Irish sporting legends take to New York stage to tell remarkable stories

Henry Shefflin & Ger Brennan in Times Square on Thursday (Photo Credit: Sean McPhail)

I had the pleasure of hosting a couple of Irish sporting legends last night at the New York Athletic Club in New York.

They were called Sam Maguire and Liam McCarthy and neither of them spoke a word.

That is despite that fact they are, arguably, the two most famous sporting figures in Ireland.

Every year thousands dream of Sam and Liam, people vie and will almost die to get their hands on them.

Even the Queen met them on her recent visit to Ireland.

Women will scream and breakdown when they are spurned.

Grown men will cry bitter tears.

In recent years Liam has pretty much taken up residence in Kilkenny, a source of great annoyance to other Irish counties, especially those in neighboring Tipperary, who managed to snatch him away in 2010 for a while.

Sam is more of a flirt, showing up quite often in Kerry but taking a fancy to Dublin this year.

His re-appearance there after a lapse of 16 years brought the capitol city to a halt and thousands hailed him as the long-lost savior.

40,000 showed up in Merrion Square in Dublin to see him.

Meanwhile Liam drew 25,000 in Kilkenny

Sam and Liam of course are the Sam Maguire cup and Liam McCarthy cup which are given to the winners of the football and hurling all Irelands respectively.

They are more famous in Ireland than the Vince Lombardi trophy is here.

I was invited to meet them by the Gaelic Players Association, who are seeking to bring the extraordinary story of the amateur athletes who vie for those trophies from every county in Ireland to Americans.

In an age when Manchester City soccer star Carlos Tevez refuses to play even with a $47 million dollar contract, the best athletes in Ireland, playing the most beloved games there of hurling and football, are complete amateurs.

Two of them came attached to the cups last night, Ger Brennan of the Dublin team which won this year's football All Ireland and the legendary Henry Shefflin of Kilkenny whose hurling team hoisted the Liam McCarthy cup as All Ireland hurling champions.

Listening to the incredible commitment of these amateur players, 12 months a year, to the games they love was a humbling experience.

There are no NBA style lock outs, no star players demanding new contracts. Each player gets about $1,000 a year in expenses and goes back to his regular job once the cheering has stopped.

In every town and parish in Ireland the GAA is an incredibly unifying force.

In an Ireland where institutions such as church and state have almost fallen apart in recent years, the GAA has stood firm.

It is a vital force, giving hundreds of thousands of young kids, male and female, a place to go, to become part of a team, to share community values.

At a time when emigration is rampant many of those same young Irish will first connect with a new community in America or Australia or Britain through that same GAA which has a worldwide reach.

The GPA association heads, Cork hurler Donal Og Cusack and former Dublin footballer Dessie Farrell were on hand to talk about the vital urgency of what they are doing through grassroots organizations all over Ireland.

They nurture the sports and, even more importantly, provide a solid community base for so many young Irish people.

As American Ireland Fund CEO Kieran Mcloughlin pointed out suicide is the number one killer of young Irish people these days -- a shocking statistic.

It is organizations like the GPA which can help stem that tide by getting kids all over Ireland involved in team sports and creating a support network for them.

The 200 or so Irish Americans on hand were certainly taken with the message-- an amateur sport in a professional world that is not just surviving but thriving and which is giving back in spades to the Irish people.

There are many things wrong in Ireland but the GAA and the Gaelic Players Association are vital unifying forces at a critical time,

For more information go to http://gaelicplayers.com/

Is Martin McGuinness the barbarian at the gate? Irish media reaction incredibly hostile to Sinn Fein leader

I counted no fewer than eight separate attacks on Martin McGuinness in
the pages of the Sunday Independent this week.

The attacks were also quick in coming in The Irish Times and most
other media publications in Ireland.

It seems the decision by the Deputy First Minister of Northern Ireland
to run for the role of Irish president has set the clock back about 20
years.

Back then daily attacks on Republicans were a feature of the Irish
media, intent above all in keeping the Northern troubles off their
radar and fenced off.

The successful peace process softened their cough for a while, but
there are many writers who can never forgive the IRA for going the way
of peaceful resolution, thereby screwing up their weekly target and
making them, in many cases, irrelevant.

Suddenly they feel relevant again, at least for the few weeks of the
Irish presidential campaign.

But they worry that McGuinness might even win the race for president,
thereby presenting them with a barbarian at the gate of Aras an
Uachtarain.

They have much to be worried about. In terms of political ability
McGuinness is head and shoulders above the other candidates in the
race.

Michael D. Higgins is an effective politician, but he never managed to
pull off the near impossible and create a political and working bond
with Ian Paisley as McGuinness did, which cemented the peace process.

The peace process is the outstanding achievement of the past thirty years in ireland, an inspiration to the world. It would not have happened without McGuinness it is as simple as that.

The Fine Gael candidate Gay Mitchell is from the second tier of his
party and has spent his political life in recent years quite
anonymously in Europe.

David Norris is colorful and brash, but the scandal over his gay lover in Israel and letters he wrote on his behalf after he was convicted of child rape will haunt him.

During that time McGuinness has forged peace in Northern Ireland,
become an international figure and a man called on to aid in peace
processes all over the world.

In the debates that will accompany the race, McGuinness will shine. He
is articulate and very comfortable in front of the cameras.

Polls already show that McGuinness is off to a quick start, only a few
percentage points behind the front-runners.

He will find it hard to win because the Irish system of preferences
means that voters vote, not just for a single candidate but all of the
field in order of their preferences.

McGuinness will find it hard to get the second and third preference
votes because his party, Sinn Fein, polarizes opinion.

