First Word: A True Friend of Ireland irishamerica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishamerica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
“Am I the first Scots-Irish person on your cover?” Senator John McCain asks.
“Yes. But it’ s all the same DNA.” He doesn’t seem to hear me. He’s busy being photographed by Kit DeFever.
I’m about to tell him about Scotland being the only place the Irish ever colonized – the Scotti being Gaelic speakers from Ireland who settled in Argyle – but I stop myself. I’ve noticed in the past that, for a Scot, the news that Scotland gets its name from the Irish “Scotti” is equivalent to an Irish-American hearing that Al Smith was German (and that’s a story for another issue).
When Barack Obama moved into the White House, many felt a sense of optimism despite the vast challenges facing America. Such feelings, naturally, recalled January of 1961 when, on a bright, frozen Washington morning, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was inaugurated, declaring that “the torch has been passed to a new generation – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage.”
It wasn’t just Kennedy’s speech, youth and good looks that gave people a reason to feel optimistic. It was also the undeniable history of the occasion. Kennedy was the descendant of an Irish Famine survivor and America’s first Catholic president.
Irish Eye on Hollywood: Netflix Buys The Irishman irishamerica.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from irishamerica.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Movie columnist Tom Deignan examines David Nasaw’s book The Patriarch: The Remarkable Life and Turbulent Times of Joseph P. Kennedy with an eye to Kennedy’s time in Hollywood.
The year was 1926, a year before Charles Lindbergh would make his heralded flight across the Atlantic. And so, when a 38-year-old Joseph P. Kennedy made his first trip to Hollywood, a train would have to do.
Kennedy’s grandparents, Patrick Kennedy and Bridget Murphy, had also traveled thousands of miles to chase a dream, from New Ross, Co. Wexford, to Boston. But they had traveled in dire conditions, at a time when treacherous vessels were called “coffin ships” and cholera was referred to by some in Boston as “the natural death of the Irish.”