Anybody remember this 1977 National Lampoon issue based on an alternative history in which Jackie, not Jack, was assassinated on 11/22/1963?
1964 - JFK withdraws U.S. troops from South Vietnam, ensuring America will enjoy peace and prosperity.
1968 - JFK sends U.S. troops to Northern Ireland to liberate the oppressed Catholic minority, setting off the British-American war of 1968-1973.
I presume P.J. O'Rourke, who is a Prod, came up with that one.
How much did the existence of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish help deflect natural Irish-American competitiveness away from the Belfast conflict (1969-1997) and toward beating USC?
Drop it, Steve. Jews don't care about sports. We suck at them. Israel, which has a quite fit citizenry given their nation-in-arms, never places in the Olympics.
ReplyDeleteDo Chinese Americans obsess about team sports? If not we are all screwed.
ReplyDeleteReally?
ReplyDeleteen.wikipedia.org/wiki/NORAID
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friends_of_Sinn_Fein
Apparently the existence of the Fighting Irish didn't do much for one NYC born Hibernian (okay-half Irish and half Hispanic):
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eamonn_de_Valera
or one 1/4 Irish 3/4 Hispanic t-shirter:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Che_Guevera
In any event how Irish was the Notre Dame football team?
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knute_Rockne
wn.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Gipp
P.J. O'Rourke is Protestant? Really?
ReplyDeleteSteve, do Irish Catholic people living in the USA still care very much about what is going on in Northern Ireland? I mean every single other European group in America has forgotten about the local politics. how many Italian Americans care what is going on in Italy.. How many Swedish Americans care what is going on in Sweden?
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of Ireland, My relatives who live in Dublin say that violent immigrants there make some neighborhoods dangerous. The told me that in Denmark, the voters a few years ago elected a political party that promised to end immigration of NAMs and that political party actually delivered an end to NAM immigration. But then the voters changed their mind and voted back in a different party that was in favor of massive NAM immigration. I don't follow Danish politics but can anyone confirm if this story is true?
ReplyDelete"P.J. O'Rourke is Protestant? Really?"
ReplyDeleteYup. When he visited South Korea, he found that Koreans reminded of his Protestant Ulstermen family.
Favorite parts of the "Fifth Inaugural Issue" that I remember off-hand (it's been a while):
ReplyDeleteWhen the Paris couturiers heard about Jackie being run over by a press bus, they all said "Oh my God!" Jackie's preserved pink-suited-and-pillbox-hatted corpse (with tire tracks across it) is on display every year on November 22 in Saks's or Bloomindale's window (can't remember which)...
JFK marries Christina Onassis...
Cassius Clay is the last American soldier killed in Vietnam...
P.J. O'Rourke is Protestant? Really? & When he visited South Korea, he found that Koreans reminded of his Protestant Ulstermen family.
ReplyDeleteThe version I read was that his dad had some kind of falling out with either the the local Democrats and/or the Catholic church.Which resulted in him becoming Protestant and joining the Republicans on the same day supposedly.
Thus the young PJ grew up Protestant in Republican household.
No one from a Protestant Ulster family calls their son Patrick, especially if they already have an Irish Catholic sounding surname.
I dont doubt there are a few Ulster Protestants called O'Rourke - but not many.
Of course I may have all this wrong, or he made the whole thing up.
While I always knew that PJ O'Rourke was a d-bag, I always assumed he was a Catholic. Glad to know he's from the other tribe (my granny used to say "kicks with the wrong foot").
ReplyDeletePeople like him are also referred to as "soupers", as they took the soup. The soup being provided by the Anglo-Protestant establishment during the forced hunger of 1845 - on. The powers that be offered soup ... if one converted to protestantism.
To answer other commentators ... most Irish Americans care little about the occupation of the 6 counties of Ulster. But, if you belong to certain clubs in Irish neighborhoods in the northeast Phila, Boston, NY, where ethnic solidarity still is somewhat alive, the topic is discussed and actually means very much to these Americans.
"Of course I may have all this wrong, or he made the whole thing up."
ReplyDeleteOr I could be wrong. Or people don't necessarily tell the same story about their families all the time -- you find out your elderly uncle took offense to the last version, so you tailor the new version a little differently. Things like that.
