Here comes a religious hurricane - the 9/11 Memorial

Father Mychal Judge.

Catholic League president Bill Donahue and many of his fellow Irish Americans are fuming mad at Mike Bloomberg.

No, they are not angry at the New York mayor’s handling of Hurricane Irene.

It is a religious conflict revolving around 9/11 which has many upset, and even calling upon the memory of 9/11’s first official victim, the sainted Irish American Franciscan Father Mychal Judge.

In short, we have the makings here of a different kind of hurricane, a full blown force of human nature which could leave a lot of destruction in its angry wake.

This week, Bloomberg announced that no members of any religious organizations would be speaking at the 9/11 anniversary ceremony. Bloomberg's office has argued the service should be focused on the families of the victims.

"There's an awful lot of people who would like to participate and you just can't do that,” Bloomberg noted.
Catholic League president Bill Donahue is having none of this.

“When it comes to granting the clergy their constitutional right to freedom of speech on the 10th anniversary of 9/11…(Bloomberg) simply elects to ban them,” said Donahue.

William McGurn, in The Wall Street Journal online, evoked the memory of the beloved Irish priest.
“The exclusion of religion from an important anniversary distorts an undeniable part of the 9/11 story, perhaps most vividly illustrated by its first recorded casualty -- a fire department chaplain named Rev. Mychal Judge.”

McGurn then quotes Ed Whelan, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who said, "If the fear is that the inclusion of religious leaders at a public commemoration is divisive, we've really lost something."

Donahue offered this solution: “Mayor Bloomberg should reverse his decision, allowing a priest, minister, rabbi and imam to make a short statement.”

This certainly seems sensible. Sadly, it’s also absurd on its face.

First of all, clergy did not speak at the previous nine ceremonies. Then, obvious questions about Sikhs and Hindus and Mormons who died on 9/11 also arise.

Then there are the atheists who would inevitably enter the fray.

As it is, Republican presidential candidates such as Rick Santorum have already jumped into this battle, surely hoping to score political points as they paint themselves holier than every one else in the 2012 race.

Meanwhile, Donahue surely knows that a lot of people are enraged that imams and other Muslins are setting up shop two blocks from Ground Zero.

Seeing an imam actually at Ground Zero at the ceremony would surely whip up a lot of those hostile feelings.

Such an ugly fight, and possibly even lawsuits that would result, leading up to this solemn anniversary would surely taint the event.

No one denies religion did and should play a role in how families cope with this tragedy. But let’s also not be naïve.

Religion can divide as well as unite. Those familiar with Ireland can tell you a thing or two about that.
Same deal with evoking Father Mike. He was indeed an earthly saint. Yet many of his admirers also opt not confront obvious questions about his sexuality and the broader implications those questions raise about gays and the Catholic Church.

More simply, as a blogger at uscatholic.org noted: “With September 11 falling on a Sunday this year, there will be no shortage of religious ceremonies that day…There will certainly be opportunities for people to reflect and remember in a religious way.”

The broader, more disturbing problem here is the growing number of people in America who believe that, since the country is falling prey to evil secular forces, they need to fight harder to bring religion into the public sphere.

The first Catholic president, John F. Kennedy, stressed that the U.S. Constitution would guide him, rather than any religious authority. That would probably get him booted from today’s Republican Party.

We live in a city of many religions and that is sometimes amazing, but let’s not pretend it is ever simple. Keeping religion out of the 9/11 anniversary is a bad decision -- with the exception, perhaps, of any other decision that could have been handed down on this very sensitive issue.

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

Some must-see Irish TV - ‘Whitey’ Bulger and Sarah Michelle Gellar’s ‘Ringer’ - VIDEO

Talk about a whacky neighbor!  This guy whacks people for a living!

There is word out of Hollywood that an acclaimed sitcom writer has sold an idea for a TV sitcom to Twentieth Century Fox.  The premise?

Imagine you were living right next door to Whitey Bulger, South Boston killer extraordinaire, and didn’t know it.

Writer Peter Mehlman, whose has worked for Seinfeld, among other TV hits, lives in Santa Monica, California, the same place the legendary Irish godfather laid down roots while he was hiding from authorities.  Bulger lived in Santa Monica with his girlfriend as well as their dog, until they were busted earlier this year.

Mehlman has said Bulger will not be a character in the show but definitely inspired the idea.

