My eyes are already half-closed when it come to the Globe these days.
"50 years after visit by Kennedy, Ireland languishes; Unemployment up, government services slashed" by Timothy Egan | New York Times, October 20, 2013
DUBLIN — Oscar Wilde still lounges, louche-like, on a boulder in Merrion Square. As always, the Liffey, a river crossed by bridges named for playwrights and patriots, lumbers its way to the sea. Grafton Street is packed with moneyed pedestrians. But Irish ayes are missing.
The Gathering, as they call this year, is a campaign backed by the government and the tourism industry to induce the clamorous clans of Erin to pay a visit here. Given that half the world is Irish and the other half wants to be, in Bill Clinton’s phrase, it’s an easy sell.
Yet what should be a year of discovery, a diaspora of 70 million summoned to the home of their not-so-distant ancestors, is clouded by a bittersweet anniversary. Fifty years ago the last king of Ireland, President John F. Kennedy, came to the land of his great-grandfather Patrick. A few months later, he was gone, shot by an assassin in Dallas.
To look back now, at a time when Ireland and the United States are staggered by doubt, is to realize how much has changed in the half-century since he was here — change, in too many respects, for the worse.
Kennedy was mobbed. Over several days, he delighted a lyrical people with his wit and his one-liners. He charmed old ladies, nuns, and schoolgirls. He lifted hearts by his very presence: Here was the leader of the free world, the descendant of people who fled a famine that killed a million Irish.
To see what time and good fortune had done to produce that youthful leader was to believe that anything was possible.
You can take a tour of my JFK file to see how the Globe has treated him as I work on a 50th anniversary post to be presented later next month.
The Ireland he toured was the youngest of old countries, an independent nation barely 40 years on, finding its footing after 750 years of British occupation enforced by hangman’s noose and cannon. It was a poor island of farmers, shopkeepers, and laborers, a nation of devout Catholics.
Turns out a lot of people don't like that.
It had a tomorrow, one that would lead to the Celtic Tiger period of a few years ago — an Ireland of unfathomable, and unsustainable, prosperity. Hipsters from Google and Facebook flooded pubs in Dublin’s Temple Bar area and danced to traditional music as mournful as it was infectious.
The crucifixes are gone from many homes, after an epic institutional failure of a church that protected pedophiles and abusers among its clerics. The belief in government as a force of good has been displaced as well. The ruling elite, aided and abetted by bankers, financiers, and insurers, wrecked this economy, and then got out on the bailout express.
Wow, a whisper of truth from the lips of the New York Times.
Everyone else paid a price — in higher taxes, in across-the-board slashing of essential services, in real pain.
I think it is all worth it if the wealthy elite and bank$ters are happy.
The unemployment rate is still 15 percent, and nearly 1 in 4 mortgages are in arrears. Once again, the numbers are up regarding the greatest of all Irish exports — people. Since 2008, more than 300,000 have left.
What remains, in homes and shops and pubs, are pictures of Kennedy. He is forever frozen at age 46, when the American century was in full flower.
We could do things then — go to the moon, ensure health care for the elderly, legislate full citizenship rights for a race of people originally shipped to the country as property. Landmark environmental laws were passed under President Nixon, with robust support from both parties.
Ronald Reagan brought optimism and Cold War closure. Clinton, who idolized Kennedy, raised taxes and ushered in years of balanced budgets and record job gains.
Is that ever a cleaned-up piece of crap regarding the last half-century or what? Kennedy was hated, Nixon was hated, Reagan was hated, Clinton was despised. All this conventional myth and narrative being rolled at the reader is disgusting. This endle$$ promotion of a $tatus quo $y$tem by an agenda-pu$hing corporate paper of wealth and privilege is $hamele$$.
It baffles people here why the US government was shut down and the global economy threatened with catastrophe.
I'm baffled by the endless hyperbole and Chicken Little screeching by the agenda-pu$hing pre$$.
It does no good to wonder what could have been — if Kennedy had lived, if a domino effect of downward economic moves had never happened, if one blow after another had not produced a Western world where too many people feel that the game is rigged against them.
No, I suppose it does no good now; however, it is important to remind oneself of why he was killed and who he offended and give thanks to the man who gave his life for humanity.
Of course, if Kennedy had lived their would have been no Vietnam, and who knows what would have been possible after that?
But looking back is always productive. Memory is embedded in every square foot of Irish sod. These days, Kennedy’s visage is on posters and pamphlets at the Dublin airport — an effort to use him to inspire others to help Ireland. It’s a straightforward proposition: Bring a job to Ireland, and earn a government reward of 1,500 euros.
Shops sure looked full to me last time I gave Ireland a go-around.
Well, it’s something. But at the same time, both countries would do well to recall the feeling of doubtless possibility from Kennedy’s era. It hasn’t entirely disappeared; it’s just so much harder to find.
Don't you love advice from an agenda-pu$hing enabler and apologi$t that is one of the prime reasons for such a phenomena?
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"Voters opt to keep Ireland’s Senate" by Shawn Pogatchnik | Associated Press, October 06, 2013
DUBLIN — Irish voters Saturday rejected a government plan to abolish the country’s much-criticized Senate, a surprise result that dealt a blow to Prime Minister Enda Kenny.
Kenny had personally campaigned for the proposed constitutional amendment to eliminate Ireland’s upper house of parliament, arguing that the Senate was undemocratic, politically toothless, and expensive in an era of budget cuts. All opinion polls during the monthlong campaign had pointed to easy passage.
Instead, voters rejected Friday’s referendum on abolishing the Senate with a 51.7 percent ‘‘no’’ vote. Turnout was just 39 percent, a typically weak figure for Irish referendums, when antigovernment voters often come out in droves.
That's where my printed Globe ended it.
Paul Murphy, an Irish Socialist Party member of European Parliament, said the result reflects ‘‘deep distrust of the government and shows that people have a desire to check and hold back the proausterity political establishment.’’
Because the e$tabli$ment repre$ents bankers, not you $illy and $too-pid voters!
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As for the other Ireland items the Globe has carried over the last few months, it's the usual coverage: terrorists (sure smells like British bullshit), drunks, and perverts.
Hey, what's another stereotype in a sea of Jewish supremacism and elite insult that is my daily newspaper?