The questions about his IRA past are legitimate but could have been
asked of many major political figures in Ireland such as former
presidents Eamon De Valera and Sean T O’Ceallaigh, Foreign Minister,
Sean MacBride and Prime Minister Sean Lemass, not to mention Michael
Collins.

The Irish Free State was founded by the gunmen who fought a vicious
War of Independence and later a nasty Civil War to make it happen.

Like the United States it was forged in battle but in Ireland the
attempt to elide that inconvenient truth continues afoot.

Under that scenario McGuinness, having taken the path of so many
others from all Irish political traditions, is somehow illegitimate
for doing so.

If his deeds and accomplishments happened fifty years ago nw doubt
there would be a statue to him as there is to many of his predecessors
in the IRA who made peace.

But because his achievements are in the immediate past and still weigh
heavily on the self-image of many of the Irish powers-that-be they
oppose him tooth and nail.

I think the ordinary people in Ireland will acknowledge his
extraordinary journey, his massive role in bringing peace and his
image on the world stage where he is seen as a peacemaker.

Whether that is enough to win the office remains to be seen –
bookmakers have him at 3/1 so it would be no great surprise.

Chris Christie will only help elect Rick Perry as GOP prez candidate if he runs

Rick Perry is the latest false prophet for many Republicans and they want to stop Mitt Romney at any cost.

They think Chris Christie is the answer -- but he's not.

Ironically, if New Jersey governor Christie gets into the race he may well ensure Perry's nomination.

Perry polls weakest against Obama and is the GOP worst nightmare.

Christie is a blue state governor who is moderate and centrist, certainly compared to the red meat right of his party.

On issues such as immigration, gun control, the environment, Christie is far more moderate than the average Republican primary voter.

In that respect the attacks on him will come form the right and his support will come from the middle where Romney currently resides.

So Christie will be supported by the same pool that Romney is seeking votes from.

In that eventuality, it would make Perry the big winner if Christie runs.

Perry pretty much has the hard right to himself now that Michele Bachmann has imploded.

The pressure is mounting on Christie as Perry fades and makes mistakes.

He should be careful however, every candidate is perfect in the media's eyes until he or she gets in then they are savagely dissected.

But few self respecting politicians can resist the siren call of the national stage and it will make it hard for Christie these next few weeks as Republicans seek their latest savior.

As a general election candidate Christie would almost certainly be the strongest against Obama but that means little to primary voters.

The net effect if he enters will be to increase Perry's chances.

Which is why the White House is desperately hoping that Christie does jump in.

Ireland on the road to recovery says Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore ----A night to remember at Irish America Wall Street 50 Awards

Minister Eamon Gilmore speaking at the Irish America event

 Our annual Wall Street 50 event held at the New York Yacht Club last night was a stellar success, featuring the best and brightest of the Irish on Wall Street.

Over 300 of the best of the Irish on Wall Street gathered for our Irish America Magazine event.

Highlight of the night was the speech of chief honoree Brian Ruane of BNY/Mellon, who oversees 1,800 employees in the company's Irish offices as well as running their hedge fund strategy from New York.

Far from downgrading Ireland, Ruane sees potential for expansion there and pointed to a dedicated and well educated workforce that can help Ireland again become a major player in international finance.

Ruane was bullish on the Irish economy, and he is a man who should know.

It was a welcome respite from the prophets of doom and gloom who populate the Irish air and media space every day.

Also bullish was Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Eamon Gilmore, who delivered a stem winder speech noting that Ireland was fighting back after its near economic collapse.

He pointed to a GDP rise of 1.6 per cent over the past three months and a host of positive articles in the world media, including the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal proclaiming that Ireland was on its way back.

He noted the contrast with his first few months in office when the weekly bulletins he read on news coverage about Ireland was depressing in the extreme.

Gilmore is helping lead a government that has got the optics right, that is straightforward and is not massaging figures or telling porkies about Ireland's real situation.

That honesty and willingness to talk straight about the problems and solutions has resulted in a markedly better press for Ireland in recent months and sense that a corner has been turned.

There are clear signs that the bottom had finally been reached in the bank bailout saga also he noted.

Maryland governor Martin O'Malley, head of the Democratic Governor's Association and a potential candidate for president in 2016 was also effusive in his praise of Ireland getting its story straight and beginning a major comeback.

He stated he never doubted the Irish spirit and resolve to put matters right.

The night I think, marked a turning point, a sense that there was reason for optimism about Ireland's prospects after a long dark night.

The caliber of the 2011 class was exceptional "This year's honorees are among the best and the brightest Irish America has ever had the pleasure of celebrating. They have a lot riding on their shoulders in these turbulent economic times, but their
accomplishments and determination assure me that we are in safe hands," said Patricia Harty, editor and co-founder of Irish America magazine.

Honorees included some of the leading lights on Wall Street, some of whom came from as far away as Boston, California, Ireland and Philadelphia,

Prudential's Barbra Koster filled a table with female colleagues, four of whom had flown in from the subsidiary in Letterkenny, Co. Donegal for the occasion.

An incredible musical interlude was provided by violinist John Kelly, CEO of the Irish Chamber Orchestra which will be performing at Lincoln Center on October 31st.

All in all a night to remember

Vicious attacks on presidential candidate Martin McGuinness begin -- Absurd call to have him arrested as war criminal

The Irish presidential race gets nastier every day since Martin McGuinness entered.

He has touched a raw nerve among the Little Irelanders,who want nothing more than to keep their little Republic to themselves and bitterly oppose any interference from the likes of McGuinness.

We are witnessing the last throw of the dice of the revisionists who would much rather a wall was built around Northern Ireland many years ago and then have averted their eyes to whatever needed to be done.

