This weekend's Notre Dame game is all 'Official Ireland' wants from Irish-America
Posted on Thursday, September 06, 2012 at 05:32 AM
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| Notre Dame fans thronged Dublin over the weekend . |
What a fantastic weekend! Tens of thousands of Notre Dame and Navy fans taking advantage of all too rare great summer weather seeing the sights, 'having the craic' in Dublin and, of course, enjoying a football game. The general consensus is that they came, they saw and they were charmed.
Oh, and they spent too - an estimated $150m this weekend alone. Of course, they didn't just stay in Dublin a couple of days for the game. They saw the rest of the country too. More spending, more great days for Ireland's hotels, restaurants and pubs.
In addition to the sight-seeing and fun times there was some serious business discussion too. The movers and shakers among the traveling thousands were wooed by the government in the hopes that they would steer some investment in Ireland's direction.
It was a dream weekend for the Irish economy, one that bears witness to what's possible when Ireland reaches out to accept the two hands always on offer from Irish-America, without which this weekend would never have happened.
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Read More:
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However, that's as close as official Ireland wants Irish-America to get. Tourists spending a fortune? Hurrah! Wealthy, powerful Irish-Americans steering jobs and investment to Ireland? Hurrah! Any further, deeper involvement of Irish-America in Ireland? "Whoa! Hold on there. That might be an issue. Can't have that."
Best example of this is how Craig Barrett has been treated. Barrett was the head of Intel for many years, including when Intel made its initial massive investment in Ireland back in the late 1980s.
Back in June of this year Barrett added his name to the list of those Irish-Americans who are willing to sit on boards of state companies, offering their wisdom and experience to these companies, to Ireland, for free.
The response of official Ireland to his offer? Zzzzzzzzz. Barrett joined the Irish Technology Leadershp Group's (ITLG) Diaspora 2016 movement after it had already been received in silence by the government and slapped away by Maura Quinn, head of the Institute of Directors (Ireland).
Diaspora 2016's mission is to "make a list of at least 100 business leaders from across the globe who wish to contribute their experience and time to helping Ireland's economic recovery." As Barrett pointed out, for Ireland's economy to rebound and thrive Ireland "must integrate the best of Irish innovation from around the world."
Too true. There are Irish people, whether born here or of Irish descent, who want to see Ireland succeed. They're willing to help out, to contribute.
Spurning their expertise is foolishness in the extrem. As Tom McEnery, former Mayor of San Jose wrote in response to Quinn, "One would think that all is well in Ireland." Attitudes like Quinn's can only be explained as the response of those who are comfortable and fear 'outsiders' coming in and shaking things up.
I admire McEnery, Barrett and the others' persistence. They refuse to take 'No' for an answer.
There is so much potential in this group, so much that these men and women have to offer. All that's required is that Ireland stop resisting.
I just don't see that happening, especially not after this past weekend.
This weekend was exactly what official Ireland wants from Irish-Americans. Let's entice them to come to Ireland in big numbers, hence next year's "Gathering." Let's get the very successful among them to come to Ireland, hand them a glass of Jameson and a piece of brown soda-bread, put on a display of Irish dancing, show them our tax breaks and convince them that they should locate their EU operations here. Ask them to bring their non-Irish friends next time.
That's the extent of it. That's what Irish-America is for, tourism and investment. I don't really have a problem with either of those, but how is that any different from the strategy in 1987? How does it differ from 1962?
Next year's Gathering is actually a good idea. I support it. But how often can we gather? How often can Notre Dame play in Dublin?
Networking is the future in a world where technology has made distance almost irrelevant. In Irish-America Ireland has a ready made network; all it has to do is accept it. It's time for official Ireland to reach out with two hands and fully embrace Irish-America.
{Photo from Matt Cashore, University of Notre Dame}
33 comments
JimmyJK | Sep 06, 2012, 07:17 PM EDT
It's mind boggling that a lot of Irish people do not think of the Irish diaspora as anything but an invisible sea of people they have not connection to. this is despite the fact that the DNA of the Irish and the diaspora in most cases is identical, a DNA family history that goes back literally thousands of years and one that contains ingrained similarities wether you like it or not, it's science. As long as those on one end of the receiver is still trying to communicate there will be great possibilities of connecting our disparate communities but there is also a possible scenario to consider albeit a crazy one.... What if the Diaspora would come back to Ireland to live and to be themselves they would become advocates for the diaspora.... Ireland needs to be more of a two way street instead of a one way exit....
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manhattan | Sep 06, 2012, 07:15 PM EDT
Will Hamilton, read the responses to your insulting comments by El Rubio and you may learn something. Then again as someone with s--t for brains (Old Irish Saying begorrah) it would be way over your head.
