Father Sean McManus, that perennial thorn in the side of everything
British, reads the Style section of the Washington Post, writes Basil Miller.
This nugget was revealed in a frenzied press release dated August
23 which McManus sent to news directors from his office on Capitol Hill.
The president of the lrish National Caucus was complaining about
a throwaway remark by Tony Blankley, press secretary to House Speaker Newt
Gingrich, while telling Post writer Roxanne Roberts about his summer reading.
Blankley, something of an intellectual, took three books to the beach:
The Long Fuse: How England
Lost the American Colonies, 1760-1785, a political biography
of Oliver Cromwell, and a collection of the Lord Protector's speeches.
Though Blankley described the first book as "a sad story", it was
not this unorthodox view of American independence that stirred
up McManus. No, it was Blankley's response to the Cromwell bio.
"He's an intriguing character," said Gingrich's chief spin doctor,
"a visionary misunderstood both in his time and afterword." Clearly
for a spin doctor Blankley wasn't having a care for the
Irish vote.
"Speaker must disavow racist views of press secretary," screamed
the headline on the incendiary press release: "Blankley must apologize."
The missive wasn't above a touch of racism itself, referring to "the
English-born Blankley" endorsing "hatred and anti Irish-Catholic bigotry".
It strikes AOB that Blankley's reaction was like Gerry Adams' crack
about the IRA, "they haven't gone away, you know". As our own editor put
it last week, that was waht lawyers call 'a statement of fact'. And
whatever else Oliver Cromwell may have been, surely, as upturner of the English
monarchy -- no friend of the Irish -- in favour of what he and his
supporters called the 'common weal', he was indeed a "visionary"?
Poor Blankley. He found out that reading at the beach can
be dangerous to your health. "Cromwell is the greatest hate figure
in Irish history," riposted McManus. "Cromwell is to the Irish what
Hitler is to the Jews . . . racist, ruthless, and brutally anti-Catholic.
. ."
"It's appalling that the press secretary of the Speaker would endorse
such hatred . . . I call on Gingrich to disavow [and] . . . demand
that Blankley apologize to Irish-Americans."
Phew! Hitler! In the pantheon of English injustice in
Ireland, one might have thought that, purely arithmetically, the late Victoria
would have rated closer to Hitler. On a scale of one to 10, in comparison
to her depredationsthe Lord Protector's would score somewhere between zero
and 0.5. Yet, she can be dug up and exhibited in UCC with impunity,
even in this the 150th anniversary year of the Great Famine.
Well, in the way of these things, McManus got what he wanted. The
next day, the hapless English-born Blankley ate that quintessential American
product, humble pie. In a grovelling letter to McManus, Blankley said:
"I appreciated the opportunity . . . to learn from you the deep and
justifiable revulsion that Irish people feel at the mention of the name Cromwell.
"I now understand that my brief comments . . . were offensive to
you and the Irish people because I failed to make clear my utter rejection
of Cromwell's Irish war and policies.
"I . . . apologize to both you and, through you, to the Irish
people."
Nice to know the 'Irish people' have a spiritual and historiographical
champion in Washington, D.C. Down with revisionism! But Cromwell,
nonetheless, was the leader who came closest to making England a republic
-- didn't you know that, Father?
Interviews about summer reading will never be the
same.