“I can’t imagine how many times I walked past (Bulger),” Mehlman was recently quoted as saying.  “And he has 19 murders under his belt.”

The Bulger comedy is one of several upcoming Irish-themed TV shows. BBC America is planning a show about an Irish immigrant cop in the Five Points during the
Famine era, and Sarah Michelle Gellar is playing addict/stripper twin sisters Siobhan and Bridget in the series Ringer, which debuts on the CW Network September 13.

It makes you wonder what other forms of Irish American dysfunction and misery can be exploited for comedy. What follows are some other TV ideas that folks in
Hollywood might want to consider.

The Irish Odd Couple: It’s the 1970s, and two lads from Belfast have just landed in New York in the hopes of leaving their troubled pasts behind.  But what happens when the boys – one Protestant and the other Catholic – go looking for a place to live?  They end up forced to share a one-room apartment in Hell’s Kitchen.

“It’s hell alright,” Liam, the Catholic fellow, says. “And I don’t mean all the
crime and drugs.”

Billy, the Protestant, counters, “It cold be worse.”

“How?” asks Liam.

“We could get another Paddy Papist in here.”

Don’t miss the episode when the boys get confused by all the explosions on the Fourth of July, as well as the heart-wrenching season finale when Billy and Liam finally become pals, since both agree that gays should not march in the St. Patrick’s Day parade.

The West Wing’s Awake: In this political comedy the Republic of Ireland needs a new president, and when voters look around and see what Irish-born folks have done to the country, they pass a law outlawing Irish-born folks from the position for 20 years.  (No Irish need apply, indeed.)

Hungry for new leadership, the Irish turn to a member of the diaspora – a celebrity who once played a president on television, and whose mother was born in Ireland.
But what seems like a new dawn turns into a culture-clash nightmare.

“Where’s the corned beef?” the new president proclaims during his inaugural address.

Things only get worse when the new president makes an appearance at a football match -- wearing a New England Patriots shirt and Notre Dame cap.

But things soon turn around for the new president when a Chinese bank forecloses on the presidential residence in Phoenix Park – showing the Irish people that this man of wealth and celebrity can sympathize with their problems.

The season cliffhanger has the new Irish president formulating a group of 21st century Fenians and pondering an invasion of China.

“This is finally our chance to learn from the mistakes of Canada,” the president intones solemnly.

Holy Crap!:  It’s bad enough a priest tried to put the moves on Kevin when he was growing up in the big city. He’s finally put the past behind him and moved to a new parish in the suburbs.

So he doesn’t think much of it when the parish is about to get a new pastor.
“Probably some dude from India,” he quips.

Not quite.  It’s the pervy priest from his past! It seems he’s simply been transferred from the big city to the burbs while the big wigs at the archdiocese sort out decades of abuse charges against the man who’s been called Father Feelgood.

“I’m not going into the confessional with that guy!” Kevin declares at one point.
The wacky next door neighbor (who is not a gangster on the run) adds, “Boy, he really wanted you to have a Good Friday, didn’t he.”

It’s Always Sunny in Butte, Montana: Pat, a rugged coal miner, wants his beloved daughter Rosie to be a respectable nurse or a schoolteacher.  But take one guess what she wants to be?

Hint, hint: She wants a lantern and a giant pick for her 18th birthday.
Is it any wonder why the Irish are so popular on TV?



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

‘Irishmen Who Are Drunks’ - a reaction to FDNY's discriminatory remarks

As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 looms, you see many stories these days about firefighters and their families, and how they are coping with the loss of loved ones and the passage of time since that terrible day.

But that’s not all you will hear about the FDNY these days.  For the past several weeks, Brooklyn Federal Court has been the setting for a federal discrimination trial against the New York City fire department.

The feds are looking into allegations that the FDNY discriminates against minority firefighters. So it is interesting that in this setting, one of the most blatantly anti-Irish statements I’ve ever heard was not only muttered, but entered into the public record.

Worse, there was not a peep from anyone that it was at least ironic that Irish stereotypes were being peddled at a -- wait for it! -- anti-racism trial.

There was no outrage from an Irish American politician or the national AOH, or even the Emerald Society of the FDNY.  Nothing.

