Divine Right To Slash and Burn

Sometimes it seems that things are so carved in stone there’s not a prayer of changing them. Though only enacted in 2003 the Bush Tax Cuts are a case in point.

Don’t worry I’m not proposing a raise in taxes. But I am broaching something even more sacrosanct – the idea that a commercial corporation’s only responsibility is to turn a profit.

Geez, exclaims your man up in Pearl River, the next thing he’ll be doing is criticizing Jeremy Lin!

Not really but with profits at an all time high it’s easy forget that corporations do not have a divine right to slash and burn regardless of workers or community.

Travel the roads of America, however, and the scales will soon fall from your eyes at the sight of abandoned factories nestled amidst once bustling neighborhoods. And everywhere workers jittery about their prospects while their unions bend backwards in an effort to save jobs.

What you won’t see is any meaningful effort from large corporations to give back to their communities despite robust balance sheets and unusually large cash reserves.

Why should they? Their god-assumed sole goal is to make a buck.

Take Apple, for instance. The company delivers astounding profits yet never seems to have given a thought to manufacturing its products totally in the US; why bother when big savings can be made by subcontracting to Chinese firms. The irony is that Apple microprocessors are manufactured in Texas, sent to China where they are placed in iPads then shipped back to the U.S.

No doubt it’s more expensive to assemble the iPad in Austin so why not turn a quick buck and to hell with American manufacturing jobs – the portals of entry to the middle class.

But what a battering even those vanishing portals have taken. The $28 per hour UAW contract has been “shaved” to $14. That’s less than $30K per annum - hardly enough to buy the white picket fence let alone the house.

What’s the solution? Well, social media brought the almighty Rush Limbaugh to his knees over his deplorable “Slutgate.” With almost 100 billion dollars in cash reserves I don’t have the least doubt that Apple would “sacrifice” a billion or two for job creation to prevent a community boycott. The same pressure could be applied to every company with the good fortune to be ensconced in the S&P index.

A politician unbeholden to donors and lobbyists wouldn’t hurt either. Perhaps some pale imitation of a Teddy Roosevelt who in similar circumstances challenged the right of the robber barons to ride herd over America workers?

How about Governor Romney? Forget about it! His sole solution is the George Bush vanishing card trick – cut taxes, balloon deficits! Besides, he comes from a venture capitalist background where the standard remedy when acquiring ailing companies is to cut jobs. Imagine letting him loose on an ailing country?

Contrast this approach with how Germany dealt with the recent recession. Its unemployment figures remained remarkably low because many corporations instituted a three-day week rather than cast off their workers like old dishrags.

Nor are German firms unaware of their social responsibility; most maintain an apprenticeship system in association with government, colleges and trade unions that trains young workers while providing them with entry level jobs.

You think President Obama might consider introducing such a practical solution? No way, he’d be accused of being Karl Marx’s bastard son and born in Berlin to boot!

Besides, he’ll have his hands full shaking the corporate money tree in his re-election bid. That in itself should lead to a strategic watering down of the Dodd-Frank Act passed to regulate the financial entities that brought the country to the brink of disaster.

Still, half a loaf or no loaf at all – and there is a slim chance that if he wins in November he just might use his bully pulpit to call out the corporations who continue to view the US as a cash cow instead of the home of a proud people whose only aspiration is an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work.

Unlucky Green

He was the most famous Irishman of his era and yet he abhorred the color green, considered it the height of bad luck, and blanched at the many gifts and awards presented to him in the national color.

One of the shrewdest political tacticians, his parliamentary battles with Prime Minister William Gladstone were legendary, and yet he was hopelessly superstitious.

A belief in predestination led him into divorce court thereby sacrificing the last chance to gain a united Ireland with a minimum of violence.

Charles Stewart Parnell is no less a paradox now than he was as uncrowned King of Ireland between 1880 and 1891. Mysterious and aloof he rarely entertained questions let alone criticisms.

Though we can now rake through the minutiae of his life, a veil of secrecy and claustrophobia still shrouds the man.

