Sidewalks
by Tom DeignanRSS 
Recent Posts
- Remembering Morton Downey, Jr, the father of trash TV
- Father Andrew Greeley’s powerful faith - remembering the larger than life Chicago priest
- Ireland’s rotten Apple scheme - two-bit operation need to pay their dues to maintain “civilized society”
- Sleazy secrets and the American Dream of Dublin born spy Kevin Richard Halligen
- 'The Great Gatsby' author F Scott Fitzgerald’s death and burial another Catholic lesson
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This may not be what you’d expect from a comic whose latest stand-up tour includes a goofy Irish drinking song which takes swipes at Michael Flatley and the Catholic Church. But Denis Leary’s Rescue Me is one of the most important Irish American cultural artifacts of recent decades, right up there with Angela’s Ashes, and, yes, even Riverdance.
Anyone interested in telling the history of Irish Catholics in 21st Century America could not possibly ignore all of the crucial themes – family, the church, 9/11 – the show has explored, at times with brutal honesty, dark humor and occasionally, with a bit too much goofiness.
Indeed, now we just have to hope that the show, which had its season premiere on the FX cable channel this week, goes out with a bang rather than a whimper.
Does Ireland have a set of laws that assist men, because women are becoming so successful? And should America copy these Irish laws?
You might think so, if you believe what you see on TV and in cyberspace these days.
Let’s start at the beginning. The cover of the latest edition of the Atlantic Monthly declares that “The End of Men” in near.
When Michael Mulgrew became head of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT) this year, he was entering some uncharted territory. As Harold Myserson noted in an August 2009 article about the waning influence of the Irish in the labor movement, the ascension of the Irish American Mulgrew ended “a 50-year succession of Jewish UFT presidents.”
This Wednesday, June 16, Mulgrew turned up the heat in the UFT’s ongoing battle with New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg by spearheading a rally against education cuts at City Hall.
Mulgrew’s rise to the top of the UFT came around the same time Mary Kay Henry was named leader of the West Coast-based Service Employees International Union (SEIU), which represents over two million workers.
This is a plea to my fellow Irish Americans. It’s time to start giving a damn about football.
And I don’t mean the Giants or the Jets. I mean soccer.
Much was made of the recent 50th anniversary of the birth control pill, which revolutionized sexual behavior in America.
There were cover stories in magazines, big questions about how “the pill” changed American culture, and even a new book by Elaine Tyler May entitled