The latest extraordinary outburst was by Irish Times columnist Fintan O'Toole who proclaimed that Martin McGuinness if he became president of Ireland, could be arrested for war crimes if he traveled abroad because of his role with the IRA.

"Should we appoint a head of State who could be liable to arrest for war crimes under international law?," he asked in his column.

The blindingly obvious retort is that Nelson Mandela, founder of the ANC, an organization that invented 'necklacing' where a burning tire was placed around a victim's neck, could be arrested too under O'Toole's definition.

That did not stop Mandela getting the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993.

O'Toole's comments also ignored the reality of the history of his own state.

Sean MacBride, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Nobel Peace Prize winner was a Chief of Staff of the IRA.

Two previous presidents of Ireland, Eamon De Valera and Sean T O'Ceallaigh were members of the IRA before going into politics.

McGuinness is following a long tradition in Irish politics of putting aside the gun and entering politics.

He is head and shoulders above those competing for the race against him in terms of accomplishment.

His two major rivals, Gay Mitchell of Fine Gael and Michael D. Higgins of the Labor Party are second tier candidates from within their own parties.

McGuinness has an amazing track record as a peacemaker, playing a huge role in ending the IRA campaign. forging a deal with Ian Paisley and later with Peter Robinson to share power in Northern Ireland.

It was world statesman stuff, ending an horrific conflict, and was acknowledged everywhere from the Oval Office to indeed, Mandela himself.

It seems like O'Toole and others like him want to forget the last twenty years of incredible progress in Ireland and focus only on McGuinness's IRA past.

Well then, O'Toole,who almost wept with joy when the Queen agreed to visit her former subjects, should apply the same criteria to her majesty and her family.

Prince Charles is Commander in Chief of the Parachute Regiment which killed innocent civilians in Derry in 1972.

Should he be retroactively banned from Ireland?

Of course not. The reality is that the Irish Republic was forged in war and violence,like the United States once was.

We can no more ignore that history than we can the impact The Troubles had on Ireland North and South.

Martin McGuinness was a key player in ending those troubles, arguably the single biggest achievement on the island of Ireland for the past 100 years or so.

O'Toole is revealing a little Ireland mentality that infects many of the great and the good on that island.

Alas, we will be seeing it manifest itself again and again in the coming weeks

An All-Ireland football final for the ages ----One of the greatest games as Dublin defeat Kerry

I have just witnessed one of the greatest sporting occasions I have seen and I have witnessed Olympics, World Cups, Super Bowls in my time.

This event was all the more remarkable because it was a game played by total amateurs, who were not compensated a penny for their endeavors.

I am referring to the All Ireland football final played in Dublin's Croke Park between age-old rivals Kerry and Dublin with 'the Dubs' victorious by a single point 1-12 to 1-11.

Over 80,000 were on hand to witness the latest chapter in Ireland's anceint game, often described as a cross between rugby and soccer.

Actually. it is an amazing game in its own right.

All 32 counties in Ireland participate as well as a team from London and one from New York and all the players have day jobs, but train and play like highly prized professionals.

At stake is the pride of the county, the town, and the local village even.

Think texas high school football in terms of the ferocity and pride in the local place

It is sport at its finest a billion light years away from the pampered super millionaires of soccer, baseball and football.
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Read more:

Dublin finally win the All-Ireland title thanks to last minute point from goalkeeper
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Here there are no gleaming Mercedes driven by the players, no WAGS, women who stalk the top players looking to make a kill.

Rather there is a homespun reality that is as beguiling as it is appealing.

The hero of the day for Dublin, the goalkeeper Stephen Cluxton who ran almost the entire length of the field in order to kick the winning point from a free.

He is so camera shy that he refused to appear for the after-match presentation of the cup and just quietly went the dressing room.

By day he is a schoolteacher and will be back in his classroom this week.

His insistence on anonymity is as rare as a hen's tooth in an era of ego inflated super stars.

The battle rolled on for seventy minutes in Dublin on Sunday. Dublin and Kerry are the polar opposites. In the blue corner, Dublin, are the city team, with fanatical followers who follow the team to every corner of Ireland.

In the green and gold corner Kerry, the rural champions, 'culchies' in the vernacular, playing 'the Jacks' as the Dubs are dubbed.

At stake was county pride but also something deeper for Ireland.

At a time of deep national trauma with institutions such as banks and Catholic Church exploding in pieces, the GAA, Ireland's leading sporting organization has become a touchstone of Irish society.

The organization is widely praised for it involvement in every aspect of Irish life, helping young children become athletes and better citizens and providing a focus for millions all over Ireland.

The game yesterday was broadcast all over the world to expatriates everywhere from Sydney to New York.

It was a marvelous occasion , one the Irish diaspora felt part of and an example of the greatness of the Irish heritage and spirit.

A day to remember for sure.

Talk of a Kennedy curse is nonsense, latest death of Kara revives idle chatter

The latest Kennedy tragedy to hit, the death of Kara Kennedy, just 51, once more reveals how much this great family has suffered.

Untimely deaths run like a river through the history of the family and Kara is no exception.

Ted’s two other kids, Ted Junior, who lost a leg to cancer and Patrick who has had major substance abuse and alcohol issues illustrates just how tough the battle has been for the younger generation.

John Kennedy Junior was also a casualty of course, dying far too young in that Martha’s Vineyard plane crash.

His sister Caroline remains the only direct inheritor of the JFK family name as a result.

Is it a curse or is it just what any family so large and so extended would go through?

I believe it is the latter. Talk of a curse is nonsense really, this is a massive extended family, always under scrutiny and one which every illness and death is highlighted.

The madmen who gunned down JFK and his brother Bobby were not acting out some curse, but rather a twisted agenda of their own.

