Intelligencer
Bush’s Irish Sleepover
DESPITE all the hullabaloo surrounding President George W. Bush’s visit to Ireland on June 25 and 26, it now turns out the he will only be spending 12 hours in the country – and for eight of those he is expected to be asleep.
All this will come as a major setback for the organizers of mass demonstrations who were hoping that Bush would stay around a little longer in order to see how unpopular he is with many Irish people.
It now looks certain that Bush will jet into Shannon late on the evening of the 25th, sleep over in Dromoland Castle and join the European Union summit the next morning. After lunch he will jet off to Turkey for his next appearance.
There has been an incredible amount of coverage in Ireland given to date to Bush’s visit, including demands that the Secret Service agents who guard the president not be armed during their stay there. Only the Irish would come up with a plausible scenario where the president’s bodyguards should not be armed, it seems.
Local politicians say that the president’s security should be left to the Irish police, which has about as much chance as a snowfall in August in Washington.
Even the question of whether Bush’s bodyguards will have immunity if they shoot someone trying to kill the president has roused Irish ire. There must be a prolonged silly season underway over there.
Granted sometimes the Bush security team looks for too much, such as when they asked that the London underground system be closed during his visit to London last year. Having his bodyguards armed doesn’t seem such a major request though, does it?
Hume Booed At Friendly Sons
NOBEL Prize winner John Hume was the guest of honor at the Friendly Sons of St. Patrick dinner at the Sheraton Hotel in New York on St. Patrick’s night, but all did not go according to plan apparently.
During his remarks, Hume told the doggedly all-male group that Ireland owed a deep debt of gratitude to President Clinton for all that he had contributed to bringing peace to Northern Ireland.
But that did not sit well with numerous members of the audience who booed loudly at the mention of Clinton’s name.
It seems that a number of those booing may well have imbibed the St. Patrick’s Day spirit a little too much, but they were quickly drowned out with thunderous applause for Hume, one of the great statesmen of our time.
The incident shows, however, just how divided the Irish American community is, like everyone else when it comes to Democratic and Republican preferences. A few years back Senator Hillary Clinton was similarly booed at an Irish event, again by an inebriated spectator.
Doubtless, they are the same kind of people who would be very upset at any stereotyping of the Irish as drinkers around St. Patrick’s Day.
Richard Clarke’s Irish Friend
RICHARD Clarke was very well acquainted with another Irish American during his days as terrorism czar at the White House, and the two men seemed to be the only ones who took Osama bin Laden seriously.
The other person, of course, was FBI counter terrorism expert John O’Neill, who tragically lost his life on September 11. O’Neill had just taken over as head of security at the World Trade Center when the planes hit.
Clark and O’Neill first worked together on the capture of Ramzi Yousef, who was the ringleader in the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Clarke told PBS in 2002 that O’Neill was the only one in the FBI who got what the new wave of modern terrorism was about.
The Yousef arrest was “the beginning of a beautiful friendship” according to Clarke.
Clarke once compared O’Neill to an old Irish ward politician. Once O’Neill became convinced that al-Qaeda was an imminent threat he tried to convince everyone in the Clinton administration.
“John would come into the room and there would be a presence about him,” Clarke said in an interview. “He would go around the room like it was a ward meeting and he was an Irish politician.”
O’Neill allegedly told two French journalists in an interview before September 11 that the reason the Bush administration did not pursue al-Qaeda was because of the Saudi Arabia connection, and their fears that oil supplies night be interrupted if they demanded action. That hypothesis has never been proved, but no doubt Clarke might be interesting on the topic.
The Yiddish Sons of Erin
JONATHAN Harris, mayor of West Hartford in Connecticut, had an interesting op-ed in the Hartford Courant over the St. Patrick’s period, recalling the contribution of Jews to the Irish battle for independence.
Harris noted that the period from 1881 to 1911 represented the high point of Jewish immigration to Ireland, mostly from Lithuania. At its high point about 6,000 Jews emigrated, and Dublin even had its own “Little Jerusalem” neighborhood. Many of those who came performed valiantly in the Irish War of Independence.
Indeed, so nationalistic were they that they formed the Judeo-Irish Home Rule Association in 1911, and Fanny Goldberg of Cork was a great heroine when she joined the revolutionary forces during The Troubles. Many other Jews became decorated IRA war veterans.
Harris also notes that an organization known as the “Loyal League of the Yiddish Sons of Erin” marched every year in the St. Patrick’s Day parade in New York City. Fascinating to find out if any of those marchers are still around and if the organization still exists in any form.
Grand Marshals Already Chosen
AND now for something completely different. The identity of next year’s New York City St. Patrick’s Day parade grand marshal is already being touted around town by several of the parade honchos.
Not only that, but this column has even heard who the grand marshal for 2006 is going to be, according to the same sources.
Now “Intelligencer” would consider it a major injustice to those who will be striving so hard over the next two years or so to become grand marshal of the august parade. But your columnist can now tell you hopefuls that you’re wasting your time.
The boys have already decided. However, there may be a vacancy by 2010 or perhaps 2110, so if you want to call back then…
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