And everybody has a lot of ancestors, so you can pick and choose.
ReplyDeleteHere's an interview with P.J. in which he says his mother was Protestant. No mention of his dad.
Or I could be wrong. Or people don't necessarily tell the same story about their families all the time -- you find out your elderly uncle took offense to the last version, so you tailor the new version a little differently. Things like that.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, I wasnt being critical. The man writes funny stories, so I would take some of his biographical details with a pinch of salt.
Len Deighton,a British writer, has a comically different biography at the beginning of each of his books.
People like him are also referred to as "soupers", as they took the soup. The soup being provided by the Anglo-Protestant establishment during the forced hunger of 1845 - on. The powers that be offered soup ... if one converted to protestantism.
ReplyDeleteBut this was 100 years later and it was his father that converted. PJ didnt have any say in the matter.
"Despite my name, I wasn't raised a Catholic. My mother was a Protestant, of a traditional American, vague kind: she belonged to the church that the nice people in the neighbourhood went to. My wife is a Catholic, the kids are Catholic, so I'm a Catholic fellow-traveller."
ReplyDelete"Drunk, Stoned, Brilliant, Dead" is a good account of the 70's National Lampoon, btw, with a lot of clips from the old mag. Henry Beard's "Law of the Jungle" piece is....well. It's a sendup of law review articles. It goes on for page after page, with intricate arguments and Latin and footnotes, completely deadpan. Ultimately it's so crushing in it's thoroughness that it goes from funny to boring to funny in its boringness to some other category beyond that. It stands as a kind of monument in American humor.
How quaint of them, to suggest that a war could last only six years.
ReplyDelete...
ReplyDeleteNo one from a Protestant Ulster family calls their son Patrick, especially if they already have an Irish Catholic sounding surname.
...
Actually I have a 2nd cousin named Patrick who's an Ulster Protestant living in Northern Ireland. There are also quite a few equally Irish first names in the extended family over there.
Mr. Sailer asks a good question though. I'd broaden it out and ask how different US foreign policy would be if Jewish-Americans poured as much time and energy into sports, wood working, golf, tennis, car restoration, wildlife preservation etc as their upper middle class Gentile neighbours?
ReplyDeleteIn a bit of a role reversal, in Boston we just had a white illegal Irish nanny arrested and charged with murder of her brown 1-year old charge, child of a Pakistani tech millionaire and his financial industry wife. She was described in the Boston Herald as a "brawling, beer-bottle tossing Irish illegal alien with a history of run-ins with the law".
ReplyDeleteLittle-known secret is that there are probably between 25K-35K illegal Irish in Greater Boston, most with chips on their shoulders larger than the usual Boston Irish, which is saying a lot. The Boston Irish are as insular and tribal as any ethnic group you can name. The drunken and loutish Kennedys are perfect exemplars of the tribe.
Steve, back in the 90s I used to occasionally frequent a tavern, Liam's, where they actually had a donation box for the Provos.
The whole issue is in the news here because the police in Northern Ireland have been trying to pry documents away from an oral history about the Troubles, the Belfast Project, done by a former Provo and an Irish journalist, and currently housed at Boston College's Center for Irish Studies. Thugs and murderers basically confessed to the things they did, and the cops want access. Naturally, the researchers were happy to send the archive across the ocean to keep it away from Irish law enforcement.
It's tough to get away from the obnoxious Hibernians around here, which is why I wear orange on March 17th.
"How much did the existence of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish help deflect natural Irish-American competitiveness away from the Belfast conflict (1969-1997) and toward beating USC?"
ReplyDeleteIn my grandfather's day, some of the Boston bars he frequented supposedly used to still pass the hat for the Provos (I can't verify firsthand). I still occasionally run into young Americans who are hardcore Irish Republicans (one twentysomething guy at a party seemed quite annoyed that the 'RA never got Thatcher), particularly in Boston College circles, but they come off looking a little silly sometimes- they appear to care more about Ulster than most actual Irish people do these days. Of course, I remember having participated in a sing-along of rebel songs like "Come Out Ye Black and Tans" at a Christmas party, so I guess I look a little silly, too.