Sound a bit like Sherlock Holmes? Well, the analogy is not far off the mark as the fictional Holmes and the larger-than-life Parnell strode the same foggy Victorian streets of London when a right to privacy was still accepted.

Still, how Mister Parnell could live for almost a decade and raise two children with Catherine O’Shea without the knowledge of his party or the press is hard to fathom in our own media-intrusive age.

And yes, her name was Catherine. In a successful effort to demean her, Tim Healy, one of Parnell’s bitterest opponents, coined “Kitty” – then a codeword for prostitute.

But even Healy had no idea of the depth of attachment of Parnell for Mrs. O’Shea until her husband sued for divorce on Christmas Eve 1889. Nor indeed did anyone suspect that Mrs. O’Shea’s two girls were Parnell’s children.

Ireland was “shook” by the news of the divorce proceedings. In typical fashion, Parnell ignored both the consternation and ramifications. He was the king, what would be would be. Religion and money, however, always trump destiny.

Parnell had aligned himself with Gladstone’s Liberals in a “union of hearts” that promised Home Rule for Ireland. However, the god-fearing Methodist wing of the Liberal Party could have no dealings with an adulterer. The pragmatic Gladstone let it be known that the Irish would need a new leader.

This split the Home Rule Party; many stood with Parnell because of loyalty and a rejection of English interference, but a majority sided with Healy and the Catholic Church, long suspicious of a charismatic Irish Protestant leader. The battle was fierce, sectarian and bitterly personal – many families split on the matter.

And money? Well, back in 1880 when Parnell was first introduced to Catherine O’Shea she was to be the benefactor of an old Aunt’s huge estate. Catherine and her husband, Capt. William O’Shea, had more or less gone their separate ways on the understanding that on the old lady’s demise Capt. Willie would “be well looked after.” Alas, the aunt lived on “to spite them all.”

Shortly after the old lady’s expiration, O’Shea arrived at Catherine’s house expecting that a financial deal would finally be hammered out.

Parnell refused to sully his hands with such negotiations, while Catherine was “short” with Willie who stormed out and filed for divorce.

Parnell achieved one goal – he finally married the woman he loved. However, since his girls were born while Catherine was married to Willie, the good captain threatened to use them in all future legal negotiations.

Undaunted, Parnell fought on believing that “no matter what the Irish will not desert me.” In torrential rain he delivered an election speech at Creggs on the Galway-Roscommon border, took ill and died barely a week later in Catherine’s arms.

Though they had deserted him in large numbers, the Irish people were stunned. Over 200,000 attended his funeral in Dublin.

Catherine was not amongst them. Overcome, she sank into a lonely life hallucinating that Parnell appeared to her late at night.

Ireland never achieved unified Home Rule. Would things have been different had there been another outcome to the negotiations between Catherine and Willie O’Shea on that awful night of Dec. 23rd, 1889?

Perhaps, Parnell was right, green was an unlucky color for him - and Ireland.

Saint Patrick's Day Message

On one day a year, they congregated outside St. Patrick's Cathedral off Prince Street in New York City and marched in celebration. To some of these immigrant Irish and their American born children it was a religious occasion, but to most the gathering was an affirmation of their right, not only to survive but to thrive in their adopted country.

That's what I sense on St. Patrick's Day - an echo from a time when the Irish were despised outsiders. And that's why I go along with the raucous energy, the excitement and even the green beer, the plastic shamrocks and the ubiquitous leprechaun.

I didn't always feel that way. When I arrived from Ireland, these manifestations of Irish-America were at best embarrassing. Back home, our own celebrations were rigid and religious; we did sport actual sprigs of shamrock but there was no beer, green or otherwise. The Parade up Fifth Avenue and the ensuing bacchanal seemed downright pagan by comparison.

I had other immigrant battles of my own ahead. Black 47 was formed to create music that would reflect the complexity of immigrant and contemporary Irish-American life and to banish When Irish Eyes Are Smiling off to a well earned rest in the depths of Galway Bay.

