ICBlog: The Keane Edge

Exorcism of my inner Peter King (IrishCentral)

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 02:10:16 PDT

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.

Gas question: why give Ireland's enormous wealth away? the Norweigan alternative (IrishCentral)

Fri, 26 Nov 2010 11:25:14 PST

The head of Ireland's energy department, John Mullins, warned in September that Irish people were being forced to decide between paying their mortgages or their heating bills. He lamented having to shut off gas connections all across the country in the middle of winter, but expected to do so anyway.

Ireland is set to experience another record cold winter this year, as it did last December when temperatures dove to their lowest level in 65 years.

Ironically, Ireland has plenty of natural gas to heat its population, and bring enormous wealth to the state. The irony is that Irish politicians do otherwise, preferring to sign away these profits to multinatinoal corporations.

Bashing the Irish -- a break neck run down on Ireland's history of betrayal (IrishCentral)

Wed, 24 Nov 2010 02:40:15 PST

Hugh Roe O'Donnell (An Ó Domhnaill)
After Kinsale the sovereignty of Ireland sailed to Galicia or "Gael land," to regroup and try again. They established an Irish College at Santiago de Compostela. O'Donnell was poisoned on-board a ship and died en route to ally with the King of Spain. He was one of countless Irish leaders that were physically assaulted or murdered in the pursuit of compliance and assistance in the cessation and usurpation of Irish nationhood.

Daniel O'Connell (The Liberator)
Among the greatest men of the 19th Century, O'Connell would be arrested sometime following his Monster Rally at Tara to Repeal the 1801 law which dissolved Dublin's ancient parliament and made Ireland a province of the UK. He was arrested, and spent three months in jail, where his health was compromised, as happened to Oscar Wilde who wrote about horrible prison conditions upon his release. O'Connell died of cerebral softening in Italy shortly after he left prison.

Charles Stewart Parnell (The Uncrowned King)
Lots of Irish scandals riveted England in the late 19th century. Parnell was felled by his second big one. The Piggott forgeries became the basis of a media sensation which he somehow weathered to his vindication. It was the Kitty O'Shea scandal that brought him to insurmountable ridicule, alieved only at the time of his sickness and death.

Stephen Fry to appear on Gaelic soap opera Ros na Rún (IrishCentral)

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 09:55:12 PST

Few men stoke my Anglophilia quite so masterfully as Stephen Fry.

The English actor will follow the trail of William Wilde, father of Oscar, to Connemara when he appears in the popular Irish language soap opera Ros na Rún. William, like his son thirty years later, became the subject of public ridicule amongst the social set following a trial in Dublin. The dejected doctor left the city and sought solace in Moytura House which he built on Lough Corrib, whence he collected fragments of Irish aural literature for the rest of his life.

Stolkholm Syndrome infects Dublin (IrishCentral)

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 08:40:17 PST

The Irish economy is stuck in the euro, and has no control over its exchange rates, which means it has no way to ease financial bubbles. In the euro, Ireland must accept bubbles and suffer them, no matter how ridiculously inflated they become.

Instead of finding an orderly way to extricate herself from this captivity, respectfully, and with guarantees to her eurozone captor, Dublin's politicians are suffering from Stolkholm Syndrome.

In psychology, Stockholm syndrome describes the paradox whereby hostages become enamored with their captors. The hostage is in terrible danger, but comes to love the source of that fear, viewing the captor's constraints as evidence that the hostage is better-off behaving. The captive even begins to love the captor, believing she won't be harmed, despite the conditions which point otherwise.

Cartoon of John Perkin's Economic Hitmen (IrishCentral)

Mon, 22 Nov 2010 01:10:15 PST

The advice the Irish government took during the Celtic Tiger period became universal advice across the world media: do what Ireland is doing. In the Celtic Tiger period, any Irish politician that went against globally-propogated Celtic Tiger mythos would have been ousted for being a backward culchie that wasn't with the modern answers.