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el rubio | Sep 06, 2012, 06:54 PM EDT
Will Hamilton, I do not intend to discuss the attitudes of the hip New Irelnd (yes I will continue to use that term) towards the Catholic Church of yesteryear with someone whose personal bigotry towards a particular faith blinds him to real persecution which has gone on in the world throughout history and continues to go on in certan countries. Ultimately, it is ignorane of history that is the crux of the prejudice and stereotyping of Irish-Americans by those denizens of contemporary Ireland. Notre Dame football is a tradition which sprung from a unique Irish-American culture that was heavily rooted in Catholic Institutions in the United States; a Catholicism which helped to raise the offspring of immigrants out of the slums and gave them both an education and a personal dignity which they would never attain through any secular welfare state. The transposing of Irish-American culture back to Ireland is no different than the dominance of English football games in the salons of Sandymount and Ballsbridge. As I recall, a young Michael Collins was outspoken concerning association football's popularity vis a vis Gaelic football, saying that there should be "no soccer for the Gaels." What I'm curious about is your hostility to one sport of foreign origin while embracing another? Perhaps you are just hostile to Americans in general and Irish-Americans in particular, but that doesn't surprise me. By the way, rubio is a physical description. Learning some Spanish might come in handy the next time you're living it up in Ibiza with all those boozed up Brits in their ManU and Liverpool replica tops.
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Will Hamilton | Sep 06, 2012, 06:21 PM EDT
You are some kind of poor unfortunate ball of confused cultural problems to be spouting ill informed religiously deluded bruscar about Ireland (where you were never born and never will be) and doing it with a Spanish handle. I referred to the gulag of industrial schools, Magdalene laundries and local schools that Irish people have had to pay for and the crimes committed within, up to the present day. You tripped up and transposed the term into a reference not made which you presumed was. But your're doing that your whole life with a whole country so the problem is habitual in your case. You are a perfect example of the kind of confused schizophrenic that scars Ireland within and without. Roman Catholicism is the religious tool of a foreign state in Rome. It's not Irish. You're also welded to this imaginary "hip new Ireland" which just goes to show how ignorant of Ireland you are. You melt into a complete mess when you can't tell the difference between Irish people volunteering to spent their time travelling from and to English soccer games/holidays in Spain/work in Deutschland and American football travelling into Ireland. No wonder you spout all this Plastic Paddie Irish but use a Spanish name. That's why Irish people don't like Americans like you.
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el rubio | Sep 06, 2012, 06:02 PM EDT
From Wikipedia: Mary J. Hickman writes that "plastic Paddy" was a term used to "deny and denigrate the second-generation Irish in Britain" in the 1980s, and was "frequently articulated by the new middle-class Irish immigrants in Britain, for whom it was a means of distancing themselves from established Irish communities
The term came into common use in the 1980s when it was frequently employed as a term of abuse by recently-arrived middle-class Irish migrants to London. Hickman (2002) states; it ‘became a means of distancing themselves from established Irish communities.’ And the use was a part of the process by which the second-generation Irish are positioned as inauthentic within the two identities, of Englishness and Irishness
Ironically, both English hostility when faced with the spectre of Irish identities, and Irish denials of authenticity of those same identities, utilizes the pejorative term ‘plastic paddy’ to stereotype and undermine processes ‘of becoming’ of Irish identities of second-generation Irish people. The message from each is that second-generation Irish are ‘really English’ and many of the second-generation resist this.Hickman (2002) Irish Journal of Sociology
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el rubio | Sep 06, 2012, 05:40 PM EDT
Will Hamilton, to refer to Catholic Ireland as a gulag is a manifestation of a profoundly purile ignorance of history when considering the millions who perished in actual communist gulags. Suffice it to say, though the Irish liberal establishment will never admit it, the Catholic Church did far more good than harm both in Ireland and among the Irish Diaspora, with respect to the educational, charitable and health care institutions enacted by the Church. Indeed I believe that the decline in Catholicism is a big part of the reason why relations between Irish-Americans and the hip New Ireland are strained as they are. In the past, Catholic culture was something the Irish nation on both sides of the Atlantic had in common; now that is largely gone. With respect to American culture inundating Ireland, it is British culture which has probably had a bigger impact on modern Ireland. D4 liberal sophisticates may complain about Notre Dame/Navy and the prevelance of baseball caps, though they say nary a word about the ubiquitous ManU and Liverpool jerseys about the place.
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Will Hamilton | Sep 06, 2012, 04:41 PM EDT
Plastic Paddies was never used to describe Irish people in Britain.
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Will Hamilton | Sep 06, 2012, 04:39 PM EDT
Good observation ancavker. Since the late forties Ireland has become slowly but surely swamped in American culture along with the rest of the world. In Ireland it finds fertile ground because there is very little native considered to be any of better value. The Notre Dame game is just another part of the process. At events in Ireland supposed to be celebrating Irish culture you'll even have the Dublin Gospel choir. How ironic is that. There are even majorette bands. People who have never seen a baseball game wear baseball hats. So contrast that with [Irish] Americans going on about the "home country" and the "Emerald Isle". They are dreaming of a place that does not exist. Any connection people have with the land of their birth" (which they weren't actually born in) are suffering from a serious delusion. Why only go back through your genetic line for a measly 5 or 6 generations. Why not go all the way back to the rift valley and spend your holidays in Africa.