"Steve, do Irish Catholic people living in the USA still care very much about what is going on in Northern Ireland? I mean every single other European group in America has forgotten about the local politics. how many Italian Americans care what is going on in Italy.. How many Swedish Americans care what is going on in Sweden?" I think that most of the immigrants from Europe, who came through Ellis Island, have pretty much assimilated. Most of the people I know who have Irish ancestry are also part Italian, German, or Wasp.
ReplyDeleteMLK at 60. Just another race hustler busted in sex orgy scandals.
ReplyDeleteOther classic National Lampoon articles include P.J. O' Rourke's "Guide to Foreigners Around the World, " complete with caricatures and jokes illustrating each national character, "The War Between the Blacks and the Jews ," in which black sanitation workers stop picking up the Jews trash, and the Jews retaliate by having all the radio stations play only Muzak, rendering the blacks' boom boxes useless, and the quiz "Are you a Homo?" in which you score your responses to various questions and find out.
ReplyDeleteI can't find any of these online, I hope someone else
"In a bit of a role reversal, in Boston we just had a white illegal Irish nanny arrested and charged with murder of her brown 1-year old charge, child of a Pakistani tech millionaire and his financial industry wife."
ReplyDeleteIs the wife young enough to procreate naturally again?
The Internet Archive hosts a copy.
ReplyDeleteThat organization is kind of like a more sainted version of Wikipedia, so I'm sure it's legit.
"The drunken and loutish Kennedys are perfect exemplars of the tribe."
ReplyDeleteHey, you can call the Boston Irish drunken and loutish if you want (it's often true), but please don't suggest that the Kennedy clan is in any way typical of the tribe- they share some traits, of course, but the Kennedys are the furthest thing from paradigmatic. Joe Kennedy Sr. was a social climber who aspired to join the Brahmin elite, but was barred from numbering among them- ostensibly because he was a Catholic, but mostly because he was a greedy, self-absorbed jerk. His kids and grandkids, despite their occasional tribalist lowing and tepid posturing at blue-collar solidarity, are SWPLs to the core in every respect, and have been since at least the '50s.
A better example, if you want to use a politician, might be someone like James Michael Curley, Tip O'Neill, or Billy Bulger. Bulger is maybe the most representative of the breed. Was he crooked? Maybe, though I have my doubts. Did he show far too much loyalty to his good-for-nothing murderer of a brother? Absolutely. Tolerance toward corruption and violence are bad vices in Irish Beantown (as is liquor). But you should also remember that Bulger, along with most of the Boston Irish, took the lead in fighting intrusive government intervention in the school system in the name of a Utopian "civil rights" scheme, probably sacrificing his own political future in national office when doing so (absent his opposition to busing, he likely would have gone on to Washington, either in the House or the Senate). In contrast, the lace-curtain judge who ordered busing was a close friend of JFK. Or you can look at Congressman Stephen Lynch, who remains an ostensible pro-lifer despite massive pressure from the party (I say "ostensible" because he has started to cave a little in recent years). In contrast, Teddy Kennedy flip-flopped on abortion the minute the diktat came down in Roe v. Wade, and his brother was toying with the idea as early as the mid-60s.
Actually, President Kennedy resembles President Obama in a way. In Chicago, black voters thought Obama was "too white" (crudely speaking) to represent them, just as Kennedy was part of a new generation of affluent, upwardly-mobile Irish Catholics who disliked the old Catholic ghetto culture and were trying to shed it as fast as they could. Once Obama was a nationwide candidate, though, blacks rallied round him, just as Irish-Americans suddenly identified with Kennedy (who privately despised or was indifferent to many of the things they valued most).
FWIW, my mother's family (very Irish, out of PA) did not care very much about Northern Ireland, but did very much about the Hunkies, the Germans, the Italians, the Jews, etc.
ReplyDeleteI suspect a lot of inter-ethnic competition in 1880-1940's Urban Eastern America focused most attention on the near enemy (basically other Catholic immigrants from other countries) rather than the British. There is also the traditional Anglophilia of the US Upper Classes (see Joss Whedon, for example) that tended to suppress anti-English feeling (to emulate upper class folks).
The shooting war in Northern Ireland has been on hiatus for years now so I'm assuming that fundraising in Boston has tailed off. I also heard (does anyone know?) that in the aftermath of 9/11 donations to the IRA went into a decline - multiple factors at work there.