Experts in the country aped the happy talk about Irish de-regulation they read by bigger experts on TV for years. Self-congratulation on bubble pumping was all you got in Irish media. Condescension was the reward doled-out to doubting Thomases asking questions about a country that had become too expensive for normal Irish people to live in it.

The basic human instinct for self-determination and survival was replaced by trust in a compelling Celtic Tiger cartoon. Irish politicians should have been more heroic, intellectually, to see through the trickery. They were unable for lots of reasons. Some were probably bought. Others probably threatened. Most just believed.

Putting the É back in Ireland (IrishCentral)

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 04:40:16 PST

The revolt against Irish romanticism led my editor Niall O'Dowd to declare "I find the use of the word Eire, very annoying. Ireland has not been Eire since the declaration of the Irish Republic in 1949. Why it persists I don't know."

Mr. O'Dowd speaks Irish and is responding, I think, to the thing Irish Irish people hate, and that's having their own humanity confused with fairy imagery. Turning a people into children or fairies or primitives or what have you, was a basic tactic of the psychological belittlement that must accompany physical subjugation.

That long history of belittlement, has left people feeling safer to reject Small is Beautiful ideas, in favor of Bigger is Better ones. By identifying only with the Big One, one feels more evolved, adult and powerful. Éire might be beautiful and all that, but it doesn't have the big brand identity of Ireland. In "Ireland" the Irish have a shot at respectability. In "Eire" the Irish are lost to an impoverished fairy land, or so the belittled thinking goes.

Salvatore Giunta receives nation's highest honor (IrishCentral)

Sun, 21 Nov 2010 03:55:14 PST

Salvatore Giunta was awarded
The Medal of Honor for Bravery on the Field of Battle by President Barack Obama last week and sat down with Stephen Colbert in an interview on November 18th to discuss the highest honor our nation can bestow on anyone.

"People call you a hero, do you like that?" Colbert asked him.
"I know a lot of heroes," Giunta said. "I serve with heroes. I can be with those guys, as long as...they call us all a hero."

"Now that you have that Medal," Colbert said "for the rest of your life you represent more than just yourself. You represent the Army, and what this nation considers the height of honor, of putting yourself in danger in a particular way, above the call of duty, as it says."

Jon Stewart speaks with Rachel Maddow (IrishCentral)

Wed, 17 Nov 2010 09:40:13 PST

The above interview is a frank discussion about the responsibilities of journalists and the role a satirist plays in our society.

Irish placenames deciphered: a Joycean Gaelic tour of Ireland (IrishCentral)

Mon, 15 Nov 2010 08:55:11 PST

In the land of Óg, shee put on her arget brogue and crossed moy gal along the owen sally ; over the droghed dub down the brick boher boy into the caher glas of Oz.

Travelling Ireland means reading a landscape that talks two languages--one an original; the other, its slang-like echo. James Joyce was obsessed with the meaning and sound of Irish place-names. Using his namesake PW Joyce's references, logainm.ie and PotaFocal.com, I've tried to construct a short thematic "tour" through the vocabulary of the Irish landscape.

A traveller can learn to read Irish placenames as words from an environmental language. Irish can also tell secrets and summon sublimnity from the text of Éire's land--Éire was, afterall, a goddess before she was shrunk down into a fairy romance.

Lady GaGa waves Irish flag at Belfast concert (IrishCentral)

Wed, 03 Nov 2010 05:55:12 PDT

At her Belfast concert last Saturday, Lady GaGa waved an Irish flag; causing debate about the emblem's meaning, while invoking the rebel Irish strain in rock rebellion.

David Bowie made similar controversy at a Dublin concert a few years back, when he shouted Tiochfaidh Ár Lá (chukee owr law) on a live recording of "Rebel, Rebel." He stubbornly released the live-in-Dublin DVD including Irish phrase "Our Day Will Come," as a nod to the mantra of the Irish Civil Rights Movement and Republican struggle.