The death of this generation of Kennedys has actually been few and far between.

David died of a drug overdose, brought about by a very tough childhood after his father’s death. John died in a plane crash that arguably was avoidable, and that is really it until Kara’s death.

So talk of a curse, with such large numbers in a massive extended family is just nonsense. The Kennedys may not be that all American normal family but then who is these days?

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Martin McGuinness presidential move a major coup for Sinn Fein ---Either way they will win

The entry of Martin McGuinness into the presidential race throws the cat among the pigeons very forcefully in Ireland.

I happened to be on a current affairs program, the George Hook Show here in Dublin when the news hit

. The reaction of the pundits was immediate.

A presidential race that was becoming a circus of minor contenders suddenly had been galvanized by the entrance of the Sinn Fein Deputy First Minister.

The immediate reaction was that McGuinness could not win the race but could get as high as 25 per cent of the vote and possibly finish second.

Paddy Power bookmakers seemed to concur with that. They listed him as a 6/1 shot, well behind the two front-runners Michael D. Higgins of the Labor Party and Gay Mitchell of Fine Gael.

But this presidential race has been such a surprise cocktail form the beginning.

McGuinness was not the only contender announcing yesterday.

Last night on the Late Late Show, Ireland’s top rated program, David Norris announced he was getting back in the race after a gay scandal forced him out .

Like moths to the flame contenders cannot resist the lure of Ireland’s top constitutional job.

I’m not that sure that McGuinness can’t win. There is a strange mood abroad in Ireland with the economic collapse there and I know several Irish people who told me McGuinness is the one Sinn Fein candidate they would cast a protest vote for.

He has an excellent image in the south in recent years, his ability to work with Ian Paisley and Peter Robinson and construct a solid government in Northern Ireland has won him deserved praise everywhere.

There are many who will wish he can get back to that that the peace process is not fully bedded down and who see his steady hand is still needed in the North.

But the lure of running for president in the south was too big to turn down.

It positions Sinn Fein as the largest opposition party in the south and leaves Fianna Fail, who have refused to run a candidate for Ireland’s highest office, looking very diminished indeed.

Sinn Fein as usual are playing a long term game If McGuinness wins it is an incredible achievement.

If he loses, but finishes second it moves Sinn Fein to the position of being Ireland’s leading opposition party.

Either way they win, it is a plus sum game and a net gain for them.

Clever, very clever.

In JFK's ancestral Irish home the memories still linger as Coca Cola's Don Keough retraces his ancestor's path

Dunganstown County Wexford: It was from this little farm outside New Ross in Wexford that arguably the most famous Irish emigrant to ever hit America’s shores came from.

Patrick Kennedy was a cooper, or barrel maker when he departed this land in 1847 fleeing famine or chasing his true love Bridget Murphy, depending on who you believe.

The access roads to and from the farm don’t look all that different from the day he left I’d say.

The narrow path, barely room for one car, is paved over now of course, but the sense of rural Ireland and a far more simple era is evident.

In New Ross harbor he climbed on board and ship and set sail for America. John F. Kennedy would come back to visit Dunganstown in 1963.

Today, Patrick Grennan, Patrick Kennedy’s descendant farms the land where he left from and gives visitors a wonderful tour of the old homestead.

You are standing in history’s road here, as you are in nearby New Ross where the exodus to America began.

In the harbor now is the Dunbrody, a perfect replica of a Famine ship such as the one that Patrick boarded all those years ago.

I am in Wexford to accompany another famous great grandson of an Irish emigrant from the period.

When Michael Keough left from here around the same time as Patrick Kennedy he could hardly have envisaged that his descendant Donald Keough would one day return as president of Coca Cola, the best known corporation in the world.

Now retired but till on the board of Coke, It was a deeply moving experience for Don Keough to clamber on board the Dunbrody yesterday and relive what Michael went through.

Actors dressed as emigrants at the time laid bare the stark facts of life on the boat.

On many trips up to half of the 250 or so passengers died. It is easy to see why.

Sanitation was primitive. In bad weather the hatches were bolted down and the passengers were unable to get on deck. The voyage took four weeks, time for cholera and other illnesses to become rampant.

As Don Keough remarked, we can’t imagine what they went through to reach the Bright City of America.

It was an intensely important moment for him to stand where his ancestor stood, anticipating the new world, that awaited him after the ship reached the neck of the Barrow river and launched on the broad Atlantic en route to America.

Don Keough came back and gave back. His company has invested over $900 million to date in Ireland, including one plant that is being officially opened today in Wexford town, which is nearby and which will eventually supply 100 badly needed jobs.

One can only imagine the joy that Michael Keough would feel in what his great grandson has accomplished.

Part of the Dunbrody footprint now includes the Irish America Hall of Fame, which Keough was inducted into last year.

It is a wonderful exhibit, tying the incredible rich history of the Irish in America to the port where so many including Kennedy, Keough and Eugene O’Neill’s people left from.

I highly recommend a visit.

Wexford was also where the English first landed in Ireland and where the famous rebellion of 1798 began and ended.

On a beautiful autumn day in Ireland the county looked resplendent in the warm sunlight.

The shades of its great and often tragic history loom everywhere though. For Don Keough, as it was for John F. Kennedy, it was a wonderful and warm homecoming though.

Irish cut backs have hit young and vulnerable hardest --Down Syndrome, autistic kids lose special assistants

Protesters yesterday outside Leinster House. (Photo: MickWallac.net)

Dublin: The cost of Ireland’s austerity program on the poor and disadvantaged was made clear to me Tuesday as I made my way to the Irish parliamentary building for a meeting.