This idea met with not a little resistance in the north Bronx and the south sides of Boston and Chicago; but when irate patrons would yell out in the middle of a reggae/reel "Why can't yez sing somethin' Irish?" I would return the compliment with, "I'm from Ireland, I wrote it! That makes it Irish!"

With time and familiarity, Irish-America came to accept and even treasure Black 47, probably more for our insistence that each generation bears responsibility for solving the political problems in the North of Ireland, than for recasting Danny Boy as a formidable gay construction worker.

I, in turn, learned to appreciate the traditions of the community I had joined along with the reasons for the ritualized celebration of our patron saint. And now on St. Patrick's Day, no matter what stage I'm on, mixed in with the swirl of guitars, horns, pipes and drums, I hear an old, but jarring, memory of a people rejoicing as they rose up from their knees.

Our battles, for the most part, have been won; indeed, one has to search an encyclopedia for mention of the Know-Nothing Party or various 19th Century nativist politicians and gangs. Anti-Irish sentiment, not to mention Anti-Catholicism is a thing of the past. Might it not be time then that our New York St. Patrick's Day Parade broadens its parameters to celebrate all Irishness no matter what religion (or lack thereof), sexuality or political conviction?

It's a broad step, I know. But with the makings of a just peace finally taking seed in the North of Ireland, might we not some day witness Peter Robinson, Martin McGuinness and various members of the Irish Gay community walk arm in arm up Fifth Avenue. Impossible? Perhaps, but I, for one, would have wagered heavily 20 years ago that the Sinn Fein party would never sit in a Northern Irish Parliament. Times change and with them tactics and even treasured principles!

Whatever about Parade pipe dreams, we still must honor the memory of those who paved the way for us. Part of that responsibility is that Irish-Americans should never forget the new immigrants from other lands, legal and otherwise. Many, like our forebears, are fleeing tyranny and are striving to feed and educate their families. It would be the ultimate irony if an Irish-American were to look down upon the least of them; for, in my mind anyway, there is no place in the Irish soul for racism, sectarianism, homophobia or even dumb old Archie Bunker type xenophobia.

I once heard Pete Hamill ask: "What does the Pakistani taxi driver say to his children when he gets home after 12 hours behind the wheel?" I can't answer for certain but I'll bet he echoes many of the sentiments of those Irish who gathered outside St. Patrick's Cathedral so many immigrant tears and years ago.

Blood

They stared down at us from the walls of musty parlors. Seven somber men, faces cased with conviction - the signatories of the 1916 Proclamation.

There was no escaping them as they glared off into a tomorrow forever anchored to the past. Few denigrated them for they were a breed apart – martyrs!

My father, a caustic merchant marine, said they were nuts! But he was a rarity.

Three of them were of importance to me: Seán MacDermott, James Connolly and Pádraig Pearse.

You could still hear echoes of Connolly down the laneways of Wexford for he’d led a great strike in 1912 that still polarized the town. I’d always wondered at his sudden conversion to Republicanism since he had often been scathing of “advanced” nationalism.

And then I stumbled upon a clue! On January 19th, 1916, Connolly had been “detained” by the Irish Republican Brotherhood; when released three days he said, “I’ve been through hell.” Nonetheless, the following Easter he and his Irish Citizen Army joined the IRB in the uprising.

No account has ever been given about the interrogation, probably because all the participants were executed by British firing squad but Sean MacDermott was a part of it.

The hard man of the IRB, ailing and partially crippled with polio, MacDermott was going to get his revolution come hell or high water. Charismatic, secretive and ruthless, you can trace his DNA down through Michael Collins to the revolutionaries of the recent “troubles.”

The enigmatic Pearse was involved too. A poet, barrister, educator, mother’s boy, he was shy and a trifle vain but possessed a will of iron. This first president of the Republic was a saint-like figure in Ireland until the mid-1960’s when he became a butt of jokes to a generation eager to discard the past and embrace the modern world.