Paul McCartney's classic song "Give Ireland Back to the Irish" and John Lennon's two songs "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and "Luck of the Irish" are but a few famous moments in the marriage of Irish spirit and rock renegadism.

My little trip to the Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert rally in DC (IrishCentral)

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 06:55:13 PDT

One guy had a sign that said "Jon Stewart was my idea." Some people had t-shirts with George Bush saying into a talky bubble "I did it, but thanks for blaming it on the black guy." There was also a Viking long ship the length of a bus on-hand, manned by dancers in horns.

For twenty bucks on Saturday, I got a Chinatown bus smelling like an old-school subway to Washington DC. Most of the people sharing this stank-on-wheels were going to the rally too. Traffic and the popularity of procrastination had it so that I and what seemed like a million other people got to the American capital about an hour after Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had already begun the March to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.

The crowd was so chock-a-block that it was literally impossible to make it close enough to the stage to see, let alone hear any of the shenanigans up there.

Fáilte Ireland brings in deeper kind of tourist on village secrets (IrishCentral)

Sat, 30 Oct 2010 12:25:17 PDT

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.

General Petraeus: "I'm an Enya guy" -- the Irish and the American military (IrishCentral)

Tue, 26 Oct 2010 11:25:12 PDT

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.

Cordoba House is good for New York (IrishCentral)

Tue, 19 Oct 2010 11:25:13 PDT

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.

Scottish yachtsman patents Celtic cross as a rediscovered navigational tool (IrishCentral)

Mon, 11 Oct 2010 02:40:13 PDT

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 learned Irish tradition was first written in the trees (IrishCentral)

Wed, 06 Oct 2010 01:25:13 PDT

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.

Rick Sanchez points a dirty finger at Jon Stewart aka "The Bigot" (IrishCentral)

Mon, 04 Oct 2010 06:55:14 PDT

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.

Going to Jon Stewart's rally in a Stephen Colbert costume (IrishCentral)

Thu, 30 Sep 2010 10:10:14 PDT

Your ride is covered, Arianna Huffington is giving lifts to Washington on the Saturday before Halloween.

The author promised buses-for-everybody from Manhattan to DC on Saturday morning, October 30th, leaving from 560 Broadway---that sweet-spot between the Puck Building and Old St.Patrick's in SoHo.

She was pretty clear that the ride was free if you're going to Jon Stewart's rally. Details are still primordial, as seen on the Huffington Post sign-up page here.

Italian Americans seek affirmative action, and get it, at CUNY (IrishCentral)

Tue, 28 Sep 2010 11:55:13 PDT

Diversity of many different coming-froms is much more interesting when its based on culture, language, knowledge and art, rather than less thought-based categories.

Sometimes that opportunity means extending a helping hand to those who posess special knowledge or fluency in the symbols of a cultural system that would add to the alphabet soup of college.

Universities are first and foremost libraries, where books contain all sorts of symbols. Students come with different skills for both reading and writing these symbol-holding books. In study, they learn to read and write, having started-out with unique clues.

Weiner calls on Beck to disavow Goldline (Olbermann video) (IrishCentral)

Sat, 25 Sep 2010 12:10:22 PDT

Glenn Back's number one gold sponsor was interrogated at a hearing last week by Congressman Anthony Weiner, over gold sales scams. The Congressman alleges that the company uses dishonest sales techniques, though the hearing made no final conclusions. Weiner said victims are often intelligent middle class people, convinced, unfairly, to pay many times market rate.

The company employees at least two salespeople that the SEC had sued for scamming a hundred elderly people out of more than one million dollars. The case was settled in the 1990s, all the money was returned to the victims, but currently Goldline employs these same salespeople to handle some of their biggest clients and to train other salesmen for the future.