I was overtaken by a crowd of about 500 parents and children, most with special needs, on their way to protest outside the Dail.

The cutbacks in services mandated by Brussels and the IMF has deeply affected those most in need. Amid all the talk of green shoots of recovery in Ireland and discussion about debt repayment schedules the little people are feeling the pinch most acutely.

In the case of the protesting parents it was the withdrawal of Special Needs Assistants, or SNA’s to look after their kids in schools.

Thus, autistic children, Down Syndrome children, and others with serious developmental problems are no longer offered the wide array of SNA’s that was there previously.

It is part of the savage cutbacks mandated by the European Union to bring Ireland’s budgets in line. Education has been among the hardest hot areas with daily headlines about a looming shortage of teachers and cut back curriculums.

The protestors were blaming the arrogant bankers and the government and it was hard not to be affected as smother after mother took the microphone and talked about the deep anguish the loss of the SNA teacher had made in their lives.

This is where the rubber meets the road in the Irish recession, where all the high-level talks about debt restructuring and funding finally trickles down and hurts the most needy.

‘Tip’ O’Neill the famous Speaker of the House once said the test of a country was how it handled its youngest, neediest and oldest.

By any standards Ireland has begun to fail that test like never before in modern times.

You won’t see that featuring among the high levels discussion in Europe this weekend, but the reality is that when elephants fight it is the grass that gets trampled.

Jackie Kennedy was a complete snob about the Irish and others --New book highlights her disdain for those less exalted

What comes across in the new book about Jackie Onassis and her conversations with historian Arthur Schlesinger is how much of a snob she was.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, she was after all a child born into privilege, Yale-educated father and a wealthy Irish American mother.

Art history, poetry, French history and literature were her preferred pursuits we read and you might also add, contempt for those lesser classes who failed to see the importance of such aesthetic pursuits.

Consistently, throughout the book that snobbishness comes through.

She dislikes her mother-in-law Rose Kennedy because she is too Catholic and has a persecution complex.

She dislikes the Irish mafia around Kennedy because she thinks they are very bitter people.

Why she even complains about Irish stew being made in the White House kitchen and she wants to replace it with proper French cuisine.

She dislikes Lyndon Johnson because he’s a Texas rube who should not be trusted with anything.

She dislikes Martin Luther King because he had affairs.

She fails to see the complete person in all her comments, merely taking the superficial as the reality.

Johnson and King together dragged civil rights into the 20th century.

They have no equal in history.

The Irish mafia that she complained about propelled Kennedy to the presidency and played key roles in creating the ‘Camelot’ mystique right after he was killed.

On the other hand every obscure French or foreign intellectual, painter, artiste is treated as the greatest genius on earth. Most are now utterly forgotten

Perhaps she was a woman of her times, afraid to go beneath the manners and the social niceties that dominated a wife’s role back in the early 1960s.

Typical of the period her husband could do not wrong, Jack Kennedy comes across as an almost saintly presence, ironic when we know now he was all too human when it came to human failings.

She knew of course, but choose to bury it in the fashion of the times but canonizing her husband makes her book far less authentic.

Jackie Kennedy proved herself before and after leaving the White House, becoming a woman of the world.

She raised two great kids, given the incredible pressure she was under.

She also saved so many historic buildings in Washington from developers not to mention landmarks such as Grand Central Station in New York that her legacy as a great First Lady is secure.

But there is no doubt also a French-influenced disdain for the unwashed who failed to see the greatness in idle intellectual pursuit and vanity.

Perhaps we should never be surprised that our heroes are mere mortals after all.

In her own voice in this new book, Jackie makes all that abundantly clear.

Surprised by tears on 9/11 - Loss and deep love mark America's sacred day

I was surprised by how many tears I shed yesterday on 9/11.

I though I had let the raw emotion of that event pass me by in the ten years since, but it quickly resurfaced from early morning.

The children reading out the names of their dead relatives at that wonderful dignified ceremony at Ground Zero moved me deeply.

The moments of silence when the dreadful events happened, at 8.46 when the first plane struck and so on, were poignant and deeply painful as we recall the moment our old world ended and a more threatening one began.

Suddenly , once again, and very powerfully those who died became real. One child remembered her dad's wonderful smile, another little girl remembered how he used to put her to bed and his good night kiss.

Those were little treasured memories saved from the wreckage of the awful day and you needed a heart of stone not to be moved by it

I can only imagine what i t was like for the direct families who lost loved ones, but I found myself back again in that awful day when I first glimpsed the Twin Towers on fire from the roof top of my apartment building.
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READ MORE:
The face of the many fatherless children of 9/11

President McAleese pays tribute to Irish victims of Twin Tower attacks

Why America still feels so strongly it has lost its way after 9/11
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The years in between have not buried those memories, or never will now.

'Even the weariest river winds somewhere safe to sea' the poet Swinburne once wrote. I feel for some of the families that point has not been reached and it is a lifelong journey.

As for the rest of us we can only marvel at the strength that has kept them going, raising kids, getting on with life over the past decade

I was on a radio show in Ireland yesterday arguing with Middle East expert Robert Fisk abut 9/11. He cast it in part as Bin Laden gaining vengeance for the Palestinians,

I argued strongly that Bin Laden never cared a fig for the Palestinians, but was a Middle East Zealot, in the same way Hitler was a German fascist, seeking world power and domination.

My point was that Bin Laden killed many Muslims in New York that day too .

They were all innocent victims and portraying in any other grandiose terms seems nonsense to me.

What we witnessed yesterday was the antidote to all that hate, a remembrance full of solemnity, caring and compassion. It did America proud.

