Dear America: Please Get Over Ireland and Italy Already

I am Euromuttboy but the last name's Irish and there's plenty of Irish and Scottish blood on both sides of the family. Don't fetishize it but don't mind it -- there's also French, Italian, German, English...

who goes 'don't fuck wit me - I'm one quarter french'?

The Quebecois, les Metis and ME, an Acadian.

(a) One St. Patrick's Day -- I was standing in a bar with some guy I'd just met, and he went on for about ten minutes about how he'd recently been to Ireland and it was a powerful experience to see "his people" but now it was just so sad and heartbreaking to see what's happened to that beautiful old Irish culture. In the interest of actual two-way conversation I said something like "Yeah, dude, I know how you feel, my family's from Ethiopia," to which he actually went "No no no, but this is Ireland, you know," etc. etc.

(b) Same thing except substitute drunk girl at party going sloppily on and on about how she was going to Italy and would really, you know, "connect" with her history and her culture &c. After ten minutes cue me: "Yeah, it really is a pretty interesting experience" and so on, and her basically like the Irish guy.

I hated the Irish guy more, though. Pretend we're just talking about Ireland, then, fine.

My mom reminds us occasionally of our scotch-irish blood, but that was several generations ago, so...

your ancestors were heavy drinkers?

Remember that sketch from "The State", where everyone was a stereotype - they had a Jew, an Italian, etc. Then in one sketch, they had an Irish person with red hair who wore an Aran sweater and a Notre Dame hat.

scotch=liquor.

But never-the-less, alcoholism is in the family tree.

Top 10 Prize Cultural Ties for Americans

1. Irish
2. Native American
3. Italian
4. Latino (for not-so-Latinos only)
5. "African"

Also per Tracer and Kerry: really, why Irish? To be completely honest, from what I've seen among college-aged males Irish affiliation serves primarily as an excuse for binge drinking. I see the obvious arguments that there was a ton of Irish immigration, and Irish culture is "close" enough to the prevailing English-derived culture of America, and the Irish were easy to quickly consider "white," but still -- it seems to me that it needs some unpacking. Also: if not for the World Wars, would Germany be a big one here, too? (It only is in certain parts of the Midwest, from what I can tell.)

Pete Baran to thread!

Nabisco what did yr Irish guy think was so bad about 'what had happened' to Ireland?

It's not really even an immigrant thing so much as a metropolis-regions thing (partly anyway) - in Britain for instance the nation urbanised rapidly over relatively few generations so there's this need to overstate or fake a felt connection to 'the countryside' (Robin C to thread too!) and this is a more extreme cousin of the same imagined-utopia thing.

Unless I'm misreading, nabisco isn't talking about anyone who's resisted the melting pot -- he's talking about the people whose grandparents and great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents melted in ages ago -- people who were raised without any ethnic identity beyond "American" -- but who have suddenly decided "Fuck it, I'm Irish," because they saw a particularly moving Liam Neeson movie. Or because the IRA makes them sad. Or they look good in green.

If he's NOT talking about those folks ... well, I am. And fuck em :)

From what I gathered, he wasn't even talking about Northern Ireland troubles but about the death of some imaginary rural-Ireland peasant idyll, the collapse of the economic viability of the picturesque farming hamlet and whatever hardships and dislocations have stemmed from that. (Those poor Irish with their economic modernization.) I wasn't completely clear on what he meant, but whatever he was talking about it was apparently worse than anything that's ever gone on in Ethiopia.

Noodles: no, they're not.

Mary: I am thinking of those cultural ties that people, all other things being equal, foreground in their senses of identity. I think if you take a given youngish American person who is 1/4 Irish, 1/4 Danish, 1/4 Swedish, and 1/4 Dutch, chances are that that Irish portion will have been teased out to occupy much more of their self-identification that any of the others. The same is true of Native American ancestry to a massive extent: people who are 7/8 everything in Europe ever and 1/8 Cherokee will inflate that last bit to create a sense of their own exceptionalism, even if they've never met or associated with a full-on Cherokee in their lives. I hate to generalize but I do think this is a trend that tends to be broadly true of significant groups of people.