Executive Vice President Scott Carter defended the company against Weiner's claim that Goldline uses scare-tactics to encourage buyers. Glenn Beck participates in promoting the idea that purchasing vastly over-priced antique coins is the best way to ensure the government will not confiscate gold investments as was done in 1933.

Assimilating differently, Irish Americans re-discover Gaelic Ireland (IrishCentral)

Mon, 20 Sep 2010 05:25:14 PDT

President O'Bama said it best when he said "is féidir linn," "yes we can," at a Saint Patrick's Day reception last year in the White House.

More and more these days, Irish Gaelic is returning to Irish American life at functions and in art, as perceptions of what makes something Irish shift towards more detail and care. In multi-cultural America, the old Irish American assimilation model is giving way and making it possible for Irish Americans to rediscover what they were once told to give-up in the past.

Corny versus cosmopolitan, Rachel Maddow takes-on Christine O'Donnell (with a vibrator !?) (IrishCentral)

Thu, 16 Sep 2010 12:25:13 PDT

Don't rub-out masturbation metaphors lightly. That's what I've learned this news cycle.

I had written quite generally about theory-heads always tying-in their specialty with everything else. You can read my wanky piece here.

masturbation was "in the air" that news cycle. So was the Delaware race where Christine O'Donnell beat the much more ethical candidate--Mike Castle--with slanderous lies. Rachel Maddow responded when news came live on-air of the defeat, and with it showed a clip of Christine O'Donnell from many years ago. In it, O'Donnell talks like a goodie-two-shoes not much older than 20.

Pulling up Barack Obama's roots, Newt Gingrich endorses British colonialism (IrishCentral)

Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:40:15 PDT

Academics are often compared to masterbators--especially the ones on TV.

The porn that gets social science academics 'off,' is race. If there were a moratorium on race-talk in America for a month, academics and TV pundits would just stare at the camera like sex-starved prostitutes.

Newt Gingrich is both academic and politician. This week, his tactic against Barack Obama is to amplify the Forbes essay that professor Dinesh D’Souza wrote while wearing Kenya-goggles. The piece is called “How Obama Thinks," and it is just another academic fantasy about the inner psychology of a distant public figure.

9/11 Families & the New York Times on the Right Way to Remember (IrishCentral)

Mon, 13 Sep 2010 08:40:13 PDT

The top Op-Ed in the New York Times on Saturday was entitled Sept. 11, 2010, The Right Way to Remember.

The New York Times has usually been exemplary in memorializing the people killed on that day nine years ago.

In this specific piece's eleven paragraphs, however, the reader is told not to "wallow" and that the right way to remember 9/11 is to think about the memorial, the transportation hub and the overall architectural boon of urban life that will come out of the ashes.

Documentary goes "beyond" 9/11 to connect widows in America with Afghanistan (IrishCentral)

Thu, 09 Sep 2010 08:55:11 PDT

"I have tried to turn this into something other than hatred." - Patricia Quigley

Two soccer moms teach us how to respond to 9/11 without hatred, in a documentary by film-maker Beth Murphy, called Beyond Belief that tells the story of their engagement with other widows half-way around the world.

It was released two years ago, and has haunted talk of escalating the Afghan war ever since. President Obama, however, has remained committed to the war's shifty and body-piling objectives.

Understanding Zionism through "smiling Irish eyes" in America (IrishCentral)

Mon, 06 Sep 2010 09:25:10 PDT

President Obama's choice of George Mitchell to ump the Israel/Palestine peace talks draws on Irish lessons for the Middle East.

The choice of Mitchell means Irish people are going to feel that the Middle East Peace Process is somehow their business too. [Irish Americans already feel that way, because of the American tax waterfall that pours into Israel each year.]

With the Irish involved on the outside looking-in, you'll see more Flotillas teeming with angry Irish mothers demanding medicine for the Palestinians.