Why America still feels so strongly it has lost its way after 9/11

There is increasing evidence that the 9/11 tragedy has created a long-term change in American attitudes that cuts across all political, social and economic strata.

On that fateful day ten years ago the terrorists not only took down the Twin Towers they also plunged America into a crisis of self confidence and direction that continues to this very day.

The tenth anniversary of 9/11 has brought forth a raft of new studies and surveys all of which show how much Americans moods have darkened in the past decade.

Many Americans probably didn’t need to read any survey to report what they have viscerally felt for a decade now, that America has gone seriously off the rails with a deeply compromised political system, two wars and an economic crisis that shows no sign of ending. 9/11 is seen rightly as the genesis of that tide of misfortune

In 2000 when Bill Clinton left office there was a $230 billion dollar surplus and America was at peace. The Soviet Union was no more, America was the lone superpower. Francis Fukuyama had written a best selling book called ‘The End of History’

After 9/11 all that changed. Suddenly history was back with a vengeance and American was on the receiving end. It was utterly unexpected and it shook the US to its foundations.

It has been downhill since Now there is a massive deficit, America is fighting two wars and the national mood has turned from sunny to sour as the political process has deadlocked.

The darkness, the wars, much of the political havoc can be traced directly to 9/11 and its aftermath.

A Time magazine poll this week revealed that only 6 per cent of Americans feel the country has moved past the events of 9/11. Ten years after the Towers fell 94 per cent of Americans still feel the impact of the horrific events that warm and clear September day.

It is a stunning statistic that reinforces a stark reality that 9/11 may also has permanently blunted the natural optimism that makes America such a can-do country when it comes to innovation and creativity.

America has a long history of bouncing back after torrid events such as the Vietnam War, Watergate and Pearl Harbor.

Not on this occasion however. After a decade, only six per cent believe we can now move on.

It seems the American gloom and doom that descended soon after 9/11 and which has helped lead to a great recession is set to continue.

Put bluntly, American is still in a funk over the events of that dark day.

Fully eight in ten expect another major terrorist attack , 71 per cent believe that America has been on the wrong track ever since the Twin Towers fell.

Two thirds of those surveyed believed that 9/11 was the most significant event of the last decade, with only 8 per cent believing that it was the election of the first Black president, itself a massive sea change.

The consequences of 9/11 are everywhere to be found. Every time, anywhere in the world you go to an airport the increased hassle at check in is just another reminder.

More importantly, without 9/11 it is unlikely George Bush would have been re-elected. Historians believe he may well have been the worst president ever, or if not certainly in the bottom two or three. The damage he did with reckless tax cuts and wars may never be fully quantified.

The rush to war and the further loss of hundreds of thousands of lives began right after 9/11. Much of America’s civil authority was undermined by the subsequent events and its reputation abroad sorely damaged.


The coarseness of the American political discourse began in the Clinton era with the impeachment debate but it reached a new nadir after 9/11. The two main parties had found a way to work together on vital issues up to the last decade of the century but the new millennium and 9/11 ended all that.

Suddenly Democrats were soft on terrors, not to be trusted, Barack Obama was not really an American and so it went on.
We now live in an era where a congressman shouted ‘You lie’ at the president during his State of the Union speech last year and was applauded on Fox News for it.

It is now, a congress where the evident hatred between the parties is clear and where less and less gets done as partisan gridlock continues. The debt ceiling debacle was just the latest fiasco. The polls show trust in politicians is at an all time low.

The attack allowed a bellicose Republican party to trumpet its ‘keep America safe’ mantra which in turn led to the wars in Afghanistan and more critically the war in Iraq which began after deliberate misinformation and hoodwinking of the The New York Times among other media outlets about the nature of the threat.

The drumbeat for war became a crescendo and America is still trying to extricate themselves.

Domestically the events of 9/11 it also created massive suspicion and fear about outsiders’ whether they be Muslim Americans or Hispanics. Comprehensive immigration reform was another casualty of the 9/11 aftermath.

New York civil rights lawyer Brian O’Dwyer put it like this in an op - ed piece in the Irish Echo.
“ In the aftermath of the attacks, we have as a nation become suspicious of the immigrant and the foreigner in a way that is almost unprecedented in this country’s history.”

The belief that the future holds better times than what we have today is at the very core of the American experience. Americans like to say that no pessimist ever landed at Ellis Island, struck out across the country or founded cities and towns thousands of miles away from their point of arrival.

That message of can-do is the very basis of the American dream. It was articulated in the presidencies of Ronald Reagan when he took on the Berlin Wall and predicted its downfall and during Bill Clinton’s time when the Silicon Valley genius of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs fully began flowering.

How does America get back to that? It starts at the top but Barack Obama despite his inspirational candidacy appears unable to summon that same spirit and fire while in office.

But you can never bet against a country that has proven itself so innovative and creative in so many ways. As they commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11 Americans know that the ability to recover and put 9/11 behind them lies in their own hands.

Remember John F.Kennedy once summoned them to the moon and amazingly they went. A terrorist strike at the heart of their country can never fully obliterate that spirit. The flame has been missing for some time now but hopefully that will not last for ever.

The world was never the same again after 9/11 ---I saw loss and love on that terrible day

There are two moments I will remember all my life.

The first, when I was a child, was John F.Kennedy’s assassination, the second ten years ago where I was on 9/11.

Both were seismic events, both ensured the world would never be the same again.

The first presaged an end to childish innocence, the second that America could never be invulnerable again.

Like millions of New Yorkers on September 11th 2001 I had been taking in a beautiful autumn day, which suddenly turned to unspeakable tragedy.

At such times utterly irrational ideas run through you mind. My first thought was this would possibly delay that week’s issue of the Irish Voice.

