By Bill O’Donnell

Reading More, Liking It Less – If you are an Irish citizen you would be forgiven if you took little solace in the bruised cliche that all publicity is good publicity. That is demonstrably untrue and especially so with two articles last month in major US publications that savaged the Irish economic crisis and its perps, and a second article that inflicted yet more damage on that country’s reeling Catholic Church.
The first article,”When Irish Eyes Are Crying,” bantering but vicious, is a lengthy look at the Irish insolvency by Michael Lewis in the March issue of Vanity Fair that has precious few kind words to describe Ireland’s brutal manhandling of its once vibrant economy and the villains from the banking, development, and political world who operate out of Dublin. Lewis, author of the Wall Street expose “Liar’s Poker,” published in 1989, names names, with a facile flourish and puritanical glee, targeting politicians like Brian Cowen, the outdoing Taoiseach, and his Finance Minister, Brian Lenihan, with a broad-brush scouring of the landscape that details the perfidy of greedy bankers and builders who thought that wall-to-wall development, fueled by feral speculation and piles of easy money, was the second coming of the Celtic Tiger.
While I had few factual complaints after reading Lewis’s piece – he is generally accurate if irritatingly condescending – his brief throwaway description of Cowen is particularly cruel: “He is not an obvious leader of Men. His movements are sullen and lumbering, his natural resting expression a look of confusion.” Lewis is a tad less harsh in calling Brian Lenihan dull: “He proceeds to make the collapse of the Irish economy as uninteresting as possible. The normal social responsibility — normalizing a freak show —is now a meaningful part of the job of being Ireland’s Finance Minister.” Ouch.
And there’s more where that came from.
Finishing off the second of the scathing magazine pieces, “The Irish Affliction” in the New York Times Magazine of Feb. 13 by Russell Shorto (described as a contributing writer) is another take-no-prisoners portrait of an uncaring, power-driven Irish Catholic Church that breaks little new ground but finds an insider, the Abbot of Glenstal Abbey, who bitterly castigates his church: “Ireland is a prime example,” he says, of what the church is facing, because they made this island a concentration camp where they could control everything. And the control was really all about sex ...Generations of people were crucified with guilt complexes. Now the game is up.”
Given the sluggish pace and the Vatican’s frequent lack of clarity in confronting sexual abuse cases and its reluctance to concede the complicit role of some of the Catholic Church’s hierarchy, there are surely, and sadly, more reports of this type still to come.
Michael Flatley Flying High – After he left “Riverdance,” the world famous Irish American dancer and producer created “Lord of the Dance” and took this company around the world, playing before tens of thousands and raking in revenue by the fist-full. And he’s far from finished. Flatley’s latest spectacular (reminiscent of President Reagan in front of the Statue of Liberty in the eighties) will be the performance of his “Lord of the Dance” at the iconic Cliffs of Moher in County Clare this fall, on Sept. 1 & 2. Some 10,000 are expected to attend this first ever open-air performance of the dance spectacular.
The appearance of Flatley and company at the Cliffs will highlight a campaign by Clare to have the site selected as one of the “New 7 Wonders of Nature,” which will be announced in November. Ticket availability for the dance group’s outdoor performance in September will be limited to 5,000 patrons each night. At $100 each, they went on sales last month and could still be available at ticketmaster.ie and at various Ticketmaster outlets.
Ireland Fund US Contribution In Jeopardy – For 25 years the International Fund for Ireland has had the financial support of successive Washington administrations, but that annual funding may have reached the end of the line. The Republicans, who now control the House, have announced that they want to end the Ireland Fund contribution. Other countries also provide funding for the IFI – the EU, Australia, New Zealand, Canada – but the US dollars are important symbolically as well as financially.
The IFI impost on the federal budget, being debated as I write this, is slight ($17 million) when stacked up against huge cuts to education, high-speed rail, and community health centers, but in recent years there has been a softening of support for this funding and a growing consensus that the Ireland Fund, if it is to continue to have relevance and fill needs, should likely look to the European Union or the UK. And this sentiment might well find a voice in the Senate, despite John Kerry’s support, where there are fewer of the original supporters around to defend the Ireland Fund.
In a sidebar to the legislative battle over IFI funding, another group doing good work in Ireland, Trina Vargo’s US-Ireland Alliance, which runs the George Mitchell Scholars Program, has put in a bid to see if some of the targeted IFI money might be diverted to the Alliance projects. I think it’s a long shot, but as my father would say, you can’t win if you don’t play.