Nick Tosches actually gives a good sense of what it meant to grow up "Italian" when he did.

In Chicago it STILL means something to be Irish, at least in most areas of the city. The police force is, for example, something like 60% irish as is the city government and the democratic machine is probably somewhat more.

And there's a smaller trend of people attempting to reclaim Jewish heritage they might not actually have, in Texas and the Southwest -- descendents of the Spanish colonists who, because an unknown number of those colonists were secretly Jewish, have started to celebrate Jewish traditions in addition to the Christian ones they've been brought up with for the last four hundred years. There's a term for it I'm not remembering because it was only brought up in passing in my Spanish Colonial history course -- maybe someone else will know what I'm talking about, though.

I grew up in New Hampshire, which is about as whitebread as you can get, and you run into the I'm-Irish-because-my-great-grandmother's-maiden-name-was-Fitzhugh thing a lot: my brother did a long stint in the New Hampshire prison system, where there are so few black inmates that although the gangs still split along ethnic lines, there are only two types: the Puerto Rican gangs and the Irish gangs. A large number of the guys in the "Irish gangs" have Polish, French, and German names.

Then why aren't "African" and "Hispanic/Latino" tied for number one on your list, followed by "Asian"?

Some guy asked me for money in some sort of slang and I said, "No I don't have anything. Sorry."

"So that's how it is with you WHITE GUYS, is it?" he asks.

I look at him and he is a white guy covered with acne. White, not tan.

I say somewhat snottily, "And YOU'RE not white?!"

To which he responds, "No, I'm Sicilian!"

And I thought that everyone must just be begging to be a minority these days. Since when are Sicilians not white? Also, since his skin was pretty much my skin color, how did he know I wasn't Sicilian, too?

What's mysterious about getting a reputation for kicking ass when you run Chicago? I love the Italian mob trade names: The Outfit (Chicago), The Five Families (NY).

Ethnicities to watch: the Russians, and the Hong Kong Chinese. The Hong Kong organizations are responsible for most of the heroin in New York, I forget what they're called, "tongs" or something.

There are some extremely dark-skinned Sicilians. It is difficult to say whether they are people of color or not.

Hee hee hee... I'm sorry, I don't mean to poke fun or anything, but these types of awkward juxtapositions are the most entertaining part of debates on racial politics for me.

"African" is surely up there, probably rivalling Irish, though it's just more densely concentrated in a smaller number of people. I don't think Latino really goes so far up, because the number of people who claim it completely out of proportion to their actually being it is actually smallish. (Though they're out there.) But yeah, granted, "African" is just as seriously fetishized as Irish, probably even more so. Africans are the Irish of Africa.

Is it just a massive sense of loss? Everyone in this country feels that his or her lineage necessarily gave something up to be here, and that that thing can possibly be recovered, trained back into existence?

I do!

On the other hand, I am related to Dan Ryan, of Dan Ryan Expressway fame. Not that this amounts to squat or makes me immune to traffic tickets.

Explain this :)

The funny bit is that I shouldn't complain about this, because there's a reasonable chance that I'll have grandchildren or great-grandchildren walking around someday saying "Yeah, you know I'm part Ethiopian, I'm totally going to go there someday and really, you know, connect."

This runs so counter to my experience that my mind is boggling.

This makes no sense nabisco.

They're the inhabitants of africa. By definition even.

mainly at berkely they tried to assimilate or sometimes to identify with black culture (done hilarously in "How High").

& nabisco I totally disagree that black americans fetishize africa for similar reasons that white ones do ireland.

I don't think that it's a sense of loss -- I'm not sure if people think that that their lineage gave something up to be here -- I think it's just a sense of not having anything to identify with, which could very loosely be construed as loss...

