Barack Obama And Hillary Clinton: We’re All Irish Now
WILL Barack Obama be celebrating St Patrick’s Day?
On this day we are all Irish on the inside. It’s fashionable to be Irish. Anyone can be Irish.
According to the Clare Heritage Centre in south-west Ireland, Muhammad Ali is Irish. His great-grandad was allegedly one Abe Grady from the Irish town of Ennis, who emigrated to America in the 1860s, settled in Kentucky and married a black woman. If only Ali was aware of his ‘Irish soul’, things could have been so different. I can just hear him now: ‘No Vietcong ever called me a nigger or a bogtrotter….’
Yesterday parade in Birmingham – location of the “world’s third largest St Patrick’s Day Parade” (and there is much competition) – featured such Irish notables as local group the Dhol Blasters, adding what the BBC calls “a Punjabi twist”.
A picture on the Ireland.com website is captioned: “Samba dancers in Dublin’s St Patrick’s Day parade.”
Says the Montreal Gazette:
Leslie Lopez calls herself a Mexican-Canadian, but yesterday she was all decked out in green at the 184th St. Patrick’s Parade. There’s nothing Irish about me, zero per cent, but I’ve been to Ireland and I like Irish culture,” she said, sporting a kicky green tinsel wig, Irish-themed buttons, a shamrock lei and green beads.
So can Barack O’Bama be Irish. Barack Sean O’Bama?. The man supported by O’Prah Winfrey? Hillary Clinton’s is at a St Patrick’s day parade in Pittsburgh. And this the Hillary who brought peace to Northern Ireland.
But which is the more Irish?
As we know:
US Presidential hopeful Barack Obama can now count himself as one of the millions of Americans with Irish heritage. Research by the genealogy website ancestry.co.uk reveals that Mr Obama’s great great great grandfather was born in Ireland, although it is not yet known where. Falmouth Kearney sailed from Ireland to New York in 1850 at the age of 19 on the S.S. Marmion arriving on the 20th of March.
Says O’Bama:
I noticed over the last several weeks that the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. And I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody, you know, senses that there’s been this shift. It reminds me: We’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent-up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. …This country wants to move beyond these kinds of things.
He is, of course, talking about 800 long years of English oppression, the overbearing priests, the drunken father, the beatings and the miserable wretch of a mother.
Meanwhile in Dublin, the locals are wondering if the Guinness is organic…
Luck of the Irish to one you – most like the loser…
Posted: 17th, March 2008 | In: Politicians Comments (11) | TrackBack | Permalink
