Pub Guide
Manhattan Diary
by Cahir O'DohertyRSS 
Recent Posts
- Why the Catholic church is wrong, yet again, with contraception lawsuit
- America's fake job creators - Nick Hanauer talks taxes, income inequality and the US economy - VIDEO
- The times they are a changin’ - the progress of our relationship with sexuality
- Mitt Romney is the zombie Ronald Reagan
- The little bright one - vicious beatings and deciding to leave Belfast
Archives
Why the Catholic church is wrong, yet again, with contraception lawsuit
On Monday 40 Catholic organizations, including the Archdiocese of Washington, D.C. and the University of Notre Dame, filed suit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services over its contraception coverage mandate. The announcement was made early to catch, and presumably shape, the week's news cycle.
It's important to stress that this has never happened before. America's bishops have chosen a key moment in an election year to sue the president over one of his policies.
America's fake job creators - Nick Hanauer talks taxes, income inequality and the US economy - VIDEO
Mitt Romney is the zombie Ronald Reagan
Why is Mitt Romney the presumptive GOP presidential candidate?
It's a question we may think we know the answer to, which explains why so few are asking it.
It's a question the party itself probably doesn't want you to ask, because of what it reveals about its current internal state.
The little bright one - vicious beatings and deciding to leave Belfast
I'm running. It’s a bright, clear autumn night, the sky framed by the eaves of Victorian houses.
There are 12 of them and two of us. A word passed between them and the chase is on.
I don't know this part of Belfast, but I know that if we make a wrong turn now we'll be killed. Just stopping in the wrong street will get us killed.
Republican's Mitt Romney - an anti-gay bully
I vividly remember the way boys like that talked about women among themselves: like they were livestock. I didn't hang around with these boys, I didn't even like to be in their vicinity. It was easy enough to avoid them though, if you weren't part of their exclusive social network then they simply couldn't see you. That was a relief to me.
But I remember this one particular kid. There's always this one particular kid. I'll call him George. It looked as if nature had created George to be a scapegoat. He was overweight and effeminate and anxious about his appearance. He bumped into things and knocked them over, every day. He was a closeted gay of course, so deep in the closet he was into his late twenties before he came out. One look into his big frightened teenage eyes was a glimpse into the horrors of adolescence. This kid was in pain, so much pain you could see it in his face.
As a gay Irishman, Obama’s support on same sex marriage means everything
President Barack Obama's announcement yesterday that same sex couples should be able to get married is a historic moment in a presidency that hasn't been short of them.
Mitt Romney and Joe Biden - the past and the present
We are living in two different Americas.
Last week Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney stayed stonily silent through a relentless and bigoted campaign that was waged against his only gay staff member by the hard right.
Pastors, racists, Neo-Nazis supporting North Carolina's Amendment One
North Carolina residents will go to the polls this Tuesday to vote on Amendment One, which would define marriage as being between a man and a woman in the state's constitution, banning both gay marriage and civil unions (for heterosexuals too).
The state already bans same sex marriage, but some particularly anxious lawmakers feel it's their civic duty to prevent gays from forming legal unions in the state's constitution.
The New York Times reports that recent polls of the state and an analysis of past ballot initiatives in other states suggest the measure is likely to pass.
The Leaving Certificate - looking to the future and moving away from the comforts of home
They call it the Leaving Certificate. It’s the name given to the high school graduating test in Ireland, and your results in it will determine where – or if – you go to college.
Ireland doesn’t continually assess you based on schoolwork throughout the year like American high schools. Instead the only assessment that really counts is the exam you take toward the close of your high school career.
The Irish condition and the silence that followed the Famine
Psychotherapy is something the Irish think you turn to only after booze, confession and prayer all fail. It’s the end of the line, the final admission of failure. Your problems must be insurmountable indeed if you have to see a shrink about them.
The people that I’ve encountered with the most hostile attitude to therapy are usually the people most in need of it. It’s a neat trick that.
