) once worked as a singing waiter.

The museum is the brainchild of native New Yorker and gang historian Eric Ferrara as well as Lorcan Otway, whose family has managed the museum building for decades.

The Museum of the American Gangster is not the only site dedicated to studying unsavory figures such as Meyer Lansky, Al Capone and Donegal native Vincent “Mad Dog” Coll. Next year, the long-planned Mob Museum is set to open in Las Vegas.

Of course, any museum dedicated to the American underworld would have to dedicate significant space to the role the Irish played.

Several of the Museum of the American Gangster’s consultants have explored some of the darkest corners of the Irish American underworld.

First there’s Patrick Downey, who has written about New York crime in the early 20th century when gangsters like “Mad Dog” Coll and Owney “the Killer” Madden reigned.

Downey is currently writing a book about Jack “Legs” Diamond (pictured above), the Philadelphia-born criminal whose parents were born in Ireland.

Also contributing to the museum is Rose Keefe, who has written at length about Chicago Irish gangster Deanie O’Banion.

Given that the museum building once housed a speakeasy, it makes sense that one of the museum’s first exhibits focuses on the prohibition era of 1919-1931 and the broader “history of alcohol trafficking in the United States.”

According to the museum’s founders, some $2 million in prohibition-era artifacts were discovered hidden in the building’s maze of secret rooms.

Prohibition, of course, was America’s ill-fated noble experiment to outlaw alcohol. The Irish played a central role in this era, though not for reasons one would think, given the stereotypes about the Irish and drink.

In fact, it was those very stereotypes that fanned the flames of prohibition.

Those who supported banning booze were not just opposed to alcohol. They believed they were doing what was best for the decadent, lawless ethnics who ran cities such as New York, Boston and Chicago.

Since the Irish (who were the dominant big city political group in most cities) could not take care of themselves, the thinking went, right thinking rural Protestants would outlaw booze for their own good.

It is no surprise that, when Al Smith ran for president in 1928, he was not only slammed for being a low-class child of the lower East Side as well as a slavish devotee to the pope in Rome. He was also a dreaded “wet,” meaning he supported lifting the ban on alcohol.

“What else would you expect?” many people argued. It was just another reason one of “them” should never be allowed into the White House.

The Museum of the American Gangster also looks closely at lesser known Irish American criminals such as John Lonergan and his son Richard “Pegleg” Lonergan, who led Brooklyn’s White Hand Gang, and was killed by Al Capone.

Hopefully, down the road, the museum will also explore the stubborn endurance of Irish organized crime and its link to politics, from the Westies and “goodfella” Jimmy Conway in New York right up to Boston’s “Whitey” Bulger, who, to this day, stands next to the likes of Osama bin Laden on the FBI’s Most Wanted list.

(Tom Deignan will be discussing “Twenty Books Every Irish American Should Read” at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, April 17 and at the Riverdale, Bronx branch library on April 22. Contact tomdeignan@earthlink.net or facebook.com/tomdeignan.)

HBO's 'The Pacific' shines light on Irish soldier Robert Leckie

Robert Leckie, a certified member of the “greatest generation,” was born in Philadelphia in 1920. As Leckie’s HBO biography notes, “He was the youngest of eight children in an Irish Catholic family” who was raised in New Jersey.

A few days after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, Leckie enlisted with the U.S. Marine Corps. He eventually became a machine gunner, serving in Guadalcanal as well as Peleliu, where he was wounded.

Until a few weeks ago, not many people recalled Leckie’s exploits. But these days, thanks to two fellows named Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg, it’s hard to get away from Leckie.

Leckie is one of the soldiers featured in HBO’s critically-acclaimed new drama The Pacific. Played by James Badge Dale, The Pacific follows Leckie and his fellow soldiers as they fight their way through the treacherous series of islands in the later phases of World War II.

Leckie’s autobiography A Helmet for My Pillow was one of the main sources used by The Pacific producers Hanks and Spielberg, who previously brought the greatest generation to life for HBO with the popular Band of Brothers.

Needless to say, The Pacific, so far, has not had much time for the glamour and heroism of wartime.

“Jungle rot and malaria, not to mention dysentery, hunger and nervous breakdowns, are as much a part of The Pacific as machine guns and bombing raids,” is how The New York Times put it in a recent review, which nevertheless called the series “mesmerizing.”

Most critics agree. However, there is one small detail worth noting.

As opposed to previous depictions of Irish military families, from the Sullivan brothers to numerous Jimmy Cagney roles, Leckie’s parents, in The Pacific, seem oddly disinterested in their son’s desire to go halfway around the world and put his life in peril.

Generally speaking, it has been believed that World War I and World War II helped Irish Americans enter the mainstream of life in the U.S.

