Nice HTML, that man! I've been watching the news coverage of Bush's phone call to Paisley with some bemusement -- after all the real effort that Clinton put into NI, Bush seems to consider it some kind of local difficulty which he might be able to chivvy along with half an hour's chatting away on a transatlantic phone line. I have to admit, however, that I, too, thought the days of Noraid were long gone. Was this bumper sticker new, or old?

The sticker was new. And Baltimore was a pretty significant center of fundraising for Noraid.

The bulk of the Irish immigration to the U.S. took place before 1900. It has gone almost completely unreported, but Irish-Americans have been disgusted with Irish ambivalence after 9/11 and outright anti-Americanism in the years since. Also, Irish-Americans often tend to associate with Polish-Americans, because both groups are Catholic. Ireland's response was contrasted very unfavorably with Poland's.

In September, my parents went to Britain for a brief stay and then to Poland and Russia on a cruise. Both of them had grandmothers born in Ireland, and they'd spent a fair amount of time visiting Ireland in the past. But to quote Mom, "I'll be damned if I'm going to give any more of my money to those people."

They're far from the only ones who feel this way. The love affair is over, Felix.

(Whoops - in case it's not clear I meant tourism money. To my knowledge nobody in my extended family ever gave money to Noraid.)

Damn, there was a brief window of opportunity there but you closed it in time.

Choosing your tourism destinations by how much you agree with the country in question's politics -- and then blackballing Ireland because it isn't pro-American enough? Wow. I guess your parents aren't going to go on holiday in south America any time soon. Or Africa. And heaven forfend they should consider Turkey...

Interesting to hear such sentiments from the land of people who say 'The War of Northern Agression' without irony. Maybe your neighbors can educate on the proper way to exercise sedition while preaching patriotism.

The bulk of the Irish immigration to the U.S. took place before 1900. It has gone almost completely unreported, but Irish-Americans have been disgusted with Irish ambivalence after 9/11 and outright anti-Americanism in the years since. Also, Irish-Americans often tend to associate with Polish-Americans, because both groups are Catholic. Ireland's response was contrasted very unfavorably with Poland's.

Yup. That's because the American position on Iraq (note, not on Afghanistan, or on the immediate reaction to September 11th) is, and remains, batshit crazy. Ireland's okay about disagreeing with craziness, and we like the US in general enough that this isn't going to change how visitors will be treated in the long term. Cf, the reactions here to Vietnam, the Second World War, Reagan's adventures in Central America.

99 - If we look far enough back we can all find something to be pissed off about. In the case of Ireland they're grasping at events that occurred in the 1600s. Right NOW it is quite a stretch to paint British rule as anything even remotely resembling tyrrany, especially when the UK gave up all the majority Catholic parts of Ireland generations ago.

Felix - Give it a rest. Ireland has been feeding off American tourism money for generations - it's a racket. It's Disneyworld - a facade erected to please the customers. And they peddled their malarkey to receptive but not stupid ears. Mary Robinson famously placed an "eternal candle" in the window of the presidential residence, "¡ras an Uachtar·in", in Phoenix Park, so that the diaspora Irish would always know they're "welcome as the flowers in May." Why? Because the diaspora Irish pay the bills and give the Republic wildly disproportionate leverage in dealings with other countries. We're talking about a country of 3 million people - an island nation that's never managed to build a navy - that punches way, way above its weight in diplomatic affairs. However, Ireland can't maintain (and profit by) an ethnically coherent diaspora if it's going to backbite elements of the diaspora. The American Irish will bite back - and there are 10 or 15 times as many in the U.S. as in Ireland. And the Irish-Americans have no great need for Ireland or the Irish.

The Irish have traditionally understood this which is why, historically, you find so much of the criticism of the United States in Gaelic media rather than in English. The IRA was actively in on this scam - "Mao" and "Marx" rarely being mentioned in their U.S. fundraising efforts, and of course no element or splinter of the IRA, no matter how crazed, ever conducted terror operations in the U.S. Ireland is basically in the same position as Israel in terms of its fealty to large ethnic populations in the U.S.

If it thinks its "Celtic Tiger" means that Ireland no longer needs the U.S., good. I want to puke whenever I see one of those "Kiss Me I'm Irish" buttons on St. Patrick's Day, anyway.

Aidan - Ah, the political wisdom of the Irish. Would that be Ireland, the only European country to send condolences to Germany on the occasion of the death of Adolf Hitler? Or Ireland, which has been the home of an armed insurrection for more than 30 years, one more absurd than anything ever imagined by a certain dean of St. Patrick's Cathedral in Dublin? Thanks to the protection of Britain and the United States, Ireland has not had to worry about its defense for hundreds of years. (Though it has often sought invasion as a way of throwing off the British.) Grown-ups are expected to know when to keep their mouths shut.