What a dream trio for a playwright! Lock them in a room with the clock ticking. Connolly was plotting his own insurrection, thereby threatening the IRB’s planned uprising on Easter Sunday. Who would blink first?

I wrote Blood almost twenty years ago; it received a number of good outings and I moved on to something else.

Some months back when another New York production was proposed I reopened the play. So many things had changed: peace had come “dropping slow” to the North. Playwrights are hardly impervious to the whirligig of time either.

When I finished a new draft, to my surprise, the play had become as much about MacDermott as Connolly. Stripped of the calcified sanctimoniousness, I was also finally able to see Pearse for what he was - a compelling, driven but ultimately strange man.

And how did these three icons look in the cool digital light of the 21st Century?

Very human but blazing with a craggy idealism almost too powerful for these pragmatic times; each had a goal and was willing to pay the ultimate price. Almost stranger - none of them seemed to have the least interest in materialism or financial wellbeing.

Why did they rise up in what now seems like a suicidal enterprise? Well, Connolly after two huge defeats in the Wexford and Dublin lockouts was determined that the Irish working class should not endure another generation of crushing poverty.

MacDermott, his own clock ticking, considered the Easter Uprising his last chance to make a stand against the inexorable Anglicization of Ireland.

And the genteel Pearse? His brand of Gaelic nationalism mystified even some of his IRB comrades, but like them all it cut him to the core that 100,000 Irishmen were spilling their blood for the British Empire in a catastrophic, meaningless European war.

During rehearsal I looked around at the cast and technical crew, all deeply affected by these three intense characters from a different time.

Ah yes, the theatre, one of the last bastions of idealism where faith and hope daily confront reality with little chance of gain, just as three very different men set out to change Ireland ninety-six years ago – and did.

(Blood by Larry Kirwan and Dancing At Lunacy by Seamus Scanlon will run through March at The Cell Theatre, 338 W. 23rd St. NYC www.thecelltheatre.org)

Sean MacBride

Ireland’s people of destiny tend to come in waves usually propelled by some great event or person.

Charles Stewart Parnell’s Home Rule Party was stacked with giants such as John Dillon, Timothy Healy and Michael Davitt, while the battle for independence served up a veritable constellation of outstanding individuals from James Connolly, Padraig Pearse and Countess Markievicz to Michael Collins, Rory O’Connor and Eamonn DeValera.

The pickings have been few of late, though it would be hard to ignore the disparate troika of Bernadette Devlin McAliskey, John Hume and Gerry Adams from the Northern conflict.

Oddly enough – and purely a dispassionate observation - all those mentioned benefited from a British education and lived in times or circumstances not dominated by the Catholic Church – hardly a ringing endorsement for the Irish republic.

Then there are those like Sean MacBride who seem to have fallen just short of their potential – at least on the national stage.

His pedigree was impeccable with parents the like of Easter Rising martyr, Major John MacBride, and Maud Gonne, muse and heart-scald to William Butler Yeats.

Born 1904 in Paris Sean spent his first fourteen years in France. In fact, because of his parents’ seismic marital problems he was not initially taught English, his mother reasoning that should the good major kidnap the boy they would be unable to converse.

A British firing squad rendered that problem moot; still, Sean MacBride always spoke with a pronounced French accent that caused no little consternation among his rural Irish followers.

In the eyes of his mother MacBride was always destined for greatness. Madam Gonne (less courteously known around Dublin as Maud “Half-Gone”), along with such tutors as Yeats and Ezra Pound, demanded much from the boy and treated him as an equal.

At seven he served mass for Pope Pius X. Barely ten he ably debated Pádraig Pearse and within a year was helping his mother care for injured soldiers on the Western Front.

Small wonder that he became a full member of the IRA and was throwing bombs at British patrols at age fifteen. By the time truce was declared in 1921, MacBride – still only seventeen - was renowned for his charisma, fearlessness, and ability to procure military supplies in Europe.

He was summoned to London by Michael Collins to act as his bodyguard during the Treaty negotiations. Like many he was flummoxed by Eamonn DeValera’s refusal to attend.