'Glee' could turn your kids gay Bill O'Reilly warns - VIDEO
Bill O'Reilly is worried that Glee, the all-singing all-dancing smash hit musical show on Fox, will encourage America's youth to experiment with 'alternative lifestyles.'
Let's be clear: 'alternative lifestyles,' for Fox News pundits, is code for gay. O'Reilly is concerned that watching Glee will turn your kids gay.
O'Reilly didn't say gay though, because for conservatives your sexual orientation is not something that's fixed or innate, like your eye color or the color of your skin - instead it's altogether more elective, it's something you can fall into, like stamp collecting or model ship building.
Tantrums of a Tea Party - Internet turns global village into Appalachian backwood
The media get blamed for a lot of things in the United States. The charges leveled against them can range from having a blatant conservative or liberal bias, to charges of leading the news rather than reporting it.
God abandons the GOP Presidential Race
Remember how the main Republican candidates all rushed to confirm to the press that God has inspired them to run in 2012?
To hear them tell it, Almighty God had taken time out of His busy schedule to make personal visits to their upscale homes to endorse them in person.
I'm talking about you Rick Santorum, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann and Rick Perry.
The Irish Government - the same politics leads to same results
The trajectory of a life in the Irish political establishment hasn’t really altered in decades. You move from the playing fields to the professions; or from the elite boarding schools to the law schools; or from the rural constituency offices to the offices of parliament.
Doors open as if by magic -- if your face and background fit, that is.
National Organization For Marriage Sought To Divide Blacks, Gays, Latinos
According to court documents, which were posted to the internet yesterday, NOM worked strategically to drive a wedge between the black and gay community in regard to same sex marriage.
"The strategic goal of this project is to drive a wedge between gays and blacks," the released document revealed, shockingly.
Struggling to find who you are in small town Ireland
Adolescences erupts like a fire inside you, or at least it did for me.
A flame lit in my head that made the weary adult world look like a pristine Eden waiting to be explored.
Rick Santorum should be the GOP's presidential candidate
Ladies, it looks like the hot fashion trend this year - thanks to the GOP - may soon be a burqa.
After all, Mitt Romney has just announced that as president he would cut federal funding to Planned Parenthood. Don't look startled, at this stage he's probably cut America's military spending if he thought it would help him clinch the GOP presidential nomination.
Democrats and Republicans united in concern about GOP presidential candidates
The whole country, Democrats and Republicans alike, have something in common this month -- total ambivalence about the current crop of GOP candidates.
For liberals they’re a lineup of yesterday’s men -- from the guy who lost to the last guy who lost, to the guy who was run out on a rail.
Donald Trump's sons shoots a leopard in Africa
The pair were participants in a wildlife hunting trip to the Matetsi area of Zimbabwe, which is located near Victoria Falls.
Irish hackers arrested by FBI, Ireland at risk of hacker backlash
Commentators have speculated for years about the motivations that compel computer hackers - from glory among their peers, to the challenge factor, or the problem solving, or the laughs, or even out of malice - but the biggest factor behind successful hacking attempts is this: hackers attack complex network systems because they can.
But hackers themselves make fine and important distinctions between real hackers (themselves) and what they call the teenage cracker patrol: the latter are in the main the adolescent males who break into phone systems and public services to create chaos just for the hell of it. Crackers don't get much respect from more experienced hackers.
Cardinal Timothy Dolan and Father Mychal Judge-- yes men and no men
In the midst of all the celebrations this week I’d like to take a moment to recall that on the recent 10th anniversary of 9/11, new Cardinal Timothy Dolan chose not to honor Father Mychal Judge, the first recorded victim of that godforsaken 2001 attack, and a man that many now call the Saint of 9/11.
It was a glaring omission considering what he still means to the Irish American community, the city’s brave firefighters and to many other communities in New York.
Is Rick Santorum running for President or Pope?
This weekend we learned even more AMAZING FUN FACTS about Rick Santorum.
First he told us that college in the United States is just a giant left wing indoctrination camp for elitists, which is presumably the only reason why President Obama says its important to go.
