The Keane Edge

Take me to your town's Irish speakers. An explorer landing on Ireland for the first time might be after more than a pint of beer. The new tourist wants to be let-in on the Gaelic secrets of the island.

In a new push announced last week, Fáilte Ireland is promoting a deeper kind of tourism to help culture-offering Irish locals catch the tourist's heart with a romance of place and placename. Getting a tourist to spend time in an unusual village is a problem of drawing the stranger into the magic of a new place.

Globalization has created a new kind of tourist--one who seeks-out significance in a secret spot she can claim as a personal find.

When Irish American journalist Jennifer Griffin asked General Petraeus about his favorite music, "I'm an Enya guy," was his response.

The hunter of Al Qaeda terrorists, Iraqi insurgents and Afghan Taliban apparently has a soft spot for the Gaelic Irish vibe.

Petraeus' musical preference is somewhat of a relief. Like Jewish Americans concerned for the special relationship between Israel and the American military, Irish Americans have an old record of service with the US armed forces, and expect it would assist the Irish army and defend Ireland's neutral independence should its economic crisis ever be exploited by bigger powers again.

The Islamic Center proposed for downtown Manhattan may not have been proposed well, but it intends well. The recently released plans for the building depict a magnificent work of architecture that will be open to the public and add enormously to the cultural cache of a neighborhood in desperate need of investment. Funding sources for the institution have and will be vetted by the US government. Concerns that the mosque will be Saudi Wahhabist have been answered and assuaged.

The proximity issue is not compelling, as the building is tucked around a corner and two blocks away from the perimeter of the WTC site. The historical value of the Burlington Coat Factory was addressed by the Landmark commission, and found to be lacking. No one was killed on that site. Parsing the definition of Ground Zero is cynical. 'It's too close,' is not nearly good enough reason to demonize anyone.

New York is better for its tolerance. Mayor Bloomberg had it right all along.

The Celtic cross is not a gory object like the common European or Latin American crucifix depicting the remains of Roman execution. More often the Celtic cross is depicted in bare geometry that is sometimes ornamented with mathematically precise knotwork.

Joseph Campbell thought the peculiar cross with circle represented chakra ascension, and quoted WBYeats' line "ancient Ireland knew it all," in describing his theory of Gaelic Ireland's Tibetan-like achievements at spiritual culture.

A Scottish researcher and yachtsman, however, has patented the Celtic cross as a tool--re-discovered---he claims, and which he thinks useful in navigation, astronomy, surveying, cartography and time keeping. Surprisingly, the UK patent office concurs on the uniqueness of Crichton E M Miller's discovery; and he received his first of two patents in November 2000.

The Irish have a learned tradition that is unique to Europe and which helped flip the continent from barbaric illiteracy in Dark Ages, to the illumination and bookishness that would become western civilization.

Important European universities began as Irish monasteries, built by literati that left Ireland with the education to teach the chaotic post-Roman world to read.

Old Irish books are tortured creatures, made from skinned calves, and often fated to the bonfires of Europe's philistine streak. In the bonfires of conquerors the independent scholarly tradition of Ireland's proto-universities was almost destroyed, as with the round towers and sanctuaries along the Shannon.

I honestly thought Rick Sanchez was white. I would never have guessed he was an oppressed "minority."

But that's what the former CNN host has claimed in his bid to represent "everyday Americans" against anyone with any advantage he did not have.

The butt of many Daily Show lampoons for being a goofy journalist--Mr.Sanchez--has finally succumbed to the gravitas of a wounded ego; lashing out at Jon Stewart, Jewish people, physicists, school teachers and anyone smarter than he.