These comments were made as the trial against the FDNY got underway earlier this month.  The topic of the day was the allegation that white FDNY candidates with criminal backgrounds seemed to be getting much more lenient treatment than minority candidates with similarly troubled pasts.

Former assistant commissioner for FDNY personnel Patricia Kavaler testified that FDNY big wigs might call members of a review board to vouch for white candidates with checkered pasts.

“You’re dealing with a lot of Irishmen who are drunks and they get into bar fights and they get arrested and they get arrested again.  They fight, they sock their girlfriends…they get arrested because they fought with the police when they got arrested.  This is boys being boys.  That type of thing.”

How does one even begin to deal with this?

First off, we have to let Kavaler off the hook.  It appears she was simply relaying what she had heard someone else say.  She apparently did not say these words herself.

However, since these drunken Irish comments were reported in exactly one news outlet -- the New York Daily News -- there were no follow-up questions seeking clarification.

So, let’s say Kavaler heard some other FDNY bigwig say this.  Isn’t this nearly as newsworthy as anti-black comments?

Look, I am not naïve.  Are there Irish members of the FDNY who like to drink?  I know several.  Do the Irish in general like to drink?

Often, Irish folks themselves put this message out.  When basketball great and Queens native Chris

Mullin was recently inducted into the NBA Hall of Fame, several stories linked his alcoholism with his Irish American upbringing.

Watch any episode of Denis Leary’s FDNY show Rescue Me and it will probably confirm every existing stereotypes.

Okay.  Fine.  So, let’s pretend the FDNY bigwig who claimed, “You’re dealing with a lot of Irishmen who are drunks,” is named Kevin O’Donovan, or something similarly Hibernian.  This is still inexcusable.

In a forum dedicated to correcting the wrongs of racial or ethnic bias, there is no way comments about drunken, brawling Irishmen should be allowed to pass unremarked upon.

Unless, that is, we are then going to discuss Mafia Italians and dumb Pollocks and cheap Jews or any other lame racial/ethnic/religious stereotype.

That all being said, it could be that the FDNY has a serious problem.  It simply does not look good that, in a city like New York, only 3% of firefighters are African American.

It is true that it is very much a job passed from father to son, which gives New York’s white ethnic groups a leg up, and it’s hard to pass a law against that.
It’s also true that other major cities have found ways to diversify their firefighting ranks. And that presumably goes for gender also.

We’ll let New York Post gossip columnist Cindy Adams have the last word. She recently lamented that the number of female firefighters has stayed at around 30 for the past several decades because the FDNY is “an old Irish club of sexists.”

It begs the question -- how can Irish firefighters find time to be sexist when they are drinking and brawling and getting arrested all the time?

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

Finding hope in tragedy - three young lives cut short by horrific car crash

Jaime Malone, Michael Mulhall and Paige Malone

They are named Lynch and Galvin and Murphy and Mulhall and Malone.  Many of them are twentysomethings still in college or just completing college, and they live in Floral Park, a tight-knit section of Nassau County.  Many of their Irish American parents and grandparents grew up in Woodside and other Irish enclaves of Queens before moving out to Long Island.

One year ago, Floral Park was thrust into sadness when three of its brightest lights died in a car accident on the Meadowbrook Parkway.  The three victims, along with two other friends, were on their way to work at Camp Anchor, which serves disabled children and adults.

This Saturday, friends and family of the victims – many Irish American – have organized a special event at St. John’s University to remember their lost friends, raise money for causes that were dear to them, and console each other on this terrible anniversary.

“It’s really a community event.  We thought it would be a nice way to expand on Jaime and Michael and Paige’s love for athletics and charity events,” family friend Matt Galvin told the Irish Voice.

Galvin said he is one of about 40 people who have pitched in to help main organizer Joe Lynch create the Malone-Mulhall benefit basketball game.  The game will be held at 1 p.m. this Saturday, July 30, and will feature top-flight professional and college athletes, including Danny Green of the NBA’s San Antonio Spurs, Justin Burrell and Malik Boothe of St. John’s and Tyrone Nash of Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish.

In addition, New York City native and Irish American Mike Breen – the New York Knicks play-by-play broadcaster – will serve as host.

According to Galvin, money raised by the event will go to the Jaime and Page Malone Foundation, which was founded to help families in distress. Funds will also go to Camp Anchor.