ReplyDeleteThe US was a haven for escaped or wanted IRA terrorists - I recall that some guy who killed a prison officer actually led the St Patricks parade in SF.
ReplyDeleteThere were literally dozens of wanted guys living freely in the US. None were extradited, and Republicans collected for the cause in the bars of Boston, NY and SF.
Front organisations like Noraid got publicity from sympathisers like Teddy Kennedy and a Republican swine whose name escapes me.
It took 9/11 to change US policy. Suddenly blowing up civilians didn't seem so cool after all.
in Boston we just had a white illegal Irish nanny arrested and charged with murder of her brown 1-year old charge, child of a Pakistani tech millionaire and his financial industry wife.
ReplyDeleteOMG! SWPL pornography right there! Surely a TV movie can't be long behind?
Remember this case? That was SWPL gold. A nice middle-class English au pair convicted of killing a sort-of-brown baby.
San Francisco still hosts a community of illegal Irish immigrants, and many of the Irish bars in the area still have lots of pro-IRA stuff up on the walls, and if you get someone talking about it, they'll talk all night. On the other hand, most of the actual talk is about jobs and money and how's your sister.
ReplyDeleteQuote: "When he visited South Korea, he found that Koreans reminded of his Protestant Ulstermen family"
ReplyDeleteActually there are very few Protestants in the north of Ireland called O'Rourke. Most Protestants in the north are actually descended from British colonists and don't have Irish Gaelic surnames.
Quote: "It took 9/11 to change US policy. Suddenly blowing up civilians didn't seem so cool after all."
ReplyDeleteActually Irish-Americans such as myself continued to support Irish Republicanism even after 9/11. Why should the actions of Al Qaeda make me hate the British any less?
Quote: "I also heard (does anyone know?) that in the aftermath of 9/11 donations to the IRA went into a decline"
ReplyDeleteThis is one Irish American who continued to send money to Irish Republican organizations.
Quote: "Apparently the existence of the Fighting Irish didn't do much for one NYC born Hibernian (okay-half Irish and half Hispanic)"
ReplyDeleteWhile Eamonn de Valera's father was technically "Hispanic", he came from Spain and therefore did not have any known Native American or African ancestry.
Actually Irish-Americans such as myself continued to support Irish Republicanism even after 9/11. Why should the actions of Al Qaeda make me hate the British any less?
ReplyDeleteWell I'm sure it wouldnt change hard core guys but I can see how some people would come to see things in terms of terrorism, or a new common enemy (Islamic terrorists).
"Well I'm sure it wouldnt change hard core guys but I can see how some people would come to see things in terms of terrorism, or a new common enemy (Islamic terrorists)."
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's a matter of how American or Irish an Irish-American feels? Hey, just thinking out loud here.
I realize you're determined to apply reductio ad NCAA to every world phenomenon but the failing influence of IRA sympathizers/backers (including St. John Lennon at one point; see also 1st Wings single) had mostly to do with the non-UK Irish getting rich in the 90s. Not many over there would know who are Knute Rockne, the Gipper, Gipp's composite girlfriend, etc. By the time of the Major government the natural base--as opposed to the artificial Belfast thing--was beginning to dry up and the radicalized Irish American remnant switched their enthusiasm to charismatic chieftain Bill Clinton
ReplyDeleteA lot of those mobbed-up 90s Boston Irish were unpublicized Protestants too.. Ben G. O'Affleck has thus far mysteriously neglected this angle in his seeming attempts to be the Celtic Scorsese, but it's noted obliquely in Monahan's adaptation for "The Departed," surprisingly reliable w/ such details (though the film mixed up the location of Chinatown)
ReplyDelete"mostly to do with the non-UK Irish getting rich in the 90s"
ReplyDeleteRight, the Southern Irish becoming more modern, less anti-contraception, more economically successful, and so forth ameliorated Northern Prod fears of being demographically and culturally overwhelmed. So, the progress of the South provided a win-win solution for the North that was seized in the late 1990s. It would be like if blacks in Mississippi were becoming bourgeois, so that whites in South Boston didn't have much to worry about from school and housing integration anymore.