What do Black women and red heads have in common? don't ask Keli Goff (IrishCentral)

Tue, 31 Aug 2010 07:40:13 PDT

"Black women have long been treated as the red-headed step-child of the fashion industry." Keli Goff made that gaff on Dylan Ratigan's show yesterday. According to the beautiful essayist, red-heads are the accepted example of ugly duckling--Gingerellas if you will.

Her picking on one body type to make her point about diversity on Vogue covers was ironic. Diversity would mean that all kinds of body types get the cover.

Picking on red-heads seems a wee bit cruel. In Britain, red-heads are deemed "ging-ers," and such epitaphs are part of a long history of ethnic defamation against people with the audacity to live on land coveted by more powerful blondes and brunettes.

Glenn Beck's rally aims at Barack Obama (IrishCentral)

Mon, 30 Aug 2010 06:40:15 PDT

Our last presidential election was something like a séance, where the great booming cadences of Dr. King seemed to channel through a man whose hope promised to fulfill the dream.

Glenn Beck's rally was held on Dr.King's anniversary forty seven years later, but also a year following his comment that "Barack Obama is a racist."

With such comments, Beck has been trying to defile Obama's style of politics. Beck is the only commentator to drudge Jeremiah Wright back up, but this time as Obama's teacher of liberation theology, which he claims is the secret Marxist belief-system of the president.

Anti-Catholic bigotry, Islamophobia and the stabbing of Ahmed Sharif by Michael Enright (IrishCentral)

Fri, 27 Aug 2010 01:10:16 PDT

Stephen Colbert is pictured there to the right on his Thursday August 26 show, performing a segment called You Mosque Be Kidding in which he conspires with the Catholic pope. With it, he captures anti-Catholicism in one picture. Part of being an Irish American, is to be responsible to the Civil Rights story where such cartoonish prejudice was overcome for ourselves, and for others after us. We have a place in the Civil Rights story here, because we were part of that which overthrew oppression and opened doors.

Muslims are waiting for their Civil Rights moment in America. The stabbing of New York cab driver Ahmed Sharif by Michael Enright has ended the mosque debate, and reaffirmed the struggle of Muslims is no different from that of Catholics. It was a disgraceful moment, as when Joseph Rakes ended any discussion on bussing in South Boston with an American flag he used to attack Theodore Landsmark, a black attorney on the Civil Rights case. That incident led to mini-race wars across Boston in the 1970s.

Sharing information about the mosque's funding sources would be a courtesy Muslim Americans might consider extending to an American public, myself included, that do not understand Wahhabi Islam and are concerned that the Sufi proposal will become altered by the financial controls of later investors. Considering the location is a landmark site in the 9/11 narrative, such courtesies would be expected from an institution dedicating itself to dialogue, but would not be required.

Stephen Colbert & Jeffrey Goldberg talk-up the existential threat to Israel from Iran (IrishCentral)

Thu, 26 Aug 2010 08:40:13 PDT

The contradictions of Stephen Colbert's person/persona are as shifting as the perspective his character/self takes through the course of any show.

It's hard to say what "he" believes, because he can dart in and out of irony like a rabbit.

He (whoever) talked on the Tuesday August 24, 2010 show, with Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic about the How & Why of Israel's "inevitable" strike on Iran.

Dylan Ratigan reports on the Ground Zero mosque money trail in interview with Dan Senor (IrishCentral)

Wed, 25 Aug 2010 08:25:10 PDT

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Is Fox News evil or stupid? Jon Stewart parses Ground Zero mosque funding (IrishCentral)

Tue, 24 Aug 2010 11:40:15 PDT

Jon Stewart is the only pundit to take-on the question of the Ground Zero mosque's funding with anything like detail.

The mosque is being funded in-part, by Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal who is also a major shareholder in Fox News Corporation. Other benefactors of the poorly placed mosque project are unknown and will remain so, according to organizers.

This means the media outlet most critical of building the mosque on top of a site destroyed by parts of the hijacked plane, is also kind-of building it.