Irish Air Travel Among World’s Safest – Despite the Feb. 10 crash in Ireland of the Belfast-to-Cork commuter flight and the death of six people, Ireland and its skies remain among the safest anywhere in the world. And that is particularly true with respect to Ireland’s national airline, Aer Lingus. You would have to go back 43 years, to March 24, 1968 when Aer Lingus Flight 712 flying out of Cork to London, crashed into the sea off Tusker Rock, County Wexford, killing all 61 aboard.
The aircraft, a British-made Vickers Viscount, went down 30 minutes after a morning takeoff from Cork Airport. Speculation centers on the possibility that the plane suffered structural failure, or a bird strike. The cause of the crash has never been officially determined. That crash remains the single biggest loss in Irish aviation history.
Polls Tell a Chilling Tale – Despite two years of solid, steady successes after inheriting a busted economy, two expensive wars, a budget burdened with deficit from enormous tax benefits for America’s wealthiest, and millions mortgaged out of their homes, Barack Obama still has to struggle to attach basic truth to the public’s perception of his stewardship. This is clearly evident in a Public Policy Polling survey (Feb. 11-13) taken among Republican primary voters that shows a shocking 51 percent (two years into the president’s term) believing that the president was not born in the United States, so he is not a US citizen! An earlier poll among all voters showed that around 40 per cent believed that Obama was or could be a Muslim, despite his repeated public assurances that he is a committed Christian. This is a new and frightening America.
There is a concerted, ongoing effort to delegitimize this Democratic president and that effort signals the widely effective propaganda campaign of the Fox television network and its conservative talk radio allies to bring down an elected president. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell asserts on television that the GOP’s main goal is to bring down the president, Glenn Beck calls Obama a “racist,” and Rush Limbaugh keeps hoping that the president will fail. In addition, five likely Republican candidates for President are regular paid on-air commentators for Fox TV, whose owner, Rupert Murdoch, has contributed a million dollars to the Republican National Committee.
The Fox slogan, “fair and balanced,” is a national bad joke, but given the successful brainwashing of 20-22 percent of the electorate, the joke is on those of us who want honest, fact-driven debate on important policy issues, not outlandish “facts” made up on the spot and on the run. Thus far it is clear that Fox TV and friends are winning the war of words. Readers, do yourself a favor: Click on Media Matters (mediamatters.org) for a critical look at what Fox is up to.
Bailout Update – Ireland is on notice by the European Union that there will be no renegotiations or redoing of the Irish loan terms agreed to by the Irish government and the EU-IMF. There have been statements made by political candidates in the lead-up to the Feb. 25 election, who are faced daily by outraged voters, that Ireland could get the loan terms eased. Not so. What could happen, although still improbable, is that bank bondholders, made immune from loss so far by Irish government fiat, might be asked to absorb a percentage of bank losses. The 100 percent guarantee to bondholders was unnecessary and done in panic mode.
Fine Gael’s taoiseach in waiting, Enda Kenny, who has run a masterly campaign, has made three risky but popular moves: He skipped a television debate hosted by columnist Vincent Browne because he felt Browne was unfriendly; he traveled to Germany to tell Chancellor Angela Merkel that Ireland was keeping its low corporate tax rate; and he announced the minimizing of the importance of the Irish language. Nothing, though, seems to have hurt Kenny’s poll numbers.
Grace Notes From A Master – The death last month at 91 of George Shearing, composer of “Lullaby of Birdland” and a gifted, internationally celebrated piano superstar for over sixty years, reminds me of a short story about the only time I was ever in the great pianist’s presence. I was with my wife Jean, her mother, Catherine McKenna, and Jean’s sister and husband, the Savards, outside Carnegie Hall on a July evening in 1973. We had just exited the hall after listening to Jean’s brother, Dave McKenna, play a solo piano performance with eight of the top piano players of their time, including Earl “Fatha” Hines, Bill Evans, Ellis Larkins, Jimmy Rowles, Eubie Blake, and George Shearing.
As we were walking slowly to the car, we noticed Shearing, blind since birth, approaching with an escort. Catherine McKenna, a fan, stopped, introduced herself and began telling Mr. Shearing how much she had enjoyed his playing. George finally interrupted to tell Dave’s mother that her son was one of the most talented pianists he knew and went on to note how good he was and how proud she must be at her son’s success. It was a lovely moment that my mother-in-law would not forget.
After finishing that sidewalk conversation with Shearing, we chatted among ourselves about how kind and gracious he had been to Catherine and what a gentleman he was to take the time to compliment his keyboard colleague. Some weeks later, when I was looking over a book of jazz interviews done a year or two earlier when, I saw the following quote about Dave by George in answer to a question about whom he liked among the current crop of piano players, “I think Dave McKenna is the best pianist playing right now. His lines flow like mad, he doesn’t suffer from playing solo, and he’s the most complete.”