Sterling: what distinctions would you make between the two? I only think of them as vaguely similar in that both have an American person with no particular sense of a heritage actively striving to reincorporate one. The terms of it, obviously, are very different, but I don't see those root impulses as being vastly removed from one another.

What am I doing on a debate thread?

Mary: I don't know but please stay -- your posts are all actually sort of making me feel like a jerk, which means you must be making points I need to deal with.

nbsco: on that level, sure, but the REASONS for that striving are completely different -- back to africa tended to develop in periods where assimilation was out of the question -- and the time-sense of that striving is different -- like there's an identification with africa TODAY, but a sense of a "lost" Ireland -- and the LOCUS of that striving is different -- like Mary's story about it getting tied more to an indigenous immigrant experience -- and finally the MEANING of that striving is different -- it represents a political outlook on the black side and an anti-political (culture as a REJECTION of issues of immediate community of interest) outlook on the white one.

All as massive generalizations of course.

I'd like to be Polish. I think it sounds exotic. Well, the part of Germany my father's ancestors were from is now Poland, so, almost...

Nabisco: your posts are all actually sort of making me feel like a jerk, which means you must be making points I need to deal with.

No! every single point you have made on this thread makes 100% sense to me (albeit as a foreigner, which perhaps on an americentric thread isnt the back up you need. heh!)

The premise of post-Columbian America is immigration. There is no more reasoned basis for drawing inferences of similarity between the experiences of particular groups of immigrants than there is for generalizing about the attitudes of the majority itself because there is no fixed majority at any given time. This was the important lesson of "Gangs of New York."

This may not be the case with the specified nationalities, though. My mother's family was from Armenia, and I think if they were from Ireland or Italy or Sweden or Mexico I'd feel the same way. I don't know why there's a specific fascination with Ireland and Italy, it's just easier to sell t-shirts because the stereotype is that they party a lot.

worst things about being of Polish descent -- (a) the food (borscht and kielbasa) and the folk-music (polka) suck. (b) when yer ethnicity is not ignored, it's slandered.

Thanks Nitsuh -- I hope it doesn't seem like I'm all over you all of a sudden -- I just ended up here due to a dearth of superficial threads today.

Actually when I was in college I was much more anti-- the type of thing you are talking about.

(Mary also gets love for using an approximated N-dash!)

I want some Polish food RIGHT NOW.

I will spend the time at each bar building up "nations" of empty beverage containers on the bar tables and then fleeing the evil dictator commie wait staff when they try to impose their "Checkist" culture on me, to seek hope anew in a brave new bar. I hope I wake up at a sewing machine in NoLiTa, they have the cutest stuff down there!

What will everyone else do?

why thank you. i can confirm that it is irish, but i also use the rather unique "one l" spelling of the name.

Is there a liberal need to identify with a minority? The fact that I can might explain why I no longer feel guilty about anything.

someone mentioned the Scotch/Scots-Irish... I gather this is an ethnic group known only in North America. I'm not entirely clear whether they were ethnically cleansed from these islands at some point in the past, or whether it's just another name for the descendants of Scottish planters in Ulster who then decided that they'd rather go to the Americas.

I think she was making a point about just how stupid it all is...*sigh*

The east-coast hardcore scene also seems sort of irish-identified; so the boys get to do their beatdowns while the girls get cool looking tattoos -- everyone's a winner! Italians of course have their gangsters and Rocky to look up to.

Everlast is a perfect example of the male, euro-american personality crisis. Didn't he start out as some sort of Rockyesque Italian boxer character, then he became Irish, then he became muslim, then he became country?

I think all these guys are just trying to keep their women in the family.

I won't make assumptions about where Kris is from (burnt once not twice) but is it safe to assume that Asia in America and Asia in UK is two very different things?

In America, what's seen as being so good about being Irish? A friend who went to Australia said that playing up Irishness is a great way to score, everyone loves someone who uses "Tis" and talks about the poetry of the landscape.

