Manhattan Diary
by Cahir O'DohertyRSS 
Recent Posts
- Daily Mail unloads on 'drunken young' Paddys with booze-baiting rant - British tabloid continues its anti Irish attitude
- Marco Rubio: 'If immigration bill gives Cubans immigration rights, it kills the bill. I'm done' - VIDEO
- Diaspora should work both ways - time for global Irish to vote
- Ireland needs a new James Joyce - new voice of the Irish people is on the way
- Fox News Lou Dobbs panel: selfish working mothers are destroying the natural order and America
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Who's the phony, Bill?
In the fourth year of the Iraq war I was walking home one day with my partner. It was June 2007, about five in the afternoon, and the sun was shining.
We had been shopping at the farmer’s market in Union Square and we’d picked up some seasonal vegetables and a French loaf.
Curiously, the most vocal segment of Irish society in matters of sex and sexuality are also usually the ones who would prefer if matters of sex and sexuality were never discussed, anywhere, ever.
Gay rights have made their unparalleled advances because technology has allowed us to see that we had nothing to fear, and so much to gain. That's even true in the Vatican now.
It's Monday morning and the egregiously perky barista is waiting to take my coffee order. I look at her askance, the way the Irish do when confronted with perkiness.
As I get closer to the counter I have an inner dialogue with myself that goes like this -- should I tell her, should I not?
Something happened the other day that spooked me. I was caught off guard by a casual comment made in my presence by a fantastically wealthy former senior economic adviser to the Obama administration.
I happen to know that this man (and let’s face it, senior economic advisers still tend to be men) has paintings by Picasso and Cezanne on the walls of his cavernous penthouse overlooking Central Park. You could say he represents one percent of the one percent, the cream of the cream. The very sunlight seems to rearrange itself around him to illustrate that he’s a person of some stature.
When news broke this week that Cardinal Keith O'Brien, the head of the Catholic Church in Scotland, had been accused by four priests of sexual exploitation both his critics and supporters were instantly suspicious of the timing.
Why now, they asked? Pope Benedict's dramatic resignation was barely a week old and the papal conclave was already looming. How could accusations this damning have come to light just at this moment (especially considering O'Brien had Britain's only vote for Pope)? It was an a reasonable question.
Patriarchy, literally the rule by the fathers, is a social system in which the male is the primary authority figure. Daddy calls the shots in political leadership, moral authority, the control of property, and over women and children. Sound familiar?
If you haven't noticed, patriarchy is not what it once was. In the Irish context the experience of patriarchy has played out for centuries in the empires that ruled us, the church that molded us and in the state that (most often) sent us to war or sent us packing.