In fact, that is the argument made in a new book which also depicts an Irishman marching off to war. In The Long Way Home: An American Journey from Ellis Island to the Great War (Harper), author David Laskin tells the story of a dozen immigrants who joined the U.S. military after America entered the fight against Germany in World War I.

Among those immigrants is Peter Thompson, born in Antrim. Thompson “went to work at the age of 12 sorting flax fibers at the Whitehouse linen mill.”

Thompson was a bright student, but his mother Rose believed the family simply could not survive without the money Peter brought in.

So work was a bigger priority than school. This, sadly, is understandable.

Rose had a dozen children, including a sister named Mary, who eventually joined an uncle who had emigrated to the heavily-Irish mining town of Butte,

Montana.

In 1914, Peter himself left Ireland and settled in Butte. As the luck of the Irish would have it, that was the year war exploded across Europe and mine production plummeted.

Two of Thompson’s brothers back in Ireland went off to fight for the British Army. On this side of the Atlantic, however, Thompson listened to older relatives explain that they hoped the Kaiser and Germany prevailed.

After all, weren’t they fighting the hated British?

In the end, Thompson joined the U.S. Army in 1917, rising to the rank of sergeant.

Perhaps we remain fascinated by the likes of Peter Thompson and Robert Leckie because they seem to have been living in a simpler time. The wars Americans are fighting these days seem so messy that we often seem to forget about them entirely.

If nothing else, both Laskin’s book and The Pacific, with their diverse groups of soldiers trying to maintain grace under pressure, are solidly in the tradition of the marching song penned by another Irish American, John Mullin, a corporal in the 77th so-called “melting pot” division: “Oh the army, the army, the democratic army/All the Jews and Wops, the Dutch and Irish cops/They’re all in the army now.”



(Tom Deignan will be discussing “Twenty Books Every Irish American Should Read” at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, April 17. Contact

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

Why "The Quiet Man" Endures

This St. Patrick’s season you surely came across it. On Turner Classic Movies or on a DVD player.

John Ford’s 1952 film The Quiet Man has been a St. Patrick’s Day staple for nearly 60 years now.

And for just as long the film has had its detractors. Those who grumble that the film is little more than a brightly-colored jaunt through Irish stereotypes -- the drunks, the brawlers and all those befreckled redheads.

Well, I have some bad news for the haters. The Quiet Man is growing in stature, not merely as entertainment, but as a work of art.

The sign of any great, enduring story is that it can be reimagined and reinterpreted by younger generations. And so, The Quiet Man -- for all of its legitimate flaws -- is going to be with us for many more St. Patrick’s Days.

Martin Scorsese, who’s got tons of cinematic street cred and just had a smash hit with Shutter Island, recently said The Quiet Man was a major inspiration.

Meanwhile, last month, it was announced that Aidan Quinn is among the stars of a new movie entitled Connemara Days, a romantic comedy which is actually set during the film shoot of The Quiet Man.

But the most interesting new take on The Quiet Man is Roddy Doyle’s forthcoming book The Dead Republic.

Doyle is one of Ireland’s more famous

contemporary writers. His book The Commitments went on to become a classic indy film, while his novel Paddy Clarke Ha, Ha, Ha won several major awards.

Doyle’s latest project is a trilogy or Irish historical novels based around the character Henry Smart, a sort of Irish Forrest Gump, who floats through the country’s history and has a knack for being at the center of key events.

In previous books, A Star Called Henry and O Play That Thing, Henry rose from the Dublin slums to become a leader of the Easter Rising, before traveling to New York and Chicago to rub elbows with gangsters and guide the career of a young musician named Louis Armstrong.

One of Doyle’s key aims here is to reexamine Irish American history. Believe it or not, this has made him some enemies.

Traditional historical writers such as Morgan Llywelyn believe Doyle is playing fast and loose with the facts.

The problem is, history is more than just a collection of facts. So, Doyle feels free to have some fun undermining readers’ conventional wisdom about the past.

In Doyle’s latest book The Dead Republic, Henry Star finds himself on the set of a film with Henry Fonda and the irascible Irish American director John Ford.

They are shooting a western, but Ford desperately wants to make a movie about

Irish rebellion. So, he has hired famous rebel Henry Smart to serve as “IRA consultant.”

But what began as a gritty tale of Irish liberation gets crammed into Ford’s myth-making machine and what emerges, instead, is what some believe to be the worst piece of paddywhackery Hollywood ever produced -- The Quiet Man.

Along the way, Henry Smart sees that Ford is transforming the story. “All references to the war and the IRA had gone. The Sean in the picture wasn’t a kid of the Dublin streets, and all the killings had become one big punch in a boxing ring,” writes Doyle.

But Doyle is not merely lamenting the whitewashing of Ireland’s past. He is examining the deeply complicated way myth and reality collide. How complicated?