Sterling; yeah, same country. Those points are a total non-sequitur, though--and, to digress with you for a second, I'm a little unclear as to what resources the US commits to the defence of a non-NATO member--but hey, you seem to enjoy typing for the sake of it, don't let me or any considerations of relevancy stop you! Hope you enjoyed your Thanksgiving, bye now.

S: Speak for your self, white man. A century and half or twice that -- you're right, it's only splitting hairs. But I'm sure you sport a bumper sticker advising your cracker brethern to grow up and ditch the confederate flags, no?

But you're right. If we keep this up, we'll get around to carping about if human civilization is ten thousand or ten million years old.

Michelle, imagine the subtext here: wanker. Let's all pause and give a little holiday thanks for our patron saint, Whit Stillman.

"...I'm a little unclear as to what resources the US commits to the defence of a non-NATO member..."

Don't be ridiculous.

Perhaps the Republic of Ireland has never joined NATO because it already enjoys the benefits of NATO membership without the costs? The United States has been the guarantor of peace in Western Europe and the North Atlantic since 1945. No military campaign against Ireland would be tolerated by the U.S. Government or the U.K. Government.

Additionally, Shannon Airport is a major transshipment point for the U.S. military, so it's not as if Ireland is completely disentangled from the U.S. defense establishment.

I highly doubt the veracity of your story about your parents and their vacation. Sounds like an attempt at anecdotal evidence to me.

I'm half-Irish on my mom's side, they are very vocal about all things Irish, we have both liberals and consevatives on that side of the family, yet I have heard nothing of this supposed new animosity regarding Irish-Americans and Ireland.

maybe you should tell your parents that Russia, whatever Putin's motivation, didn't support the war in Iraq either. how dare they give those rusky bastards hard currency!

Sac - are your Irish relatives still in Catholic enclaves? I could go on and on about my mother's reaction. Email copies of editorials from Irish papers against the war in Iraq flew around among the Irish-Americans in Jersey, with fuming messages attached at the top.

Also, my parents' local parish priest is a Pole. At a "Support the Troops" rally, one soldier's mother was overcome and started sobbing - the priest leapt up on the stage and comforted her, and then gave a spontaneous defense of the war in Iraq, and what it meant to the world. It was after this incident that my mother told me her thinking on Ireland and Poland. The pro-Poland meme I believe is not broadly distributed among Irish-Americans, but the anti-Ireland meme is.

Marc - They don't expect anything better from Russia.

Yes, still in Catholic enclaves. I suppose I'm offering my own anecdotal evidence, and anyway, east coast Irish-Americans are usually more political than their west coast bretheren. Whatever the case, I think it's stupid to avoid your own homeland or that of your ancestors out of disagreement over one issue. Or even a few issues. That would be like disowning a child because he/she is gay. Get the fuck over it, already.

Why can't people just leave the bullshit off of the bumpers? It only causes road rage. Had this white van caught Sterling on a bad day, I'm sure he would've 'forgotten' to brake when they did. Sterling, pay attention to the friggin' road!

99 - thank you. I've missed you. I figured you've been busy chasing down married women.

what, it's ok to visit russia because the russian govt was against the war due to venal biz interests? but the tourist industries of other countries that opposed the war because the people there thought the war was a farce should be punished?

i'd also like to retract my last post implying the US dollar is a hard currency. bush's utterly asinine "not tax and spend" fiscal policy has effectively ended that status.

Michelle - Rear-end? Hell's bells, I was going to run the fucker off the road.

Sac - Look, ethnic ties weaken over time. I think for a lot of Irish-Americans, the last few years represent the fraying of the last threads. Dublin's a lot of fun, Galway's a HELL of a lot of fun, and I'm sure I'l go back there at some point. (Maybe with Krucoff?) But I don't suffer under the illusion that I have anything much in common with the residents, aside from looking a heck of a lot like them.

Marc - Deep breaths.

Michelle: Shhhhhh.

I spent a week in Ireland in August. I found it to be about as pro-American, or at least not anti-American, as any country I've ever visited. And my antennae are pretty sensitive toward American bashing. The local press is against US foreign policy; hey, so what else is new? But avoiding visiting the emerald isle because you think they hate Americans is like skipping McDonalds because they don't want customers. (Avoiding it because of the shitty weather, though, makes sense.)

don't worry sterling, i'm breathing easy...i'm paid in euros.

Hahaha. I hope you're changing them into dollars, pounds or Swiss francs for your retirement accounts.

you would be silly enough to laugh. aren't you supposed to have experience in the financial world? unlike you i'm assuming, my wealth is well diversified into dollar and non-dollar assets. also i just happened to get lucky that in past i was paid in dollars before the bush administration started the greenback's latest slide. now while the euro has its day i'm happy to have a paycheck in funny colored money. but i guess you don't care much about the forex markets since you likely only buy american products and plan to never again leave america's hallowed shores. oh, except for that vacation to warsaw someday, of course.