APPARENTLY my recent criticisms of Georgina Brennan’s columns hit a raw nerve, producing a vituperative reply from one reader in the last issue of the Irish Voice.

The writer portrayed me in her letter titled “Georgina the Great” in very uncivil and unparliamentary-like language. Being equated to a piece of phallic material, albeit superior, causes me some cognitive dissonance.

However, when it comes to criticisms or compliments, it is wise to consider the nature of their source. When the letter is replete with slang and vulgar phrases, the writer wouldn’t rank very highly in common decency, much less in self-respect.

Perhaps the writer is intellectually challenged or just simply a philistine. Her uncouth words speak for themselves.

Get used to seeing my name in the letters page as it has been appearing quite frequently over the years. It might help to improve your vocabulary and hence write acceptable prose.

As to how I spend my spare time, it is frankly none of your business.

Frank Brady
Yonkers, New York

THERE has been concern among Irish Americans that the people in Ireland were becoming increasingly anti-American. I think that concern is overblown a bit.

My own experience is that there is an anti-Bush feeling in Ireland, but it is not anti-American. Big difference.

However, a fascinating piece of apparent anti-Americanism has emerged from Belfast, all the more interesting in that it is not new but 30 years old. And it comes from our old friends in British Intelligence.

The just released 1976 British Cabinet Papers — published after the 30-year confidentiality rule — reveal that the SDLP had conflicted feelings about America. Yet it was America that helped to make party leader John Hume an international statesman.

The Irish News, Saturday, December 30, 2006, in a story headlined “Fitt shunned dinner over SAS gaffe” says, “The former SDLP leader, Gerry Fitt who died in 2005 failed to turn up at a dinner party at Stormont 30 years ago because he was embarrassed over a highly public gaffe concerning the SAS. Mr. Hume said that the real reason for Mr. Fitt’s absence from the dinner was that he was licking his wounds after his statement comparing the SAS to the CIA. This had brought ridicule from outside down upon the party and many of their own supporters had been complaining that they could not take this statement seriously.”

My, my, Saint John apologizing for his leader comparing the “bad” CIA to the “good” SAS!

Now, I’m no fan of the CIA, despite Robert de Niro’s new, excellent movie, The Good Shepherd, filmed in part right next door to my old office at 413 Capital Street SE.

However, I find it extraordinary that Hume would make excuses for the notorious SAS that assassinated Catholics, carried out state-sanctioned acts of terrorism and colluded with Protestant death squads.

If that’s not anti-Americanism, what is?

Father Sean McManus
President,
Irish National Caucus
Washington, D.C.

I’VE been thinking a lot about the editorial “How Green Is Our Lobby?” in the December 13-19 issue. As founder of the Irish Lobby for Immigration Reform, Irish Voice publisher Niall O’Dowd has much to be proud of in the relatively quick success of his efforts to put ILIR on the map as an immigrant rights advocacy organization.

Yet, I am very troubled by his analysis of what that success means, the tenor of its struggle and its relationship to other people’s struggle for those same rights that Mr. O’Dowd is not shy of saying is just and more than deserving.

Mr. O’Dowd puts forth the very weak innuendo that The New York Times is politically correct, while Mr. Dowd’s ILIR is prudently self-centered and aware that its ability to sup with the powerful, the Clintons, Schumer, McCain, Kennedy, et al is witness to its wisdom, its abilities, its cogent strategies, its evaluation of political power.

They don’t need a lecture from the Times, Mr. O’Dowd avers, as our connections as charming Irishmen show our well-known effectiveness being Irish and not Latino.

It is, I believe, extremely wrong-headed. It’s not such a coup to get a U.S. senator to speak triumphantly before a home town crowd of cheering supporters, with its predictably flattering photo-ops.

Let’s look at the numbers for a second. Some 43.5 million residents are Latino, the highest number of immigrants in the U.S., while 34 million Americans say they are of Irish ancestry.

Of illegal immigrants here, about 50,000 are Irish, about 10 million are Latino. That is why it is myopic and delusional to believe the Irish can sneak in to secure a visa or green card over the right wing’s venom, hatred and contempt for Latinos, even if some Irishmen forget that they were one time considered not to be “white.”

Sadly it appears some believe standing in solidarity with Latinos would only be a burden. The fact is that Mexican Americans have a very long history of indigenous habitation in the lower 49 that some Irish overlook in their judgment of how they are uniquely tied into the history of the U.S.

While it is true that the Irish have an unique history, it is again true that the Latinos of what is now the southwest of the U.S. were Mexican in their own lands and not Mexican American as were the always hyphenated Irish, strangers in a strange land.

Simply, there will be no reformation of immigration policy if the Irish were to be legalized and the Latinos were to be denied those same legal rights.

Let’s be clear, we are not fighting for our own narrow, chauvinistic privilege, but for the human and civil rights of all our fellow immigrants from the Caribbean or Latin America or Asia or Africa.

Thus for an organization that claims it is fighting for reform of immigration policy, it ill behooves some in ILIR to intimate the Irish have a better chance of becoming legal without the Mexicans.

Nor should the Irish ever be prepared to move ahead of the line and the devil take the hindmost. Remember the Irish were once considered to be as non-white as are Latinos today.

Know Nothings whipped up a national, florid hate against the drunken, slothful, baby-making, always singing, always screwing, always dancing Irish papist dipsomaniacs just as fiercely as the open disdain for the Latino today.

Sadly, even among some Irish that is apparent when it is argued and not so subtly proposed that “you get yours and we’ll get ours.”

A house divided against itself cannot stand, as one American famously put it.

Michael Ó’Neill
Wainscott, New York

Niall O’Dowd responds:

Where exactly has ILIR stated that they wish to be considered above or instead of any other ethnic group? What they have stated is the evident truth that since the 1965 immigration reform act the Irish have found it virtually impossible to emigrate to the U.S. legally.

The main point they have made is that in fiscal year 2005, the last year of statistics available, out of almost 1.2 million green cards issued the Irish received 2,000. Meanwhile, Irish citizens who emigrate here do in the main illegally. If we were to wait for any other lobby to point that out we would be waiting a very long time indeed.

The fact is that all the immigrant lobby groups are on the same page in seeking passage of the Kennedy/McCain bill which will again be taken up by the Senate this year. Each group has its own strength and weaknesses to bring to the battle for passage of that bill.

I would castigate the Asian, Polish, Italian and other communities for their seeming inertia in not joining this fight, even with huge numbers of undocumented, rather than the Latino or anyone else who is engaged. It may be politically incorrect to point out who is doing the heavy lifting and who is not, but that does not make it untrue.

It is very easy to pass politically correct judgments sitting in the bleachers. Watching thousands of undocumented Irish as they struggle to live in America informs a very different set of priorities.