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ancavker | Sep 06, 2012, 04:13 PM EDT
Will: You are some piece of work. That being said, Plastic Paddy originally was for the Irish in Britain who claimed Irish descent. It may now have expanded to Irish-Americans as I noted.Ironically though I see so many Irish in Ireland acting like they are Americans; I wonder why that is OK?
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Will Hamilton | Sep 06, 2012, 04:06 PM EDT
The term Plastic Paddie is almost exclusively used in Ireland for Americans who imagine they're Irish. To the Irish (who don't work in the tourist trade) they are the most aggravating, irritating ill informed people in the world when the start talking about "Oireland". It's hilarious to hear people who celebrate the continual flooding of Ireland with American culture, the latest example being the Navy v Notre Dame game, and then go on about "Celtic" culture. Mr. Barrett's offer was not ignored because he happens to be an American. That's just childish paranoia driven by the Plastic Paddie cultural schizophrenia. The village fools who run Ireland don't listen to outsiders because they'e in politics to rob their own country. That goes the same for Chinese businessmen, Korean businessmen or German businessmen. The difference is they'd not be whining like some rejected child whose mammy wouldn't let him back into the house.
Independence for Ireland has only proven that Ireland is a country of small minded little Roman Catholics who can't run their own country. That's why it's bankrupt. It makes people who are not Irish pining to be included based on the illusion of the "Emerald Isle" they've created for themselves look all the more foolish. When the British marched out the Vatican crawled in to copper fasten an even more insidious occupation than had ever gone before. Decades of women and children have had to pay for it in the Roman Catholic Gulag.
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ancavker | Sep 06, 2012, 04:03 PM EDT
Much of it is pure jealously on the part of some Irish in Ireland. The thought of Irish-Americans telling them what to do, and how to do it is abhorent to them. We the Irish in America do not have the old inferiority complex that even today the new hip Irish have. And yes for us Irish Americans we will always have a connection with the land of our birth or ancestry, whether one generation removed or 5 or 6. I find it ironic now that some of my friends Irish born who came to NYC in te 1980's are now themselves being refered to as dumb yanks, and plastic paddies. They were calling us that 20 years ago! Now they are getting the same abuse!! Too funny! Really!
And just as an aside Plastic Paddies used to be reserved for those Irish in Britain, and dumb yanks was for Irish Americans, now they appear to be used interchangeably.
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Happyhippo | Sep 06, 2012, 02:59 PM EDT
@oTuachair,The term plastic paddy is used by some negative self appointed people to anyone of Irish origin who is not 100% Irish,but the millions of Irish all over the world and especially the USA who took in countless numbers of Irish for hundreds of years because they could not survive in their own country deserve better than to be described in those terms,one of the problems for so long was there was no platform for Irish America to be heard but that is changing now with Ireland being forced to reach out to its long lost diaspora for assistance in helping the country recover from the recession,hopefully after the spectacular Notre DamevNavy weekend in Dublin things will only get better.
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el rubio | Sep 06, 2012, 02:40 PM EDT
Will Hamilton, didn't you read the article above by John Fay aka the Yank? He is correct in discerning the strained attitude which is stunting the development of the country due to its attitude towards its own Diaspora. The example he relates of Mr. Barrett is telling and one gets the impression that if Barrett were a British Banker or Russian oligarch or a Chinese businessmen, or anything other than a "plastic paddy" Irish American (to use the vernacular of the hip New Ireland) his offer would have been received quite differently. The attitude taken by this New Ireland to Irish-Americans and others of the Diaspora, such as that which you have expressed in your comment below are perfect indicators of the schizophrenia which you accuse Irish-Americans of promulgating. As to your insinuation that Ireland "went downhill" post 1922, the centuries of dominance by a foreign power surely stunted that nations ability to develop industry, urbanize, organize a proper democratic form of governance and retain its most valuable human resources, which it lost to emigration.
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Will Hamilton | Sep 06, 2012, 02:18 PM EDT
Irish people for the most part, unless involved in the tourist trade, have no time for [Irish] Americans. You only have to hear guff like "my celtic heart" or "the land of our birth". But why? To some extent it's because [Irish] Americans are foreigners like anyone else except with the curious aberration of thinking they're natives. It's like a bunch of people who suffer from cultural schizophrenia. But the distaste Irish people have for Plastic Paddies is not entirely down to [Irish] Americans themselves. The reality is that for the majority of people who live in Ireland they've realised long ago that in 1922 Ireland started going downhill. In short as a country to live in it's a kip. When a green plaid draped son of the sod wombles in and starts spouting about the "Emerald Isle" and his "Celtic heart" it's more than weird. It's an insult. These people are referred to as Plastic Paddies sometimes but the more often used expression is "Septic Tanks" (it rhymes with Yanks). You have a country. For all it's faults it's a far better country than Ireland. Of course just about any other country in the developed world is. You were born in America. You're American. So stop pining for a small minded, backward, incestuous little village that exports it's own people and allows Rome to rule what's left. It just makes you look silly in the eyes of the natives who have to put up with the place.
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