Funding for the Ground Zero mosque is a big secret, Saudi oil money likely needed (IrishCentral)

Mon, 23 Aug 2010 10:40:14 PDT

Funding for the Ground Zero mosque is a big secret that organizers are keeping locked-up, while telling everyone this mosque is about dialogue and healing.

In mystery, the mind conjures. I am left only to piece together what this mosque could mean, from what I've learned about Saudi Arabian Big Oil money and Wahhabi Islam and 9/11. All that post-9/11 traumatic stress that went into research was reawakened with news of this mosque.

Demanding privacy and secrets about funding is puzzling and maddening to anyone who cares about what happened to people on 9/11.

Howard Dean talks sense on Ground Zero mosque with Keith Olberman (IrishCentral)

Fri, 20 Aug 2010 12:40:13 PDT

Jon Stewart: Is the Burlington Coat Factory on Ground Zero? (IrishCentral)

Tue, 17 Aug 2010 05:40:14 PDT

Jon Stewart's Daily Show takes the day's news and by eleven o'clock boils down the biggest story to a sort of moral position that is usually smarter, more wise and funnier than anything the talking heads had to say about it at eight o'clock.

On so many issues, Jon Stewart has been a guiding moral light to me, light-hearted and truly wise. During the Bush years, Jon Stewart diffused fury, and made it possible to breathe amidst the feeling that America was becoming a Patriot Act nightmare.

Jon Stewart is invaluable to American culture. When he makes a decision, a whole generation follows his lead. I've usually been one along with them.

Why Mayor Bloomberg handled the "Ground Zero mosque" controversy all wrongly (IrishCentral)

Sun, 15 Aug 2010 10:25:10 PDT

When Mayor Bloomberg trotted out to the podium in front of the Statue of Liberty to wallop everyone across the face with a new Ground Zero reality, he was doing so to teach the less tolerant among us, a lesson about religious freedom.

His photo-op was not addressing any meaningful controversy. Up to that speech, the cultural center was approved unanimously. If there were rumblings, Bloomberg could simply have issued a statement correcting popular misconceptions.

I wish I had learned of the so-called "Ground Zero mosque" differently. I did not understand that the poorly dubbed cultural center was in fact not at Ground Zero, but two city blocks away, and around the corner, out of sight.

Atheism site slanders me for my analysis of Christopher Hitchens' stance on God (IrishCentral)

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 01:10:13 PDT

In a piece I wrote called, Christopher Hitchens, "God is not Great" author, is not really an atheist, I state just that--Hitchens is not an atheist.

I defend my analysis from the starting point that atheism means "no god."

In a slanderous attack on my motivations, a priest of atheism named Austin Cline accused me in a headline of "misleading," and "fibbing." One can read his unsatisfying ad hominem attackhere.

Coming around on the Muslim Cultural Center near Ground Zero (IrishCentral)

Fri, 13 Aug 2010 11:55:12 PDT

Originally, my feeling about the Ground Zero mosque controversy was based on the sense that one victim-group--the Muslims and the British--were being memorialized with special attention, while it would be thought crass to memorialize the Irish-American victims of 9/11 with their own museum or what have you.

I wrote Ground Zero mosque? Not my favorite idea, but this is NYC with that in mind. I saw the zone around Ground Zero becoming a Disneyland of competing ethnic groups building special memorials where the richest ones would get to build theirs first.

I was critical of it, and like Governor Patterson, wondered if it could not be built in a less controversial location. That would avoid memorial competition, I thought.

Christopher Hitchens, "God is not Great" author, is not really an atheist (IrishCentral)

Wed, 11 Aug 2010 12:55:11 PDT

In an interview with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg, Christopher Hitchens objectively describes his terminal illness, and the prospect of a painful death.

This moving conversation is conducted as though under strict orders against sentimentality. It is a mark of his integrity, perhaps, that Hitchens would flay his own circumstance with the coldness he employed to disembowel Mother Theresa.