But, the question is, why, during the worst of the years in Northern Ireland from 1969 into, say, the early 1980s did Belfast not engage Irish-American competitive passions to within even an order of magnitude of how much Israel engaged Jewish-American passions at the same time? Could having the most famous college football team in America named after your tribe reduce your urge to interfere in tribal struggles in the Homeland?
In the 1970s, fundraising for the IRA was mostly a downscale Irish-American hobby, furtively passing the hat in bars in Boston. Fundraising for the Fighting Irish football team was an upscale Catholic-American hobby, with big booster banquets attracting car dealers and other prominent business figures getting their pictures taken with each other as they chip in to buy a cornerback.
ReplyDeleteIn contrast, an AIPAC convention doesn't look like a seedy IRA fundraiser, it looks like a Notre Dame Booster Club rally raised to the nth degree. Instead of Irish and Polish millionaires, AIPAC conventions feature Jewish billionaires, but they are all the same type of personality: extremely competitive and successful men of a certain age like to organize victories. The Catholics organize victories in war-like football games, while their Jewish counterparts organize victories in real wars with real guns.
On the whole, I think football is better than war.
Lol. Whiskey's mother's family is not just Irish, but "very Irish".
DeleteQuote: "In contrast, an AIPAC convention doesn't look like a seedy IRA fundraiser"
ReplyDeleteHave you ever been to either an AIPAC fund raiser or an IRA one?
Quote: "In the 1970s, fundraising for the IRA was mostly a downscale Irish-American hobby, furtively passing the hat in bars in Boston"
ReplyDeleteSo your biggest problem with IRA fundraisers is that they attracted working class people, not that they supported the use of violence? If such fundraiser had attracted wealthy Irish Americans would that have justified their support of violence in your eyes?
Quote: "But, the question is, why, during the worst of the years in Northern Ireland from 1969 into, say, the early 1980s did Belfast not engage Irish-American competitive passions to within even an order of magnitude of how much Israel engaged Jewish-American passions at the same time?"
ReplyDeleteIn my experience, most US-born Irish Americans are no more than half-Irish which kind of dilutes their interest in Irish politics. Also the Irish are less likely to see themselves as the global victims that Jews do. You don't see Irish-Americans obsessing over "anti-Irishism" the ways Jews do over "anti-Semitism".
Quote: "Well I'm sure it wouldnt change hard core guys but I can see how some people would come to see things in terms of terrorism, or a new common enemy (Islamic terrorists)."
ReplyDeleteActually the British are very tolerant of Islamic terrorists in their country which is why it is often referred to as "Londonistan".
"Steve, back in the 90s I used to occasionally frequent a tavern, Liam's, where they actually had a donation box for the Provos."
ReplyDeleteI frequented several bars in the 1980s that had those donation boxes.
"The drunken and loutish Kennedys are perfect exemplars of the tribe"
ReplyDeleteIs there some Kennedy-hating troll box out there with all the received wisdom about this family.
Only Ted was drank. He was loutish.
Joseph Sr. did not drink and offered his sons a million dollars on their 21st birthdays if they abstained till then. As I recall they earned the money.
JFK, RFK, their father, did not drink. Don't know about the women-one sister was alcoholic.
JFK may have been many things, and RFK even more, but "louish" is not really the word. JFK was genuinely graceful and masculine at the same time. A rare blend in a heterosexual.
JFK Jr., whose resemblance to his father startled me as he got older (I used to see him sometimes, in a charitable organization I worked with) was one of the few modern men I'd call a true gentleman in the purest sense of the word.
While I don't normally waste too much time defending the rich, I tend to think the Kennedys (the ones in very high office) have at least paid for anything they did while scum like Rumsfeld, Cheney, Johnson, Nixon, etc. etc. lived out their sorry lives and died in bed.
The North was always the economic hub of Ireland until the trouble and the bubble of 1995 to 2006 or so. Now, Ireland is once again an economic basket case. Exporting its people again. 8,000 out to a Canadian job/immigration fair last fall.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1268099--canada-woos-irish-immigrants-in-search-of-jobs
"Opinions about the North are to those of us in the Republic what flying the confederate flag are to Southerners . . . no more than flying the star and bars means you think black people should be re-enslaved." ------- You give blacks too much credit, as do most modern commenters. The stars and bars is a symbol of Southern unity and a rejection of the New England form of Protestantism. Southerners have been hating (legitimately so) Yankees since the English civil war. Attitudes towards blacks are incidental.