The second was that somehow somewhere there was a rational explanation and everything would be all right.

It was wishful thinking. There wasn’t and it wasn’t all right ever again.

9/11 changed America in ways subtle and clear. That change is still manifesting itself.


For the next five years Americans took a holiday from their political senses, re-elected possibly the worst president in US history and acquiesced in war in Iraq, which most definitely was not.

Anyone who opposed the war parties was seen as unpatriotic and craven. Great institutions like The New York Times proved horribly fallible with their cheerleading for finding non-existent WMD’s in Iraq and repeated drum rolls for war.

So many institutions proved to be like the emperor with no clothes. A senior NYPD official told me if there was another attack he could see most civil liberties being suspended for years.

We wobbled on the edge of near fascism. The men in charge of the country, especially the Cheneys and the Rumsfelds, were dangerous warmongers only too willing to grab the opportunity to play smash mouth with enemies imagined and real.

There were far too few who stood up to them. Cowed and silenced, Democrats, in particular, signed on to the war agenda and rattled sabers with the best of them.

Yet the country, starting with New York changed for the better too. Right after the bombing as the wounded and fearful made their trek north to get away from the cataclysm New Yorkers came out of their homes to embrace them.

They wiped the blood, grime and dirt off their faces, they brought them to their homes. They arranged to contact family members. They grieved with them in powerful displays of grief all over the city.

My most powerful image is standing as one of thousands outside a firehouse in Midtown Manhattan where ten firefighters had died. Some had candles, some knelt and the complete silence was broken only by sobbing and prayer.

There was no electricity , only the dim light of the candles and the sense of powerful emotions so strong it brought cascading tears to my eyes.

The message was clear though. We are with you. Firemen and policemen were the new Gods of the city. For a merciful few weeks celebrity belonged where it rested, on their shoulders, not on some Hollywood nonentities.

All victims were treated as heroes. Restaurants threw open their doors, hotels gave out free beds, people took victims into their private homes and tended to them there.

This was supposedly cynical New York where everyone looked out for themselves. Instead we got an outpouring of love and care that softened the city. I was never more proud to be a New Yorker.

As the days went by I got to know that I had known some of those killed. Two of them were at a ‘Wall Street 50’ event my magazine hosted just a few months previously at the World Trade Center.

That had been a beautiful summer’s night and the event was at the 108 floor restaurant called Windows of the World, with a majestic view over New York Harbor.

I remember thinking how long it took to get up there, two different elevators and a ride seemingly to the top of the world .
An employee had taken me on a rooftop tour before the event began. I could see New Jersey sparkling in the distance, beyond the Hudson River, which cleaves the two great states of New York and New Jersey apart.

There that night was Chris Duffy a young man just starting out in life on Wall Street. He had come as a special guest of his dad John, who survived, who was a close personal friend. Chris’s boss Peter Berry was also killed and had been there on that night.

Later I would get to know Ron Clifford from Cork whose sister and niece had died tragically and who, in an incredible coincidence, had been in the tower when the plane carrying his family members hit it.

Ron’s bravery in the wake of such a devastating loss, his refusal to hate, his determination to understand rather than just condemn was truly inspirational.

It was men and women like him who formed the basis of the book I wrote ‘Fire in the Morning’ about the extraordinary victims and heroes of that awful day.

I meet them still. Just recently it was Steven Smith a NYPD policeman whose wife Moira also an NYPD officer helped hundreds escape the blaze before she was killed when the towers crumbled.

He too has that remarkable equanimity that Ron Clifford has, he has raised his daughter alone but I know she has not been raised to hate.

That’s in the end is the pivotal lesson of 9/11. True evil triumphed in those brief terrible moment when close to 3,000 innocent people lost their lives.

But the second the violence was over humanity reasserted itself in a million different ways, from the embrace of the bloodied survivors as they made their way up town to the millions of heroic deeds and private kindnesses shown in subsequent days and months.

One story sums it up for me. It is the daughter of a survivor who I met recently, now a stunning girl of 23, and a master’s student in college. Her major? Arabic and Middle Eastern studies .

'I need to understand that world' she told me 'in order to understand myself.' She told me how excited she was about the Arab spring and the democracy movements all over the Arab world.

Of such small moments will victory eventually come over 9/11, not just for our generations perhaps, but in those beyond who will begin to understand the 'other' and heed the message that it must never happen again.

A wonderful memoir of an arriving Irish emigrant in New York in 1939

I have just finished a wonderful little book, 'The Lone Seagull' a memoir by the late Kate Keane O'Dowd, no relation, about her life in the Kerry Gaeltacht, her move to Dublin and her move to America.

It is available from Maynooth University Celtic Studies Department who translated it from the original Irish, at tadhg.odushlaine@nuim.ie

Kate was born in 1912 in the little town of Murioch in the Kerry Gaeltacht, one of the most beautiful spots on earth. Reading her book is stepping back in time to an era long gone, where the ordinary peasant people had nothing, but they had everything, in terms of companionship, neighborliness and love.

Her descriptions of growing up among the last generation of Irish people who spoke no English is priceless . The times were hard, bitterly so, but the closeness of the village and the ability to help each other through thick and thin is beautifully spelt out.

Times were indeed very hard and Kate had to emigrate to America.

She describes her voyage over from Cobh and her first impressions of America vividly.

There is always something riveting for me in that first description of the New Land, what the emigrant felt.

"I sailed from sorrowful Cobh on the 23rd of June 1939, shedding bitter tears. I missed my mother and father the most. Many's the thought would cross your mind; will I see them again? God granted me the opportunity to do so."

Apartment buildings completely threw her.