GOP's small government of the bedroom - best form of contraception is abstinence
This week we learned the GOP's best prescribed form of contraception is abstinence.
And if a woman decides she wants to get pregnant she can simply refrain from abstinence. The country's Catholic Bishop's are in complete agreement.
Sean Hannity's all-male Fox News contraception panel
Who better to tell women how to make their own reproductive choices than a room full of religious conservative elderly white men? I mean, obviously right?
Clearly that's what Fox New's Sean Hannity concluded this week when he reflexively assembled an all-male panel to discuss women's reproductive rights.
How men are defined in modern Ireland
You can't grow up in the north of Ireland without confronting the question of what it means to be a man. Sooner or later you're going to ask yourself, or more likely someone's going to tell you.
And it usually doesn't take long because the job description itself isn't long. Generally you'll be told if you're doing it right, or scolded if you're doing it wrong.
Chris Christie calls gay rights struggle 'theater'
Yesterday New Jersey's Senate approved marriage equality for same sex couples. The bill passed by a wider than expected margin.
But Governor Chris Christie has promised to veto it when it comes to his desk on Thursday, contemptuously calling the vote ' a bunch of good theater.'
The Catholic Church blasts contraception - ignores own failings in sexual abuse scandal
Let's pause in the middle of this clearly manufactured 'controversy' between the White House and some Catholic leaders over the new rule on providing contraception to consider the following.
Yesterday attorney Jeffrey Anderson revealed at least 8,000 children were sexually abused by over 100 priests and other offenders in the Milwaukee Catholic Diocese.
Gay rights are human rights, court finds
Imagine there are literally tens of thousands of people who, although they have never met you, don’t like you. And I mean they really don’t like you.
It’s personal. They don’t like how you look, act, think, vote, talk or express yourself. Many of them don’t even think you should exist.
Bill Donohue: blame Madonna not Catholic Church
Another day, another opportunity for Bill Donohue to blame some unsuspecting soul for all of the ills affecting the Catholic Church.
This week's pinata is Madonna, the nemesis of all that is wholesome, proper and sacred since 1984 (to hear Bill and his Catholic League of one tell it).
Kansas Speaker Mike O'Neal's prayer for President Obama's Death
Kansas Republican House Speaker Mike O’Neal stepped onto the national stage last week when he was forced to apologize to First Lady Michelle Obama after an email he forwarded to fellow lawmakers calling her 'Mrs. YoMama' made national news.
O'Neal's offense giving impulses were not over, however. Another email he forwarded to his fellow House Republicans asked them to to pray Psalm 109, which contains these verses:
Governor Chris Christie says majorities should vote on minority rights
Honestly, they could have spared themselves the mess, according to our esteemed historian.
I imagine the leaders of the civil rights era would have an unmistakable response to Christie's contention, and I imagine much of it would be delivered in quite strong language. A plebiscite in the late 1950's or 1960's that would have overturned Jim Crow? Really Governor?
Newt Gingrich apparently blames media for marital infidelities
How dare CNN and its sinister fellow travelers in the so-called 'elite media' dare to question Gingrich's integrity by raising the latest revelations of his second wife, he thundered?
Gingrich was not there to discuss his requests for an open marriage. To underline that point he then brought both CNN and host John King to the woodshed.
Cardinal Francis George: gays are the new KKK
Hours after he learned the organizers of Chicago's annual gay pride parade would delay the start of 2012's citywide pride march to avoid disrupting morning Mass at Our Lady of Mount Carmel Church, the Cardinal still found the opportunity to take (and give) further offense.
'You don't want the gay liberation movement to morph into something like the Ku Klux Klan, demonstrating in the streets against Catholicism,' he told visibly startled Fox News host Dane Placko.
‘Nothing gold can stay’ - throwing the first punch and being forced to leave small-town Ireland
The only punch I have ever thrown was at Christmas. I'm not sure what it says about me. I'm certainly not proud of the fact.
No drink was involved. There was no long festering family dispute. I hadn't stepped out to settle some old score. It just occurred.
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