MacBride greatly admired Collins but felt there was far too much drinking going on amongst the Sinn Fein/IRA contingent in London.

As Collins’ emissary he took the boat-train to Dublin every Friday and was back in London for Monday morning with DeValera’s instructions. He always felt that had the negotiators returned to Dublin on weekends Ireland would have been spared a civil war.

MacBride took the Republican side in the split. Captured, he shared a cell with Rory O’Connor and was about to be shot along with the IRA Chief of Staff but was reprieved at the last moment.

The execution without trial by the Free State government of 78 Republican prisoners led him to an uncompromising belief in due process and would later inspire him to help create Amnesty International. He was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for mobilizing “the conscience of the world in the fight against injustice.”

Before then however he founded the radical Clann na Poblachta party and in 1948 was appointed Minister of External Affairs in the first coalition government; unfortunately he aligned himself with Archbishop McQuaid against his colleague Dr. Noel Browne in the Mother and Child Health controversy that led to the collapse of the coalition in 1951.

That disaster scuttled his ambition of ever becoming Taoiseach, a post for which he felt he was indubitably suited.

He is best known in the US for his championship of the MacBride Principles that finally helped sweep away religious discrimination in the Northern Ireland workforce.

Yet, despite all his accolades and achievements, Sean MacBride’s final portraits seem tinged with sadness. Despite an epic and colorful life Maud Gonne’s son never quite achieved his anointed destiny and Ireland is the poorer for it.

Individual Versus Community

The Republican primary debates have been an opportunity to catch a glimpse of the soul of America or, some might argue, the lack thereof.

The topsy-turvy nature of the race demonstrates that democracy is alive; though, with the unbridled spending now allowed by Political Action Committees, it may be less than kicking.

And yet it wasn’t until President Obama’s State of the Union speech coincided with the debates in Florida that we were able to clearly identify the two contrasting fountainheads of American political life – the individual and community.

For sure, one can’t survive without the other but the degree of emphasis placed on either defines an era and its people.

The Gaelic clan system favored community and both saved and nourished the Irish when they landed on the often hostile shores of North America.

Forget about the melting pot! The Irish clung together in their neighborhoods, voted for their own and within a couple of generations were running the great cities of the Eastern seaboard.

Eventually they left for the suburbs, loosened their ironclad Democratic affiliation and began to take sides in the great battle between individual and community that’s been fought since the birth of this republic.

The real problem in the US right now is not that we differ on the proper balance between the individual and community but that we are unable to conduct a dialogue on the matter.

We have allowed ourselves to be railroaded by political partisanship. For me, the alarm bells sounded with the refusal of both parties to deal with the suggestions made by the Bowles-Simpson National Committee on Fiscal Responsibility Reform.

God knows the committee’s report was far from perfect but it could have served as a platform for debate.

It would have meant Republicans swallowing increased taxes, reduced defense spending, and the possibility of legislative success for President Obama. Democrats, for their part, would have had to antagonize unions by cutting both the federal workforce along with entitlements, and raising the Social Security retirement age.

Unsurprisingly, neither side had the stomach for confronting their bases with a presidential election in the offing.

But it’s the sheer inability to even have a discussion that’s frightening. Depending on one’s political point of view, society has little other function but to deliver profit - or the US is fast becoming a European style welfare state.

All that being said, whether you favor the Tea Party, the Occupy Wall Street Movement - or curse the day you heard of both - there is an important question that begs asking: does our present corporate system bear any responsibility to the nation’s citizens?

In other words, if more bucks are to be made overseas is that where US factories should be built?

Apple claims that it set up its manufacturing plants in China because there are not enough trained engineers available in the US. If that’s the case then why shouldn’t Apple spend some of its vast profits paying for US citizens to attain engineering degrees?

To balance that form of community-minded thinking, I have a friend – an unabashed member of the 1% - who feels that young people should be encouraged to save and invest for their own medical care and retirement, that they would do a far better job than any government.