Not to mention its organization of my grammar.

yeah, obviously.

I'd be curious as to what extent Australians and New Zealanders are into having ethnic backgrounds. Can anyone advise?

dv, the "irish bar" is a fixture of ANY town, at least on the east coast. it's cultural shorthand for something american at this point.

Sure, only I would have thought anyone going so far as to embroider "I Love Sweden" all over the place might also have confirmed the colour scheme of the Swedish flag before commencing interior decoration.

I love ethnic humor. What's the punchline?

My (English) parents emigrated to Dunedin in the 1970's and encountered plenty of residual animosity towards the sassernachs.

(Frank gets at the other thing that bothers me about the culture-borrowing -- that what's bothered tends to be stuff about food, folklore, manner, visual culture, and stereotype, but not necessarily so much about actual hard "culture." I'm sure for many those first things are a gateway to hard culture, but it's the dabblers and dress-up artists we're picking on here, right?)

So it's bonding but in a particularized or generalized way at any particular time. I love diversity, yes (I have no choice about it) but I would say it's more fun to trade stories with "otherly" ethnicized friends than just all sitting around agreeing that "Yes, I find that when my overseas relatives visit from the homeland, they behave graciously, after their own fashion, although they occasionally betray their foreign origins." Some people might say "yes, I find that I have no humorous stories about foreign relatives because they all secured passage on the Mayflower." It's all good. I would say that what Dan and nabisco are trying to articulate is actually an "American" trait if there are any.

Alex, what are you doing here and will you please put nabisco back.

I will subdivide until I get to the level of individual people and then I will probably stop.

What, to prove he's Irish?

a Transiti-ylvanian?

I shall attend this planned FAP by representing my culture proudly, namely that of Geek.

When I was in New York last year I almost walked out of a bar which proudly displayed a signed picture of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness. And I've always been more understanding of the Catholic argument than the Protestant. But Americans don't CARE - supporting the IRA is like having a poster of Che Guevara on their walls but not having a clue about what he did, like buying a Niggas with Attitude album when you're (gasp) white.

Incidentally, some Northern Italians refer to Sicilians as Marocchini (Moroccans), if that gives you an idea.

I wish I had never heard of Bennigans, lucky man...

I have to agree. Most of the people who hang around those faux-irish pubs are absolute cretins anyway, they're certainly not representative of the American attitude toward the IRA.

Mostly, though, migration is too recent to get the false connection to the “homeland”. When your grandparents don’t speak English, and you speak Arabic/Italian/Greek etc at home, then the former culture’s pretty close. There’s more a celebration of migrant culture than old world culture, if that makes sense. The experiences of the Lebanese and Italians in Australia are often closer than the experiences of the Lebanese Australians and their cousins in Lebanon.

By the way, this is my first post. I’ve lurked for a while. Hi.

Someday I will scan in my photo of this place.

I think the idea of a sense of loss is strongest. Perhaps the fact that most of America is paved over with WalMarts and Chili's makes people yearn for a collective identity that's more unique than the Awesome Blossom. Can you blame 'em?

My "ethnic" identity is very important to me even though it only comes from one parent. I think it's also tied up in a sense of place-like, saying to understand the Irish idealization thing you really need to go to Boston. Well I'd say the Irish/Italian thing is pretty small here. I really don't *know* any Irish/Italian Texan families. Most people have some but I don't think any are as close as 3rd or 4th generation even.

Here, b/c the land that is now Texas was once Mexico, and Mexicans are mutts themsevles (Indians and Europeans) identifying with Mexican culture is very important and culturally predominant. For me, I've had to dig a bit. My Mexican father grew up in Chicago and was actually rather ashamed of his heritage, never taught me Spanish, etc. I've tried to take this back. I look at it as a way of understanding my present and this world around me even more, not just a way of reliving a disconnected past.

