Inside File The time of year

By Ray O’Hanlon

"IF" needs a vacation. Why, you ask? Well, Jesse Ventura is calling the Irish drunks and there’s uproar. Dissing minorities apart, the head of the New Jersey State Police reckons the Irish are too nice to get involved in drugs and the result is . . . uproar. Some Virginia folk don’t want an Irish pub in their neighborhood because they fear for their lawns. The result? Uproar. The RUC are coming to New York. They are even promising to fight fair. Uproar. A greeting card company posts a, wait for it, "Famine Couch Potato" greeting card on the internet. Uproar. The Famine stamp becomes an immigration stamp. Uproar, albeit not unanimous. The Mets are still being mean. Uproar. ILGO is being excluded from the New York parade again. Uproar’s a coming. The Cork and Kerry associations and many Emerald society members are annoyed with the New York City St. Patrick’s Day Parade Committee. You guessed it. It’s that time of the year. It’s March. Time to up . . . up. . .uproot and head for the hills, the beach, anywhere beyond the reach of uproar’s suffocating grasp.

Gore to the fore

"IF" is still recovering from the last presidential election, but four years between White House campaigns is just too long a hiatus for some. The Irish American Democrats, with Stella O’Leary at the helm, are planning a St. Patrick’s Day breakfast in D.C. during which the group will endorse Al Gore for the presidency.

Steely Stella doesn’t waste a minute. Nor is she inclined to confine such grand events to mere words over the eggs benedict. Anyone who wants to attend the Capital Hilton brekky can sign on as a patron for $5,000. This will buy a table of 10 "with preferred seating." For a mere $1,500 one can be a sponsor. This will also assure the purchaser a table for 10, presumably less preferred. Individual contributors can chow down for $150.

Vice President Gore is listed to attend. He is, at this juncture, a veteran when it comes to dealing with Irish-American concerns. "IF" well remembers Gore talking issues Irish at the 1988 Irish American Presidential Forum in New York. As veep, he filled in ably for Bill Clinton in the ’96 forum, an event, which, while important, rather lacked the tension of the Clinton/Jerry Brown affair in ’92.

There’s no doubting Gore’s knowledge, but there are Democrats who would like to hear Bill Bradley’s views on Ireland too. Bradley might want to consider the Irish American Presidential Forum 2000, an event that will likely take place unless we get hit by an asteroid.

Meanwhile, the National Assembly of Irish American Republicans has not been so bold as Stella’s crew and has yet to jump into the lap of any GOP presidential hopeful. The GOP’s Irish Brigade did take a recent swipe at Stella, however. A statement issued by the assembly’s national co-chairs, Jim Carey and Frank Duggan, took umbrage at Stella’s targeting of Ben Gilman and Jack Quinn in the wake of their pro-impeachment votes.

"The issue of peace in Ireland has always been a bipartisan effort and this organization [Irish American Democrats] has poisoned the climate that has existed for years," Carey and Duggan stated.

"IF" can only hope that with all this talk of poison, the Capital Hilton’s eggs are well cooked. In the meantime, there is also the looming figure of George W. Bush. George W. met a few days ago with British Conservative Party leader William Hague and one recent report had the Texas governor meeting Isr’li lobbyists. So, has anyone Irish reached out to the man who may well be the GOP standard bearer next year? Yes indeed. Ireland’s ambassador to the U.S., Sean O hUiginn, was on a visit to Texas a few weeks ago and took time out to meet with Bush. The two discussed Ireland for an hour and, according to a source, "had a great chat." The ambassador duly extended an invitation for a Bush visit to Ireland and George W. replied that he hoped he could someday make the trip. So there you are now, a week is a long time in politics. Four years is no time at all.

Post snags line

OK, so this comes as little surprise as the word has been, eh, afoot, for several weeks. The New York Post will have the line of march for the city’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Not just this year but also next year, when the "Millennium Parade" marks the start of yet another century of walking and wrangling. Catholic New York and the Brooklyn diocesan paper, The Tablet, will also be granted access to the marching list which, for the first time ever, will be copyrighted. No Irish publication has been deemed worthy of the honor for reasons not yet fully explained by the parade committee.

No doubt the Post will be taking particular care not to annoy Irish sensibilities in the run up to the big day. That will mean refraining from describing John Hume as the "Irish Prime Minister" (Post, Dec. 19, 1998) and slightly sharper editing, the sort that would remove a line from one Post columnist’s piece that appeared last week. The columnist grumbled her figure. She explained that she could never be slim because, being Irish, she had been reared on a diet consisting entirely of beer and potatoes. What, no lettuce?

Hold your horses

George Pataki does indeed have an extra $100,000 in his Executive Budget for the New York public schools’ Famine curriculum. But whether the money survives the ravages of Albany’s budget debate remains to be seen. The budget is due on April 1, but that deadline hasn’t been met in 14 years. Both the Assembly and Senate have their versions. Watch this space.

Hush, listen!

"IF" this week began with uproar. Now listen to the sound of 100,000 people keeping perfect silence. Now a whistle, once attached to the forward funnel of the Titanic blows for the first time in 87 years. The scene is St. Paul, the city with all those weird streets carved out by all those supposedly boozed-up Irish. The traveling Titanic exhibition has come to town. The whistle blows, the crowd cheers. The right kind of uproar.