ReplyDelete"The North was always the economic hub of Ireland until the trouble and the bubble of 1995 to 2006 or so. Now, Ireland is once again an economic basket case. Exporting its people again. 8,000 out to a Canadian job/immigration fair last fall.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.thestar.com/news/canada/article/1268099--canada-woos-irish-immigrants-in-search-of-jobs"
God this makes me laugh.
Sweet-heart, the North is a dreary economic desert utterly dependent on her majesty's largesse. It is the economic centre of no-where.
Average GDP per capita in the North: €19,603
Average GDP per capita in the Republic: €35,195
Even the poor old West of Ireland is wealthier than the North. It has a GDP per capita of €23637.
When people get educated in the North they move to Dublin or England. The Belfast rioters in the news recently are all to typical of what's staying.
They're fucked. The British economy is fucked. It has had a balance of payments deficit since 1983. So they won't have money to throw at the North any-more. When they stop, the fun will begin. Irish Catholics already dominate the western two-thirds of the North and the city of Belfast. You see it at every election. The unionist share drops a little, like a retreating glacier. Just 35% of school-kids are protestant. My guess is that when her majesty's money stops coming you will see a type of white flight situation with middle class protestants moving to Britain.
I've come to believe the Irish economy is essentially fine. We have a huge balance of trade surplus, the only countries in the world with a bigger one in relative terms export commodities. I take as proof of our economic health the fact that we have a balance of payments surplus despite almost all our debts being owed to foreigners. A Euro devaluation is inevitable. That will solve our debt problems.
"Joseph Sr. did not drink and offered his sons a million dollars on their 21st birthdays if they abstained till then. As I recall they earned the money."
ReplyDeleteHe was too busy selling it to drink it.
What I don't get is why the Irish spent 900 years kicking out the genetically very similar English from their country, only to turn around and open the floodgates to Nigerians, etc, who are a million times further removed from them.
ReplyDeleteIn Canada, we have something called the Canadian Football League. The vast majority of people who support it are white proles and western rednecks.
ReplyDeleteSteve, I am hoping that you don't support the idea that educated, middle-class folk in America should be following organized sports in order to advocate anti-intellectualism and make people like us more dim about political issues which affect our day-to-day lives.
People like him are also referred to as "soupers", as they took the soup. The soup being provided by the Anglo-Protestant establishment during the forced hunger of 1845 - on. The powers that be offered soup ... if one converted to protestantism.
ReplyDeleteDoubtful.
Speaking of Irish victim mythology, a colleague of my father's grew up - in Canada - thinking that Oliver Cromwell was a present-day figure, because her grandmother used to tell her bedtime stories about "Crumwell's" misdeeds.
I was talking about the North's economic primacy before "the troubles" i.e 1969. I don't thousands of young people lined up anywhere as a testament to a country's future. Either North or South of Ireland.
ReplyDeleteFunny enough, this obit was in the NY Times today...
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/26/world/europe/dolours-price-defiant-ira-bomber-dies-at-61.html?ref=obituaries&_r=0
A national debt of $240 billion for four or five million people, as is the case in Ireland, at the present time, is scary and will be much worse if interest rates start to rise.
ReplyDeleteWhat I don't get is why the Irish spent 900 years kicking out the genetically very similar English from their country, only to turn around and open the floodgates to Nigerians, etc, who are a million times further removed from them.
ReplyDeleteI understand it all too well. They never thought of the nonwhites as competition. But history has a way of making immigrant populations go overnight from too insignificant to bother with to too significant to bother with.
The North was always the economic hub of Ireland until the trouble
ReplyDeleteHarland and Wolff was saved from bankruptcy early twentieth century early mid twentieth century mid twentieth century and Northern Ireland has always been a drain on the treasury it is just that people decided not to observe the observable.
Anon 8:24, you need to get out more. Drug deaths, drunken, pilled-up car accidents, deaths from skiing drunk into trees, drunken sexual assaults involving TWO generations...the list of Kennedy accomplishments is never- ending!
ReplyDeleteThings here in Massachusetts may return to sanity when the last sons and daughters of Eire who grew up with pictures of JFK, Cardinal Cushing and the Pope on the mantel finally go to their long reward.