A Cinderella Story

With the weather being so bad, we couldn’t take them out for a nice walk down Broadway or out to Castle Island here in South Boston. And you can only read to them for so long.

Thank God for Cinderella because repeated viewings of Dora the Explorer were driving me crazy. I don’t want to sound anti-children’s programming, because I certainly am not. I actually studied educational television for children at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, so I fully understand the value of quality children’s programming.

What drew me to this new Cinderella story recently was how it reminded me of the history of Irish immigrants in America. At first, both Cinderella and Irish immigrants were placed in unwelcoming and unloving homes, badly mistreated and overworked. Yet, neither lost their inner beauty and passion for life.

Cinderella’s fairy godmother watched over her as she labored as a domestic wearing tattered clothes. But, finally, her goodness wins out and she is given an opportunity to show her beauty and grace.

Like the Irish of years back, she proves herself through radiance and charm and is discovered by a handsome prince. My granddaughter dressed up in her Cinderella dress, complete with faux glass slippers, and while holding her magic wand said to me, “Papa, Cinderella lived happily ever after.”

That’s the way the wonderful family tale ends, but that’s not exactly the way it is for many immigrants in America anymore.

They no longer have a fairy godmother to rely on, whether it is elected officials, the media or the church to provide support when badly needed. Cinderella without a kind and gentle godmother to help pave the way, or a ball or other public event to help her demonstrate her talents, would not have resulted in the memorable and delightful story ending that we all know today.

Similarly, young Irish men and women in this country today are without the support and hope to achieve the true American dream.

We need to begin to help showcase the many talents that the Irish and other immigrants can offer to our nation. We need to allow them the same opportunity that Cinderella had to show their fine character. We need to begin working hard on immigration reform, for the common good in America.

Raymond Flynn

Boston, Massachusetts

(Flynn is the former mayor of Boston and U.S. ambassador to the Vatican. He has been chosen to serve as the grand marshal of the 2007 St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York.)

A New Anthem

MAYBE the Irish Rugby Football Union should pass on the two national anthems (and the “Ireland’s Call” dirge?) at this weekend’s rugby match between England and Ireland at Croke Park in Dublin.

Instead, they should invite Johnny Rotten to perform the Sex Pistols’ “God Save the Queen,” whose last verse is:

“God save the Queen, we mean it man,There is no future in England’s dreaming,

No future for you, no future for me, No future, no future, for you.”

Johnny Rotten, real name John Lydon, whose parents were both Irish, has explained the lyrics as follows, “You don’t write a song like ‘God Save the Queen’ because you hate the English race. You write a song like that because you love them, and you’re sick of seeing them mistreated.”

Dr. Sean Marlow

Dublin, Ireland

Hillary Won’t Save Us

WHEN I read Dessie Coogan’s letter “Hillary Will Save Us” in the February 7-13 issue, I couldn’t help thinking – didn’t we get saved already by a Clinton? Didn’t Bill’s presidency make us twice blessed? Remember how we got two for one, Bill and Hillary?

Mr. Coogan obviously, in his great concern for us, doesn’t think that was enough. We need another Clinton twice-blessed occasion except this time it will be in reverse, Hillary and Bill.

I think there comes a time in the life of a nation to get serious and realize that soap operas are fiction, not fact.

Like Paris Hilton, Hillary is famous for being famous, not from accomplishments. They say she is where she is by riding on Bill’s coattails. That is not correct. She was up on his back.

Is she not the same Clinton woman (Bill had many) who had to be corralled during his campaigns because of foot and mouth disease? Did she not crash and burn in her only attempt at an accomplishment, national health coverage?

Echoing this same political philosophy now, she wants to nationalize the oil industry. Communism is not yet dead.

She made a solemn promise to the people of western New York State she would resurrect their economy if elected senator, and pledged to all New Yorkers that she only wanted to be their senator.

After six years we find that Governor EIiot Spitzer, newly elected, has as his first declared priority the boosting of western New York’s dire economy, and Hillary is off and running for the presidency.

Using and abusing is alive and well in Hillary’s world. Rest assured that if elected president there are agendas she will not fail on, even though she is deceitfully not mentioning them now expansion of the abortion industry to include getting your teenage daughter aborted without your consent, legalization of partial birth abortion, support for homosexual activists, radical environmentalists and the Godless secular Hollywood value system.

No, she will not be addressing the Right to Life group on their annual trip to D.C. After all, she is not a divider.

As a flower child of the radical sixties, an age of self-indulgence, anti-authority, wanton promiscuity and Godlessness, she, like the Leopard, hasn’t lost her spots. Carefully camouflaged now, they will emerge if she is elected.

Consider one of Hillary’s oxymorons abortion must be free for all but rare. This kind of expression is designed to deceive, not to inform.

There is an ultimate salvation that supercedes all others the salvation of one’s soul. As a promoter and legalizer of the culture of death, Hillary’s type of salvation is something I can do without.

Wake up America!

John Rogers Voorhees, New Jersey

Too Many People

WHILE the debate on peak oil, carbon emissions and climate change hots up, I am amazed that one of the main underlying causes is ignored — over-population.

In recent years static populations in developed countries have masked an explosion in the overall world population. In Jesus’s time the world population was about 300 million and by the year 1800 had grown to around one billion. By 1960 it had trebled to three billion people and then, incredibly, doubled to six billion by the year 2000. It is projected to reach nine billion by 2040.

The planet simply cannot sustain this population, particularly when all nine billion will understandably aspire to a ”first world” lifestyle.

For the past 200 years we’ve been breeding and acting like locusts. We procreate to fill every available space and we devour all available resources as if there is no tomorrow.

Tackling this problem raises the most difficult moral, ethical and sociological issues. But if we ignore it, the consequences for humankind are unimaginable.

Dick Keane Glenageary, Co. Dublin
Ireland