NINA

From Newsweek, anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudice of the sort you haven't seen in decades.
Once the biggest names, faces, and voices on television were Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, Murrow, even John Chancellor and Dan Rather, all sober, serious Americans—and all Protestants too.

Now we have angry loudmouths with names like O’Reilly, Hannity, Buchanan, and, lurking back there with his Cheshire smile, the dissolute but scary Bannon.

Yet no one has noticed this obvious fact, and the sheer lack of attention may be the most important thing about it. Why has the ascent of a bunch of people who in an earlier period might have been called Micks drawn no notice at all?
The piece isn't really coherent; the author can't decide if it's important that these guys are all Irish, or if in fact they aren't very Irish. That allows him to finish on the PC note of 'embracing Irishness,' which is apparently really about being a Communist.

5 comments:

Gringo said...

The article finishes with these sentences:
When I think of Hayden and Flynn and the Berrigans, that’s an Irish America I can embrace, warts and all.To the devil with Bill O’Reilly and Bannon. They’re no more Irish than I am.

Hayden refers to SDS founder and Jane Fonda spouse Tom.While the article claims that Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, a CPUSA honcho,was buried in Moscow, Wikipedia states that while she died in Moscow and received a state funeral at Red Square, her remains were sent to Chicago.

After writing ad nauseum about loudmouth Irish conservatives, while ending with the above two sentences, it is being kind to state the article "isn't really coherent."

To deal in cultural stereotypes, the author ends up sounding like a drunk in a bar belligerently talking nonstop before he collapses on the floor. "I'm O'Toole, and I can lick any man in the bar."

The author is a college professor. Can't say his article increases respect for professors.

douglas said...

"That allows him to finish on the PC note of 'embracing Irishness,' which is apparently really about being a Communist. "
Well, Ireland did just put out a Che Guevara stamp...

Korora said...

@Douglas:
What's Irish Gaelic for "Do you really think utopia justifies the means?"

Dad29 said...

First it's anti-Catholic. THEN it's anti-Irish

Ymar Sakar said...

If it doesn't deny the Vicar of Christ title to the Patriarch of Rome or if it does not deny the succession of the Roman bishops and the Apostle Peter, it's probably not all that anti Vatican.