Christopher Hitchens is known for his war with those amongst us who purport to have special knowledge, unreasonably revealed to them by God. (I am not such a person.)

Ed Koch, sage of the city, calls New Yorkers to kick the bums out (IrishCentral)

Sun, 08 Aug 2010 11:25:10 PDT

At the age of 85, Ed Koch is leading a state-wide campaign to "kick the bums" out and make our government work right. The New York Times tribute to him is well-worth the read and listen.

He's leading a group called New York Uprising. They focus on huge problems, and just three. They get attention by targeting politicians that resist reform. We forget politicians are supposed to fear the ire of a misled people. Ed Koch is reminding us.

Three reforms that would make New York state governance less corrupt and more fair:

Jon Stewart on low ground at Ground Zero, defending Weiner's 9/11 rant (IrishCentral)

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 01:25:11 PDT

Jon Stewart stood up for his friend Congressman Anthony Weiner in a long Daily Show segment analyzing who killed the 9/11 Workers Bill. If Stewart had been less biased, he could have helped his audience see how Weiner's grandstanding was obstructing getting the bill back to the House for a regular 50%+ vote this time.

Stewart comes down hard on weasely Republican politicans, calling one an "asshole" (cool), but then pretends Democrat Weiner (bigger asshole) was being a good guy for pulling his famous shouting stunt. Stewart failed to explain the clip which was edited in a misleading way. Weiner was not being a good guy. He was covering up what he and the Dems did. He could have passed the bill by normal vote (50%+), but changed the rules so that 66% was needed to win. That's why the bill that won, lost.

If you're a 9/11 Responder trying to understand why Congress voted yes, but the Bill failed, it comes down to the party's choice of abnormal vote. Democrats and Weiner changed the rules before the vote, and all their hacks in the media are staying away, letting Weiner's grandstanding be the party's cover.

Ground Zero mosque? Not my favorite idea, but this is NYC (IrishCentral)

Thu, 05 Aug 2010 02:25:10 PDT

[A follow-up piece to the article below was published on 10 August, called Coming around on the Muslim Cultural Center near Ground Zero.]

In New York, if you ask: Should we build a Muslim interpretation center near Ground Zero? you get two kinds of answers.

Bloomberg's "yes" is the kind you expect from a good judge. He reminds us that we have real estate laws in New York and you can not go discriminating against people that want to buy property. Similar principles apply to zoning, but there's more room to wiggle there. His answer is the official New York answer. I like it when society has principles you can count on.

Talking about "illegals" and "anchor babies" (IrishCentral)

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 03:10:13 PDT

My Dad had his green card by the time I was born, but he was an "illegal" before that for a brief stint while his visa was expired. That was long ago. My Mom never had a problem with her immigration status and had all the right paper work. They both vote now, and hold American passports--not a bit less American than anyone.

I "confess" this, because I just watched Bill O'Reilly talk about "anchor babies," which are the children of immigrants (like me!). I don't quite fit the criteria for being an "anchor baby," but there was a minute there listening to him that I was looking over my shoulder for the INS.

O'Reilly likes to put the fear of something in you.

Bill O'Reilly falls flat in his Afghan war reasoning (IrishCentral)

Tue, 03 Aug 2010 07:55:12 PDT

The title of Bill O'Reilly's Talking Points last night "Why Liberals oppose helping the people of Afghanistan" got me thinking in bullet point format:

- "Liberals" prosecuted: World War I (Wilson), World War 2 (FDR), Vietnam (LBJ), Bosnia (Clinton) so you (O'Reilly) can't pretend Democrats are anti-war or anti-intervention.

- The "Left" "Right" framework falls apart when you put a Democrat or Republican in a "War" or "Peace" category. Most wartime presidents were Democrats. Most peacetime presidents were Republican.

9/11 responders given shaft by politicians in the House (IrishCentral)

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 01:25:11 PDT

Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the fighting on the Hill a "disgraceful proceeding."

