The Keane Edge
by Brendan Patrick KeaneRSS 
Recent Posts
- Exorcism of my inner Peter King
- Gas question: why give Ireland's enormous wealth away? the Norweigan alternative
- Bashing the Irish -- a break neck run down on Ireland's history of betrayal
- Stephen Fry to appear on Gaelic soap opera Ros na Rún
- Stolkholm Syndrome infects Dublin
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Peter King helped me see an ugly strain in my identity that can seem ok in some parts of Long Island, but is still wrong there and everywhere else that claims to be American.
I came of age in Queens at a time when King was the only representative in US Congress defending the IRA. As then, his constituents are mostly white working class people who would be deeply affected by 9/11 as victims and heroes and as sensitive New Yorkers who just want to maintain the flame of respect for the people of that day.
Last year I made a big mess of mistakes trying to show support for 9/11 families and workers by chiming in on the Muslim center, the 9/11 Workers Bill and other issues in which Peter King was staking out various audacious claims about dangers posed by Muslims. Full circle, I was repeating a kind of mistake I had also once made in high school when Peter King first got his Congressional seat. I let Peter King's title back then fool me into thinking that it's ok to support the IRA. And more recently, I let him let me think it's ok to express American patriotism in the form of anti-Muslim rhetoric.