It's just folk tales, and I think Americans are basically very interested in geneology - their own and each others'. I'm mostly Scots-Irish but the real impact I got from my ancestry showed up in the kitchen in the form of Swedish, Polish and French food, and in the half-French Bohemianism of my granny.

Living in London as an American with an 'obviously' Irish surname has made me cautious of discussing regional politics with people I don't know well.

wow, you do have roots in lots of places. etc. : /

Another thing I've noticed is that Jews of my mother's generation (born in the 30s–50s, second or third generation immigrants) were often given very non-Jewish names, like Diane, Marlene, Edward, etc. while many Jews of my generation have names straight from the Old Testament, or even Ashkenazi names like Meier, etc. Something to do with the anxiety of assimilation I suppose as noted upthread.

Also, I decree that any future Chicago FAP will have to include a visit to the Red Apple on Milwaukee Blvd., where we can stuff our faces full of kielbasa and potatoe pancakes while we continue this debate. (They also serve bottles of some impronouncable, but very tasty, Polish beer.)

I also like telling stories about people in my family that make them more quintessentially, cinematically American to people in my neighbourhood.

(Oh Amateurist, what about those sick chili dogs with every single available relish?)

Irish pubs -- I assume if I am at a pub in Ireland I'm all right.

A girl at my school had to elope because her boyfriend's family and her's were from warring vilages in Greece. Cultural detritus is bad.

"Grace" is popular for Korean-American girls because the previous generation fetishized America at a time when Grace Kelly was a popular actress (if by "fetishized," you include "were happy to be liberated by").

My brother's friend calls Bul-go-gi "Bull-dog-gy." See, we laugh about everything. :)

woohoo B.Rad!

Anyway, we're all African.

(& hi, fidelma!)

Now THAT'S a spicy meataball, eh?

I am very much in favor of Felicity's approach to ethnic difference and history, and I feel that way largely because what she's describing strikes me as the post-immigration experience of actually Seeing Things As They Are: like yeah culture exists, and it's fun and interesting, and certain elements of it can be cause for concern but most of it, from the standpoint of anyone who's in the least stradding two of them, is just harmlessly funny. I could go on for hours about hilarious shit Ethiopians do, and I'd hope that pretty much anyone could do this with whatever culture they come from. My complaint in starting this thread -- which I've been overstating a bit, but I'm glad I did because this thread is turning out really nicely -- is with those people who really stretch to create that culture when it's not really How Things Are for them. I invoked Momus earlier but the more I think about it I don't entirely include him: he's pretty up-front about just being really into Japanese culture, and doesn't seem to try and pinpoint some genetic directive for it or pull any cred out of it.

Actually! That's another of the big reasons the whole fetishizing thing bugs me, because it seems to say that if one is however much genetically, say, Irish, then one should naturally involve oneself in Irish culture. Whereas this was precisely the issue I spent a lot of my youth arguing with my family about: just because I'm genetically Ethiopian I didn't see any huge reason to be any more involved with other Ethiopians than with, say, Cambodians or Indians or Swedes. So maybe I should be happy about the utterly non-Irish people who fetishize Ireland (although I do wish at least some of them would pick some other culture, any other damn culture, to be interested in).

Anyway back to what Sam said, which I think is important: why do so many Americans have a sense of our culture as a non-culture? I mean, I understand why -- it is new, it lacks the deep history of Old World cultures -- but on some level I look forward to a future where Americans can cope better with the culture of their own invention and actually engage with it as an actual culture instead of just something to be invoked when engaged in political or military action.

It's not so much that I'm always pro-assimilation, but actively trying to disassimilate seems a little silly and self-important to me. Sometimes I just want to say: you're American, deal with it. It doesn't make you non-special, and it doesn't particularly make you "interesting" to cobble together some flimsy story about how your great-great-grandfather came from Ireland and that's why your alcoholism is actually quaint and lovable. (No really, I've heard this.) And it just seems so damned ahistorical so much of the time, as evidenced by the faint laughter of actual Irish people.

have any Americans who don't live near or in major cities responded? Is any of this true in suburbs or rural America?