Well, if it seems like an “IRA consultant” for a Hollywood movie is a priceless slice of Doyle’s imagination, guess again -- Ford’s film, indeed, had just such a hard man on set, the Irish Civil War veteran Ernie O’Malley.

And that begins to explain why The Quiet Man endures. For all of its donnybrooks and thatched-cottage charm, there are deep, violent undercurrents in the film.

As Notre Dame professor Luke Gibbons has written: “The Quiet Man bears out the Celtic stereotype that, in Ireland, the tear and smile seem twin-born, and comedy is shadowed by tragedy.”

Is that why millions love the film? No. Many, indeed, love Barry Fitzgerald’s drunken shenanigans. But such stuff cannot carry a film for decades.

This St. Patrick’s Day, give The Quiet Man another viewing. And really watch it this time. You might be surprised.



(Tom Deignan will be discussing “Twenty Books Every Irish American Should Read”

at the mid-Manhattan branch library, 455 Fifth Avenue, April 17. Contact

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

The green roots of the yellow ribbon tradition

Did you ever wonder why people wear yellow ribbons to express their respect for soldiers? Was it that song from decades ago? That one about the yellow ribbon on the oak tree?

Is that also (if you will) the root of the new movie called The Yellow Handkerchief, starring William Hurt and Twilight's Kristen Stewart, which carries this mysterious obsession with yellow garments into the 21st century?

Not quite. Erin Dignam (the screenwriter of The Yellow Handkerchief) is just the latest, and not even the first person with Irish roots, to tell a new version of this time-tested story.

Some believe this story begins in biblical days, or that its origins lie in the John Wayne movie "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon."

What can’t be denied is that the legend grew thanks to a son of Belfast who scoured the gritty streets of New York City for great stories.

To begin to unwrap this obsession with yellow ribbons, let us step back in time and belly up to the bar at the Lion’s Head, the bygone Greenwich Village watering hole best known as a haven for “drinkers with writing problems.”

It was there that the likes of Frank and Malachy McCourt, Newsday’s Dennis Duggan and so many other Irish American ink-stained wretches bent their elbows.

Perhaps the best known of the bunch was Pete Hamill, author, columnist, son of parents from Belfast.

Hamill recently explained that he was at the Lion’s Head one evening when he heard a durable tale which no one ever seemed to have actually written down.

The details might have changed with each dramatic telling. But the core of the story was more or less the same. A quiet man gets out of jail and wonders if his onetime wife will take him back.

In 1971, Hamill was writing (of all things) a short story column for the New York Post. The column was called “The Eight Million,” a reference to all of the souls living in the five boroughs of New York.

In October of ’71, Hamill published a column about college-age kids who get on a bus at 34th Street in Manhattan and head off to Florida. A man named Vingo is also on the bus with them.

The kids try to engage the mysterious stranger in conversation, but nothing ignites. That is, until one asks, “Are you married?”

Vingo replies, “I don’t know.”

Vingo finally opens up, “I told her, I said, Martha, I understand if you can’t stay married to me. I told her that. I said I was gonna be away a long time and that if she couldn’t stand it, if the kids kept askin’ questions, if it hurt her too much, well, she should just forget me.”

Vingo simply had one condition.

“We used to live in this town, Brunswick, just before Jacksonville, and there’s a big oak tree just as you come into town, a very famous tree, huge. I told her that if she’d take me back, she should put a yellow handkerchief on the tree and I’d get off and come home.”

And so the story ends with the revelation -- will he stay on the bus or go home?

Will there be a yellow handkerchief tied to the big oak tree?

Swiftly the Hamill column was a smash. People all over the country got a look at it when Reader’s Digest published it.

A TV movie starring James Earl Jones, based on the yellow handkerchief story, was aired. A Japanese film was also produced.

But it may well have been the 1973 song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon,” sung by Tony Orlando, which has stuck in people’s minds for the longest time.

When the song came out (two years after the Hamill column), the Vietnam War was in its last regrettable stages. Many soldiers had not yet come home.

Some people linked yellow ribbons to the hope that a loved one would return from southeast Asia. It is a tradition that went nationwide during the Iran hostage crisis in 1980, and has stuck with Americans through the first Gulf War and Iraq and Afghanistan.

So now we have a new movie, "The Yellow Handkerchief." Every charity from autism to breast cancer to AIDS uses some form of ribbon as its colorful symbol.

This might never have been the case, however, if Pete Hamill was not listening so closely one night in the Lion’s Head.

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

Helen Gahagan Douglas – the original movie star politician

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Douglass replied, “No, no, no.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Irish Catholic Church's 'Tea Party'

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

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

Others, however, were outraged.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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



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

The real problem with stereotypes, Irish or otherwise

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

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

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

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

“Thank God for the Irish,” Garrett quipped.

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

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

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

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

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

Yeesh. What is this, vaudeville circa 1919?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

(Contact Tom Deignan at tomdeignan@earthlink.net)