We Must be Talking

The Great All-Ireland Replay             Gerry O'Shea            I am amazed that The All-Ireland Football Final, arguably the preeminent sporting event in the Irish calendar, is being held this year on a Saturday evening. This strange arrangement invites the comment that the planners in Croke Park looked for a convenient Sunday but had to pass on that to accommodate other considerations. The official explanation seems to confirm this perception: "There were a number of logistical reasons. We are very keen to have it on live TV and in discussions with RTE   -   they would have considerations such as greyhound racing." Nothing against the dogs but surely getting Sunday prime time for a game with a huge level of interest that sold out at 84,000 fans should have priority. That shouldn't be a close call. I am a big admirer of the GAA and the astounding benefits it ...

Just imagine               Gerry OShea There seems to be no end to the lies and   outrageous assertions that Republicans will tolerate from their man in the White House. Just consider how they would be reacting if the person in the Oval Office was a Democrat.   Imagine that Hillary Clinton is in the White House and she claims that her father who came into the world in Scranton, Pennsylvania was actually born in Durham, England, the birth place of her grandfather. Would Republicans ascribe such a blunder to   normal memory slippage which seems to be the best excuse they can muster to explain how their man in the White House boldly asserted that his father, Fred Trump, was born not in the Bronx, which all the records indicate as his place of birth, but in Germany. Senator Bill Cassidy, Louisiana Republican, a distinguished physician with a strong interest in the area of mental health, would surely...

        An All-Ireland Final for the Ages       Gerry O'Shea The All-Ireland finals in 1955 and 1975 are remembered with great pride by aficionados of Kerry football. In both years Dublin - better known now as the Dubs - were strongly fancied to win, but the men in green and gold emerged victorious and thus were assured of a special place in the Kerry pantheon of football heroes. There is a great story told about the 55 final. The Kerry team travelled up by train and settled in at Barry's Hotel, owned by cousins of the young IRA hero who was executed by the British during the War of Independence. A big steak dinner was consumed, the rosary was recited and on the stroke of 9.00pm the manager, the legendary Dr. Eamonn O'Sullivan, ordered his team to bed, stressing the importance of a good night's sleep before performing in the momentous event in Croke Park the following day. Early to bed was not the custom of a few of th...

The Candidacy of Joe Biden         Gerry O'Shea Electability is the core driving force of democratic politics. In the final analysis winning at the ballot box is all that matters. Losers tell election stories; winners wield political power. Ask George McGovern or Al Gore or John McCain - three fine candidates but none of them was successful on their big day at the polls. The principled McGovern was pigeonholed as supporting a far-left agenda and he only carried one state, Massachusetts, against the hawkish Nixon in 1972. Twenty eight years later the talented but straitlaced then vice-president Al Gore was leading in a close race with Bush 43, but he made the mistake of distancing himself from his boss, the lascivious but well-liked Bill Clinton, and he lost by a few hundred votes. In 2008 John McCain, a war hero with the common touch, was favored against a first-term black senator from Illinois until he chose a political airhead from Alaska a...

The Irish Industrial Schools             Gerry O'Shea One of the most disturbing stories during the first 100 years of Irish independence centers on the maltreatment of children in industrial schools. It is ten years this summer since the Ryan Commission reported in detail on the disturbing catalogue of abuse inflicted on   poor children in industrial schools who had nobody to speak for them, nobody on their side. These schools existed up and down the country until the 1970's. Among the better-known locations were Letterfrack in Galway, Artane in Dublin and Upton in Cork.   Almost 30,000   children, nearly all orphans or truants or offsprings of unmarried   mothers, were convicted as criminals and confined in these institutions by courts that just wanted them out of their sight. The Ryan Report relates that in all these places, which were paid for by the state, children were humiliated and told th...

Looking ahead to the 2020 Presidential Election      Gerry OShea There is a silliness about the claims of some of the candidates for the Democratic nomination when they assert that they are in the best position to win back blue-collar workers in the Midwest who voted for Donald Trump in 2016. They claim that Hillary Clinton just did not connect with these voters; she failed to address their issues or to appeal to their emotions as Mr. Trump did successfully. So those voters will have four years of experiencing this presidency before it comes to casting the next presidential ballot. I am sure they will be influenced by how they and their families benefited from Trump's policies on taxation and healthcare, and these important matters will influence whether or not they want a continuation of the present regime. No need for Democratic pandering; let them make their judgment based on how their concerns were dealt with since 2016. Also, the Democratic candidates wo...

Democracy in Northern Ireland         Gerry O'Shea If we identify a functioning democracy as a political system where the principle of majority rule prevails, then Northern Ireland has a sad and unfortunate history.   Decades of agitation resulted in a 1914 Home Rule Bill passing in Westminster that yielded some limited powers to a government in Dublin. Irish nationalists celebrated this new proposal, seeing it as a first step to a fuller system of self-rule. However Unionists, who were strong numerically in the province of Ulster, virulently opposed any involvement with a Dublin government because they feared that Home Rule would inevitably lead to Rome Rule, and they also viewed the majority Catholic culture as inferior to what the Protestant Ascendancy had to offer.   They organized and trained a large and determined militia and imported big quantities of arms from Germany warning the British Government that they were willi...