By the way, this citizen is by no means heartless and feels that the government should operate welfare programs for the poor and those unable to look after themselves.

However, he considers the mere idea of Apple having any responsibility to the American public to be Soviet claptrap.

And yet with social mobility at its most static in generations and financial inequality growing by the minute the current national balance between the individual and community is obviously off-kilter.

When full employment returns – as it will someday – lower paid service jobs will have replaced many manufacturing and white-collar positions leading to increased social tension and inequity.

Isn’t it about time we stepped back and took a look at the forest rather than bumping our heads off partisan trees; we might discover a way out of the morass we are surely heading into.

The perils of digitalia

What do you think of Facebook? Does it light your candle? On the one hand you’ll never be lonely again – at least digitally? On the other, you could end up with so many friends a little solitary in Sing-Sing might seem enticing.

I, myself, have way more than 10,000 amigos between Black 47, Celtic Crush, and sundry other pursuits – for all the good it does me. I even have “pirate” sites where mysterious benefactors cavalierly bestow my friendship to every Tom, Dick and Harry.

And yet I can’t say I feel the least bit more loved, cherished or understood; in fact, I would hide in doorways from many digital friends were I lucky enough to see them coming.

My first experience with social digitalia was Myspace - once the hottest thing since fried bread, now akin to admitting you once wore bellbottoms.

My record company of the time figured it was time for me to “digitally reach out” and a young eager executive hooked me up. To my amazed delight Andrea Corr was the first person to solicit my friendship.

For some years previous I had harbored a secret desire to be transferred from Black 47 to The Corrs in exchange for the good-looking brother. I could add a little edge to the sisters and Black 47 would acquire a handsome, non-political Irishman. Not to mention I would end up lip to lip on the microphone with the gorgeous Andrea.

The young eager executive however soon burst this romantic notion by tartly noting that Andrea more than likely didn’t know me from a hole in the wall – that her flirty approach was all the doing of her digital marketing manager.

Such is life in the fast lane! Still, I liked MySpace. You could choose a wide variety of friends and feature16 of them on your page. At one point I had James Connolly, Michael Collins and The Blessed Virgin as my top three; though, I worried about claiming familiarity with Jesus’ mom for fear she’d run into my own mother in heaven and complain about the cheek of me.

I’m glad Facebook doesn’t have a spot for one’s 16 favorite people – think of the bruised feelings. In fact this whole brave new world of communication is fraught with peril and pitfalls.

An agent told me he once lost his most valued client, gaining grey hairs into the bargain, by hitting “reply all” when giving his honest assessment of the sanity and sexual preferences of said client.

My own problems have more to do with the ubiquitous cell-phone. What a godsend though to babblers whose most frequent inquiry/demand/accusation appears to be – “where are you?”

Now lest you are unaware, New York City’s violent lunatics have one trait in common – they either talk to themselves or some higher being. Unfortunately, with so much inane cell phone chatter it’s hard to identify the real deal anymore.

One such character was conversing with Jesus in Lower Manhattan recently though I mistakenly assumed that he was just another deluded yuppie given to swearing through some invisible wireless device. I should have noticed that he reverently cocked both eye and ear while deciphering the Good Lord’s reply.

Without missing a beat in his tête-à-tête with the Almighty he unleashed a left hook that would have sent John Duddy running for the hills. As it whistled past the tip of my nose he yelled, “Hallelujah!” in a cackle not unlike Ron Paul celebrating the demise of the Fed. Luckily his fist’s trajectory through thin air threw him off balance and I was able to beat a tactical retreat.

Had I been digitally sensitive I would have immediately alerted my more than 10,000 friends about my brush with eternity. Instead, relief and the need of comforting sent me scurrying to the nearest pub where I breathlessly related my tale to the sympathetic bartender who backed up my pint with a much-appreciated shot of Black Bushmills.

Now that’s what I call a real friend. Yes, indeed, the bird in the hand is worth the more than10,000 in the digital bush!