“Physical education is a large part of the work done at Camp Anchor, and a day could hardly go by that you wouldn’t see Mike having a catch with a young child with Down’s syndrome, or Jamie teaching one of her campers with autism how to play soccer,” reads the event web site www.mmbenefitgame.com.

“It was a rarity not to find Paige chasing after one of her 6-year-old campers who had taken off with a basketball, insistent that the lines on the court had little bearing on the actual game.”
Reaction to the Malone-Mulhall benefit game has been strong.

“We knew we couldn’t have it at a local high school gym,” said Galvin, who added that while at least 1,000 spectators are expected, strong interest as the event approached this week could push the crowd to 3,000.
The world changed for so many Floral Park families on the morning of July 14, 2010.

Sisters Paige, 19, and Jaime, 22, Malone, friend Kelly Murphy, and Michael Mulhall headed off to Camp Anchor for another day of work.  Justine Mulhall, Michael’s sister, was driving.

Authorities said she lost control of the car.  The Malone sisters, as well as Michael Mulhall, 22, died in the wreck.

The kids in the car did not only have their whole lives ahead of them, they were willing to share their lives with others.

"This wasn't just a job for them, it was a lifestyle," a Camp Anchor coordinator later said.  A parent added, "They committed a huge part of their lives to helping our children.”

The benefit game is a fitting way to mark the memory of these selfless young adults, said Galvin.  The Malones’ father, Jim, is the basketball coach at Beach Channel High School in Queens.

On the day of the accident, as a way to cope, family members went to a nearby park to forget their sorrow and play basketball.

Paige Malone's boyfriend Joe Lynch was among those at the Malone house that day, and came up with the idea of a sporting event to remember Michael, Jaime and Paige, as well as to raise money.

“They had a love for athletics and passion for helping others, and we’re trying to emulate what they did,” said Galvin, who is 22 and just graduated from Tufts University.

Tickets are still available for the event.  For more details or to donate go to www.mmbenefitgame.com.

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

To ‘Hell’ with newspapers - industry must reacts to the threats it faces

James O'Shea

James O’Shea has seen a lot in his four decades as a newspaperman.

And yet, even he was taken aback when Rupert Murdoch closed the News of the World tabloid in Britain in the wake of a hacking scandal. “That’s a pretty incredible step,” declared O’Shea.

At a time when newspapers are downsizing or closing, the News of the World was highly profitable.  And yet, when it came to light that some journalists at the Murdoch-owned paper were hacking into private information of (among other people) crime victims, the News of the World had actually been making lots of money.

Not that O’Shea is exactly weeping for the Australian-born media titan.
“Rupert Murdoch is a smart businessman,” said O’Shea.

O’Shea himself has had run-ins with powerful businessmen in the media world, and they are the subject of his compelling new book The Deal from Hell: How Moguls and Wall Street Plundered Great American Newspapers (Public Affairs).

Just a little over a decade ago, O’Shea notes, newspapers across America earned $44 billion in advertising.  It was also around this time one of the most infamous business transactions in American history was being planned.  For better or worse, O’Shea had a front row seat.

Interestingly, as big wigs at the Chicago Tribune newspaper began plotting how to purchase the Los Angeles Times newspaper, a couple of other much smaller transactions were taking place.

Two little companies, Craigslist.com and Google.com, were going public, while a fellow by the name of Matt Drudge was -- literally -- looking through garbage cans for information for a gossip web site he’d started.
In the years that followed, Drudge, Google and many other Internet pioneers would be flying high.  And newspapers, even stalwarts such as the Tribune and the Times would be fighting for their lives.

O’Shea grew up in St. Louis.  His paternal ancestors, Jeremiah O’Shea and Margaret Sullivan, came to the U.S. just after the Famine.  His maternal family roots also runs back to Cork.

“Growing up,” he says, “I thought most of the people in the world were Irish Catholic and Democratic.”

A self-described weak student, he took to writing while in high school, a military school run by the Christian brothers.

He began a slow, steady rise up the ladder of the journalism world.  In 1984, this took him to Ballyporeen, Co. Tipperary, where he covered President Reagan’s trip to his ancestral village.

O’Shea had a made a name for himself as an investigative reporter and became a top editor at the Chicago Tribune, which, by the 1990s, was making a tidy profit for the Tribune company.

Hoping to become an even bigger player in the media game, the new owners of the Tribune Company purchased the prestigious Los Angeles Times (owned by the Times Mirror Company).

