Mick, Pete And Ruth

By Patrick Hurley

To paraphrase Smokey Bear, Congressman Peter King is not your ordinary politician. Senator McCain, a maverick? Yeah, right! Mr. King is the ultimate of that species. No poll-driven politician is he. Mr. King has always called it from the gut.

At times, the political career of this ardent Irish Nationalist has been an affront to the blue blood, country-club elite of the GOP.

Long before it was de rigueur, Mr. King was standing with the besieged Nationalist community of the Northern Irish statelet.

Subsequently, he was propelled into Congress by the hardworking tax-oppressed middle class of Long Island.

Concern for the fragile Irish peace process caused him to risk breaking with his own party on President Clinton's impeachment.

Losing over 150 friends and constituents in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Mr. King appreciated how the security of the United States had been drastically emasculated by Clinton-era negligence.

Endeavoring to correct those deficiencies, he earned the hysterical opprobrium of the Left.

Grasping how destructive the massive amnesty bill, pushed by the elites of both parties, would have been, he was a principal opponent.

Accordingly, he drew the ire of the small but disproportionately vocal Irish Left. Nor were the delusional left-wing philosophers of the Catholic Church too happy with the conservative Catholic pro-lifer.

Protesting nuns picketed his constituency office. Forget the poisoned pen of the Irish Left: There's nothing worse than a fired up nun.

In his reaction to the media's deification of Michael Jackson, Mr. King verbalized the thoughts of the vast majority.

His remarks were greeted with acclaim by the perplexed and disgusted mass. How many people gushed: "It needed to be said ... just what I was thinking"?

The saturation media coverage was overwhelming. Has there ever been such evidence of the yawning gap between the masses and the media? It was as if reality had been suspended.

Had the North Korean threat suddenly been neutralized? Had peace and love descended on the streets of Tehran? Were kindly mullahs now enthusiastically waving the Stars and Stripes?

Perhaps, the initial media effusiveness on the breaking news of Jackson's demise was understandable.

However, as the saturation coverage persisted into the following days, the endeavors to deify the Prince of Pop were nauseating.

Only a racist, so it was inferred, would mention his controversial relationship with little boys, his drug abuse, and his other deviancies.

Certainly, in our own environment, middle-class Americans of all ethnic groups became increasingly repulsed, although one or two colleagues - one an African American - joked that at least it temporarily banished the "Messiah" and his teleprompter from our screens.

Absurdity reached new heights when the Rev. Al Sharpton and other race-baiting suits described Jackson as "one of ours ... an icon of the black community ... a civil rights leader."

African-American actor Jamie Fox ludicrously proclaimed that President Obama's rise would not have been possible without the trail blazed by Jackson.

From his bleached skin, his plastic surgery, his two white wives, his bizarre use of white donors and white incubators to sire "his" white children, Jackson spent his entire adult life running away from the black community.

As the eulogies from Rev. Sharpton and other bloviating snake-oil salesmen poured forth, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rosa Parks must have been turning in their graves.

The absurdity soon spread thar saile. Anglo-Irish opiner and Sunday Independent columnist Dr. Ruth Dudley Edwards, in a bizarre contortion on July 12 - "At least Jackson never inspired young boys to go out and kill" - managed to find opportunity in the surrealism to ambush Mr. King and by implication a wide swathe of the Irish-American community.

It seems that Irish Americans, and Mr. King in particular, can get no quarter. If Irish Americans fail to progress with the peace process, we are bloodthirsty luddites who have thrown in our lot with the Continuity and Real IRA. If we do evolve with events, we are hypocrites.

"[W]ith 9/11, all had changed utterly ... he [Peter King] was now one of George Bush's most loyal fans ... he cooled too on Irish Republicans ... staying away from his former buddies ... these days he's a law-and-orderer and keep America Safe campaigner."

There is no hypocrisy or incompatibly here. Mr. King has always been "a law-and-orderer and Keep America Safe Campaigner."

Irish Americans see no irreconcilability between their advocating of an Irish Nationalist agenda and the interests of the United States. The pursuit of the two is not mutually exclusive.

What Dr. Ruth and the Dublin 4 establishment continually fail to grasp is that Irish Americans are, first and foremost, well, Americans. Our first obligation is to the United States.

Mr. King did more than most to advance the cause of Irish nationalism. We suspect that, like the vast majority in the Nationalist Diaspora, he appreciates that the Good Friday Agreement offers the mechanism by which the ultimate resolution of the Irish Question can be achieved.

Ultimately, that resolution will have to be the work product of those from both traditions inhabiting the Irish island.

With the United States bearing the mother load in the war against radical Islam and our economy in a deep recession exacerbated by governmental corruption, negligence, and naiveté, Irish Americans have their own challenges.

Dr. Ruth really should appreciate that stirring up the past to score cheap points is hardly conducive to progress.

We can all point fingers. Mr. King may have empathized with the IRA but there were more than a few Unionist and conservative politicians who were hardly a stone's throw away from the purveyors of violence on the other side.

Her contrasting of Michael Jackson with Padraig Pearse was bizarre. Pearse may or may not have been homosexual and may or may not have had a penchant for little boys. However, he is the acknowledged father of an independent Irish State.

Jackson was simply a supremely talented entertainer, a self-centered individual, tainted by controversy, deviancy, and idiosyncrasy. Let alone fathering a country, Jackson could not even bring himself to father his own children.

Yes, Pearse did inspire "young boys" to fight for Irish independence. However, contemporaneously on the Western Front, the British senior officer class - not a few from Dr. Ruth's own Anglo-Irish stock - was ordering "young boys" over the top to kill and be slaughtered for King and Country. Context is everything.

Some years ago, while in the execution of professional responsibilities, we had the unique experience of being in Michael Jackson's company.

There we were, up close and personal, as they say. The Austrian "minder," the Macroom (Kilnagurteen) man, ourselves and the Prince of Pop himself, sitting in the corner of the small "hard room."

Trademark hat, sunglasses, white glove, and fully attired in costume - black sheets, anybody? - to boot.

So enamored did Mickeen become with the Kilnagurteen lad and so profusive was the latter in his hospitality that we had to restrain an buachaill o Maighcromtha from handing the house, lock, stock and barrel over to the Prince of Pop. Celebrity be damned! It was a business after all!

In our interaction, we found nothing disagreeable about the man. He was overly polite, almost in a childlike way.

However, we did get the sense of being in the presence of a very troubled soul, an individual screaming out for genuine friendship from us common folk. To pluck from Peter King's verbiage, "weird" was definitely an adjective that came to mind. May Mick Jackson rest in peace. Go dtuga Dia suaimhneas do a h-anam buartha.

Patrick Hurley blogs at: www.irish-american-news-opinion.blogspot.com