He was referring to the shouting match on a Bill that was supposed to grant 9/11 responders sickened by poisonous air at Ground Zero a promised $7.4 billion in aid, finally after all these years. Insults were slung between Congressman Weiner and Congressman King who represent constituencies with lots of fireman, cops and other rescue workers. The Bill failed to win the 255-159 needed for a two-thirds majority.

That "2/3rds" requirement is the crux of the question: why did the Bill fail? Are Democrats or Republicans to blame?

The disgrace belongs, as usual, to both Republicans and Democrats, but not to Peter King specifically. Weiner's theatrics so wrongly, however, would have the casual observer believe King is to blame.

Who wrecked the American economy? (IrishCentral)

Tue, 27 Jul 2010 03:25:11 PDT

Because it happened incrementally, the cause and effect of our Economic Crisis is hard to pin-point, but all along the way, it had helpers. Over decades, both Democrats and Republicans overturned Depression-era laws that let liars on Wall Street sell huge financial bubbles of fake value using fake analysis.

All the rules were swept away, and yet Greenspan and Rubin; Paulson and Bernacke; Geithner and scores of other Goldman Sachs regulators will claim they had no idea it would turn out this way.

Dublin named City of Literature by world heritage group UNESCO (IrishCentral)

Mon, 26 Jul 2010 10:55:14 PDT

"How many! All these here once walked round Dublin. Faithful departed. As you are now so once were we."
--Ulysses, James Joyce

The United Nations has named Dublin City of Literature. The announcement was made by Irina Bokova, president of UNESCO.

At a ceremony in the Grand Canal Theatre, Ireland's Culture Minister Mary Hanafin, with Dublin Lord Mayor Gerry Breen, accepted the award, predicting it would be a great boon to the city.

TV pundits using racism to duck real news -- O'Reilly, Olberman, Maddow, Cooper (IrishCentral)

Thu, 22 Jul 2010 10:25:13 PDT

I started paying close attention to the latest round of themes on TV news when my neighbor got a flat screen. The experience for someone watching high definition without previously having had a TV is mind-blowing. The TV is very suggestive in high def. I could never live with one.

Bill O'Reilly reminds me of Max Headron, the 1980s and Ronald Reagan, so I watched him firstly. I like him the way I like some cops--I get where they're coming from, but it's not for me.

As a tool-of-Rupert-Murdoch, I find O'Reilly incredibly unlikeable as well, especially when he's selling war, or playing up racial stories to distract from real news, and especially when he's defending sociopathic corporate behavior.

The Wizard of Oz explains our economic crisis like a modern fable (IrishCentral)

Wed, 21 Jul 2010 03:25:12 PDT

The Wonderful Wizard of Oz is a modern fairy tale published in 1900, that was written by Frank Baum who loved editorial cartoons from the newspaper. He used the universal symbols of his day to create a contemporary fable that explains our own financial crisis.

Hurricanes (socio-economic upheaval like now), the Tin Man (working stiffs dependent on oil), the strawman (farmers), the Lion (populist leader), the wizard (the pinhead "in charge"), the Wicked Witch of the East (Wall Street banks), the Wicked Witch of the West (big oil & business) are but a few of the symbols Baum used from his imagination and the newspapers to create a fantasy where an American child could go into and fix the world of finance (Oz) that is causing her aunt and uncle such worry in the real world ("Main Street" or "Kansas"). Dorothy does this amazing thing by changing the way money is made. She kills the Wicked Witch of the East and takes her shoes. In the book the shoes are silver (money) and ruby in the movie for technicolor. The original is better.

If killing the witch seems extreme, in the context of American political cartoons it is not. The banking plutocrats were often depicted as vipers (in top hats) battling Andrew Jackson or populist heroes like him. ["The bank," Jackson told his vice president, "is trying to kill me, but I will kill it!,"--this captures the sentiment towards banks.] The vipers becames witches in Baum's fantasy of Oz.