And O’Shea was tapped as top editor at the LA paper.  He was greeted with skepticism in the Times newsroom, seen as an outsider perhaps sent to do the bidding of the paper’s new corporate owners.

Meanwhile, as the 2000s progressed, the media landscape had changed dramatically.  All newspapers struggled to hold onto advertising, while the Internet boomed.

Corporate owners looking to save money chopped newspaper budgets, forcing journalists onto the unemployment line.

The last straw came when billionaire Sam Zell -- who had no experience running a media company -- purchased the floundering Tribune Company.  Soon after, the company was completely bankrupt and O’Shea was out as Times editor.

O’Shea’s book is a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of how powerful executives injured the newspaper industry.

By now, the collapse of newspapers has been so widely discussed that it might have seemed inevitable.  But O’Shea disagrees. “I don’t think … the industry had to collapse.  It simply had to act sooner on some of the threats that were facing it.”

Over-reliance on advertising and slashing quality content, O’Shea contends, are what did newspapers in.

In the Internet age, O’Shea believes news organizations are simply going to have to charge money for their content if they are going to survive.
These days, O’Shea is editor of the Chicago News Cooperative, which partners with The New York Times and other outlets to produce quality reporting.

Aside from his trips as a reporter, O’Shea has been on several bike riding trips across Ireland and says, “I think it’s about time for another one.”

Make us proud Denis Leary - 10 years after 9/11 the finale of "Rescue Me" - VIDEO

Ten years ago this week Legally Blonde, starring Reese Witherspoon, was about to hit movie theaters, as was Tim Burton’s Planet of the Apes remake. Another remake, “Lady Marmalade,” by Christina Aguilera, L’il Kim and Pink, was one of the top hits on the radio.

It is also believed that 10 years ago this week, 9/11 hijacker Mohammad Atta flew off to Spain to meet with fellow terrorist Ramzi bin al-Shibh, where they were finalizing plans for an attack that would change the course of world history, and to this day weighs upon thousands and thousand of families from Washington, D.C. to Rockaway Beach.

It is a question that cannot be asked too many times -- has it really been nearly 10 years?

Alas, it has. And as the weeks build up to that awful anniversary two months from now, wounds that had never closed will be aggravated again, scars that never healed will ache once more.

Perhaps that is why I’m pulling for Denis Leary’s FX cable show Rescue Me to do something magical, as its final season on the air opens this week, Wednesday night, July 13 at 10 p.m.

Mind you, Leary and the show’s creators are the ones who put tons of pressure on themselves. They timed the show’s final season so that the final episode would air just as the nation was grappling with the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

But Leary and Peter Tolan and all the other guys who created this memorable show were never short of nerves.

Imagine believing that just three years after the 9/11 attacks tore a hole into the heart of New York’s cop-and-firefighter country -- Bay Ridge, Throgs Neck, Woodside, almost all of Staten Island -- that you could put a show on the air that would not only wrestle with this tragedy, but also make people laugh.
In a recent interview with the New York Daily News, Leary said, “I hope what they remember is the laughter and tears.”

Now, it must be said that there is another reason I’m pulling for Rescue Me to finish up strong. Because over the course of its seven-year run on TV, the show has had its fair share of weak moments.

That can pretty much be said of any show on TV. But, like a family member, it feels worse when something close to you doesn’t rise to the highest level.

Forgettable moments include a rather preposterous plot line a few years back about a sexually abusive priest Tommy and his cop brother get involved with.

Then there was the heart-wrenching death of Tommy’s son, a profound event in anyone’s life, which in subsequent seasons…has kind of been forgotten.

But at its best, there has rarely been anything as powerful as Rescue Me, which makes it not only a great TV show but a very important contribution to Irish American culture.

Even when the humor leans too hard on fart jokes, and the hopping from bed to bed among the sex-crazed characters becomes forgettable and the plot lines spin into the realm of absurdity, Leary and Tolan always had something important to say about blue collar men and women, a group sorely misunderstood on television and across the media landscape.

In particular, this was a balanced look at Irish Americans and their stereotypes and their place in the world’s greatest city in the 21st century, having absorbed the most brutal blow that city has ever seen.