Belfast, Boston Downtowns Struggle – Boston has its infamous “Filene’s Hole” at Downtown Crossing and Belfast has its Aurora Building development in the heart of its city centre. Both locations held out hope for stunning commercial developments and the jobs they would bring to both cities struggling with the economic downturn. It was the vision of Belfast’s city council that the Aurora project would act as a catalyst for the regeneration of a neglected and shabby Belfast city centre, but sadly the 37-story building on Great Victoria Street in the North’s capital city will not be built, at least not anytime soon as funding has dried up for new, big projects and banks are skittish.
Some new and encouraging signs point to the ultimate viability of the old Filene’s site on Washington Street. The former developer is out of the picture and a new player may be ready to surface if the right bank and the right agreement can come together. Certainly if the Boston mayor and his BRA had their way, there would be development activity there today.
In Belfast centre, things are at a standstill. The North’s Finance Minister, Sammy Wilson, is in a dispute with city planners over the killing of the project and is still hopeful of getting something moving at the central site. There we see it: two capital cities, two scenarios, two busted dreams.
Farewell Bountiful Bertie – Former Taoiseach and Fianna Fail Leader Bertie Ahern has departed his final elected post as Dail TD and is not seeking anything else from the State. He has a couple of items on his bucket list that, alas, will likely go unaccomplished. His chief hymn to himself was the Bertie Bowl, a national sports stadium that he had proposed, and that might (I say “might”) have been named for this now properly remunerated and retired public official. Alas, it was not to be. A final slight to the memory of this well-transported and expensively chauffeured veteran of the Galway Races, VIP tents, and other Fianna Fail campaign battles is the news that Enda Kenny and his Fine Gael Party will put an end to the one limo/one driver/one Taoiseach book tours and similar excesses and make do with the (dreaded) car pool system for government ministers and ex-Taoisigh. Yes, that means you, Bertie.
RANDOM JOTTINGS
When Mary McAleese, an attorney, completes her second and final term as Irish President this November she won’t be joining any high-paying corporate boards but instead will return to college and continue to study law. … The cost of Pope Benedict’s four-day state visit to Britain last September was $15 million, with $2.7 million somehow diverted from foreign aid funding. … No tears for Brian Cowen. He departs with a $400,000 platinum parachute and a $270,000-a-year pension. … Might Howie Carr of WRKO and the Herald be losing his edge? His WRKO station in this new year is ranked in 23d place, a tie with Emerson College’s better WERS. … Gregory Campbell pulling Martin McGuinness’s chain in suggesting that McGuinness should be tried for his role (being there) in Derry’s Bloody Sunday. … Rathlin Islanders win one over City Hall, which wanted the island people to vote on the mainland in Ballycastle. They said no and voted at their island polls. Take that, bureaucrats.
Canada welcomes the emigrant; the country continues to loosen the rules and the numbers to make room for the Irish as they flee the no-job zone at home. … A painting of President Kennedy by the Irish artist Patrick Hennessy showing JFK as he boarded his flight home in 1963 was originally sold for $600 but is now for sale in New Orleans for $100,000. … Anglo-Irish Bank’s former CEO and his wife had 25 bank accounts. He transferred almost $2 million into a wealth management fund just before declaring bankruptcy. … I think Gerry Adams will be OK in the Wee County when they count his votes but some say he could be in trouble. Meanwhile the family of the murdered Jean McConville say their “disappeared” mother was buried in Louth and Adams is “dancing on her grave.” … The average cost to cigarette smokers in Ireland is nearly $5,000 a year, not counting lung and heart futures. … Latest poll numbers five days before the Irish punters express their outrage at the ballot box: Fine Gael 39 percent, Labour 17 percent, Fianna Fail 16 percent, and Sinn Fein 12 percent. … Anybody who pays $29.95 for a coin commemorating the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attack should know that it’s not real currency, it just has a silver “coating,” is not authorized nor licensed by the United States government, and most likely will have zero appreciation until it finally goes into the attic.
RIP — Former Representative Marie Howe of Somerville was kind to send me the obituary and other material from the funeral of her friend, Marion McCarthy of Hull, who died the week before Christmas. Marion was a straight shooter, a passionate, caring, intelligent leader and activist in the fight for justice and freedom for Ireland and, at home in her daytime role, a supporter of disadvantaged mothers and children. She was a very special lady, a friend to Ireland and her people, and she was a welcome sight to me whenever our paths crossed. My sympathy to her family on their enormous loss.