"I well remember the day I left and the day I went ashore. America was completely different to the picture I had of it. I thought they all had little houses for themselves. I had no idea there were six doors on every floor. How could anyone recognize their own door?

"We were four stories up. I don't know how my relations who were big and fat managed that. Practise I suppose --Oh and we were awfully hot in summer time, there wasn't much air conditioning back then."

She also ran into some strange local customs -- the subway and tea bags!

"I had a week's holiday before starting work. Mike brought us to Rockaway. It was the first time saw the sea since we left it.We had a meal together.

The girl left the teapot on the table.

'Mike" I said " there are strange things hanging out of the teapot."

That's the tea you fool

The tea is grand but what's that hanging out?

They're the tea bags.

Have ye no proper tea"

"That was the first time I saw a tea bag , God be with my fine teapot I left behind in Kerry in the embers at the side of the fire at home.

"The same day we took the subway to Rockaway. I'll never forget the terrible noise of that train, You'd never think of getting used to it."

'God Bless us " I told Mike. I'll never be able to make my way around New York.

I'm telling you you have too Mike said --you have no choice.'

And indeed she didn't like many before and after.

A splendid read if you want to experience what many of your Irish forebears went through

Disgraceful cover-up by Vatican continues on Irish child abuse---Irish prime minister has absolutely nothing to apologize for

The Vatican response to the Irish government criticism of its actions on child abusing priests is simply pathetic.

The Irish government needs to stand firm and not be cowed by this Vatican response which is utterly deceitful.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny has absolutely nothing to apologize for.

The Irish Times headline on religious editor Patsy McGarry's piece on Monday sums it up best

"It takes 25 pages and 11,000 words to say - 'nothing to do with us'

The Vatican washed its hands of any real culpability.

Suffer little children then, nothing to do with us, move along there.

What the Vatican didn't do, as McGarry, a superb journalist. points out, is accept any responsibility for their own part in creating the worst scandal in Irish history involving the church.

The 1997 letter the Vatican sent covering this issue allowed bishops not to turn over evidence of abuser priests if they felt it transgressed canon law.

In other words canon law surpassed civil law even when crimes were committed.

Consider this also the man they sent to Ireland to sort out the mess when it was at its height was one Cardinal Cardinal Darío Castrillón Hoyos, (pictured), prefect of the Congregation for the Clergy, the Vatican body overseeing this issue.

Who was Cardinal Hoyos?

The Irish Times reports that "In 2001 Cardinal Hoyos wrote a letter to French bishop Pierre Pican praising him for not passing information about an abuser priest to police. Bishop Pican received a suspended sentence for failing to report the priest who was sentenced to 18 years for the repeated sexual assault of boys over 20 years, and the rape of one of them.

Cardinal Hoyos wrote to Bishop Pican: “I am pleased to have a colleague in the episcopate who, in the eyes of history and of all other bishops in the world, preferred prison to denouncing his son and priest.”

This was the man in charge of the Irish mess at the Vatican.

Talk about a fox in charge of the hen house.

The Vatican states that Hoyos told the Irish bishops in 1998 that the church “should not in any way put an obstacle in the legitimate path of civil justice” when it came to priest abusers.

They do not revel that he also called for Vatican policy on the issue to be followed.

That policy was that mandatory reporting of priest abusers “gives rise to serious reservations of both a moral and a canonical nature”.

The Vatican letter also warned that procedures in the Irish bishop's document on child abuse appeared “contrary to canonical discipline”. It also referred to it as “merely a study document”.

One Irish bishop stated he felt the mandate from Rome was “a mandate to conceal the crimes of a priest”.


McGarry also reports that at that 1997 meeting then Dublin Archbishop Desmond Connell "thumped a table in frustration as Cardinal Hoyos insisted it was Vatican policy to defend the rights of an accused priest above all."

Another leading clergyman considered that the Vatican orders “placed the [Irish] bishops in an invidious position”.

It meant any priest against whom they took action “had a right of appeal to Rome and was most likely to succeed."

indeed this subsequently happened when new Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin tried to replace two bishops he considered had turned a blind eye to abuse. They appealed to Rome and won their case.

The Vatican is trying to hoodwink public opinion and pretend they were sincere in their efforts to stamp out what they tried to portray as a uniquely Irish problem of child sex abuse.

It was not confined to Ireland as we know all to well here in America and the Vatican response to this day is disgraceful.

This letter to the Irish government just makes that all the clearer.

Sinn Fein decision to run a candidate for Irish president a body blow for Fianna Fail

It now looks certain that Sinn Fein will run a candidate for president of Ireland after party spokesman Martin Ferris stated it was under definite consideration.

A Sinn Fein candidate could do very well in such a race but more importantly, they are positioning themselves to be the leader of the opposition parties in the Irish parliament.

Fianna Fail's inexplicable decision to not run a candidate for the nation's highest office gives Sinn Fein an invaluable opening that they will be seeking to exploit.

The Fianna Fail brand has been so decimated that they decided against running a candidate but that begs the question of why they are in business at all.

Fianna Fail had won every Irish presidential election except one and not running a candidate is a sure sign of how extreme the parties' troubles are.

Party leader Michael Martin has been very shaky on the issue as he approached TV host Gay Byrne to run and promised Fianna Fail backing.

When Byrne backed out he was left with egg on his face.

Now Sinn Fein could well turn the screws when they announce their candidate.

Martin Ferris ruled himself out and that still leaves a slew of candidates available.

The best by far would be Dublin member of parliament Mary Lou McDonald who would present a young and modern face of Ireland.

McDonald, 42, a former European MP has been a rising star in the party for some time.

If she runs for president she would probably not win but a very positive showing would further increase SInn Fein's political presence and hand Fianna Fail another major defeat.