At its best -- a guilt-ridden Tommy Gavin dousing himself in alcohol, Tommy at a ball game with his difficult father who’s just died -- Rescue Me veered into Eugene O’Neill territory, with its unflinching look at family and Catholicism and the particular ways Irish folks tend to heal, as well as hurt, one another.

So, how do you end a show like this?

"We're not talking too much about specifics," Tolan told the News. "There are some large things that happen. We are, in the tradition of all great shows, killing off a major character very near the end of the series. We're not giving any hints."

Great art need not be realistic. Great art takes reality and bends it and manipulates it until something shocking and brilliant emerges.

Rescue Me hasn’t always been pretty. But it has been great. And decades from now when people want to understand post-9/11 New York – and Irish America – they will have to take a long, hard look at Rescue Me.

Here’s hoping Leary and Co. can pull this off one more time.


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

David McCullough: An artist, an Irishman and a patriot

David McCullough

It was an odd Fourth of July weekend.

First, you had the interesting news out of Rhode Island that Governor Lincoln Chafee had officially pardoned an Irish immigrant who was hanged for murder in 1845, after a highly questionable trial took place in an atmosphere charged with anti-Irish, anti-Catholic sentiment.

For a history buff such as myself, there is value in this.  We should do our best to acknowledge and correct the mistakes of the past. That was certainly done in this case.We should also, however, use the past to guide us in the present.

And while anti-immigrant sentiment today is not the kind we saw in Rhode Island in 1845, I would say we are still in a rush to imprison certain kinds of people, and in no rush whatsoever to ask tough questions about how they ended up there.

But okay, that’s nitpicking.  More depressing is the story that refuses to go away, that of Fox Business channel commentator Eric Bolling, who has been accused of making racist comments, in part because he said President Obama was “chugging 40s in Ireland,” rather than returning to America to help tornado-ravaged regions of the Midwest.

Much attention has been paid to the possible racism in this statement, but what about the automatic link to the Irish and drinking!  Then again, what can you do when the most common photo of Obama in Ireland is one of him hoisting a pint?

If you’re like me and want to momentarily forget about some of this surreal stuff, you may want to pick up a copy of historian David McCullough’s new book. In The Greater Journey: Americans in Paris, McCullough (best-selling author of Truman) tells a forgotten story about an inspiring Irish American whose name not many people remember, yet whose work we see all the time.

His name was George P.A. Healy.  His father was an Irish-born captain in the merchant marine. The oldest of five children, Healy grew up poor in 1820s Boston.  He aspired to be an artist, however, and he is one of many Americans McCullough explores who went to Paris in the 1830s to soak up the culture of that city.

“For a much younger, still struggling and little-known artist like George P.A. Healy of Boston, Paris was even more the promised land.  He was the oldest of the five children of a Catholic father and Protestant mother.  Because his father, a sea captain, had difficulty making ends meet, he had been his mother’s ‘right hand man’ through boyhood, helping any way he could.”

Healy, though, emerged from boyhood with a passion for art.  In 1834, he went to Paris to see sites that most Americans – mush less a poor Irish kid from Boston – would never have seen.  Centuries-old buildings, classical works of art, even museums were unheard of in the United States.

Healy would go on to become best known for his portraits of American statesmen, including a famous portrait of the peacemakers settling the terms of the U.S. Civil War, and of Abraham Lincoln himself.  One of Healey’s portraits of Lincoln became a famous stamp in the 1950s.

Healy was joined by at least two other artists of note with links to Irish America.  First there was Augustus Saint Gaudens.  Though his name is decidedly non-Irish, Augustus was born in Dublin in 1848 to a French father and Irish mother.

He moved as a youngster to New York City and would go on to become one of the premier sculptors of his day.  He is perhaps best known for his works commemorating famous figures from the American Civil War as well as the statue of Parnell on Dublin’s O’Connell Street.

Given the state of stories floating around the world these days, about chugging forties and things of that nature, I found the Healy story in McCullough’s book particularly inspiring on Independence Day. But even this book has its depressing side.

One other painter of note who went to Paris around this time was Samuel Morse.  Most people, these days, remember Morse for the telegraph he invented and the code that was used to convey messages on this miracle machine of its day.

Morse was also a great painter.  But guess what?  Morse was a rabid anti-Catholic and opponent of immigration.

Presumably, he shed no tears when that Irishman was hanged in Rhode Island way back in 1845.