I live in what passes for a major city now (New Orleans), but at the time I was seeing the "kiss me, I'm Irish" thing, I was in southern New Hampshire, a little over an hour outside of Boston. Southern NH is a weird place: it's largely "immigrants" from other parts of the country who came in when Digital, Wang, Lockheed-Martin, etc., put plants in to avoid the taxes in other states and take advantage of the available land and proximity to Boston. So not only isn't there much in the way of ethnocentric communities (there are some German communities upstate, and you still find remnants of the old French-Canadian ghettos here and there), you don't even really have a whole lot of "regional culture" beyond the basic New Englandiness of postcards, apple orchards, and the abomination of the lobster roll.

I suspect that's one reason I don't have much of a New England accent (beyond saying "wicked" a lot and having to remind myself that a milkshake isn't a milkshake) -- my parents weren't from there, and neither were any of my friends' parents (literally, all of my closest friends' parents had moved there from other states).

Anyway, point being, like I was saying above: these folks weren't, as far as I can tell, reclaiming their Irish heritage, i.e. a set of traditions and culture specific to their family which had been watered-down through assimilation, so much as they were adopting a generic, stereotypical Irishness which revolved around Gaelic, vilifying the British, the Druids, and pretty much everything this side of Lucky Charms. (And it all picked up speed when House of Pain hit the radio.)

But much of the rest of this thread suggests that never would've happened in southern NH if it hadn't been happening in the rest of the country.

Since I do live in New Orleans now, I'll point out that the whole issue of ... what should we call it, white ethnic identity? ... is a different can of worms down here. I think I'd have to live here much longer to be able to talk about it with anything resembling understanding.

(And when I was a kid, if you just said "shake," you meant something from McDonald's, which I mention to keep this on topic and point out the green shakes you can get to celebrate St Patrick's Day!)

Also on the asian thing: at berekely asians did hang together and stuff, but they very much didn't identify with "asian" culture -- no dragon posters on walls or canto-pop cds or whatever mainly.

I see those chili dogs and raise you meatballs swimming in pork gravy, and fried gizzards, and chocolate pudding for dessert.

We need a cultural superpower to eclipse us so we can notice our own circumstances. Maybe this Irish stuff is exactly the answer: once we're all reading Memoirs of Horrible Irish Childhoods Volumes 842-850, Faulkner and Twain will start looking like something to cling to!

Anyway, personally I have only occasionally felt any desire to establish an "ethnic" identity for myself, perhaps because there is no there there---b/c my "roots" are in prewar Jewish life in E. Europe, there is no "homeland" to look to, only a history. I've often been somewhat repulsed by those who aggressively assert their Jewishness by aping the hackneyed cliches of Jewish life, so I can see a parallel w/what nabisco is complaining about. But still in moments I feel the lack he alludes to, so I understand the phenomenon.

it's both a blessing and a curse. it's a blessing because you're more tabula rasa, you don't have the ethnic identikit that certain other white ethnic groups have or always feel the need to be "polish" or call attention to yerself (unless yer being slandered for it). but it's also a curse, because Polish-Americans are not represented as proportionally as they could be -- and as a result, their interests aren't taken too seriously.

Nevertheless to be able to claim a small degree of exoticism is what it is about for me. To excuse away a degree of ability to drink, a liking for Gin and a certain sullen stoicism.

I didn't know that many people who claimed to be Italian or Irish, but I did grow up in one of the densest Dutch - Xian reformed areas of the US! My one Sicilian friend takes great offense at being called Italian!

When my brother describes his current girlfriend he has to say, "I'm dating an Italian - no - like actually from Italy."

Chicagoans ought to check out Hegewisch, the East Side, and the Illiana / Calumet Region, where the Poles are more "assimilated" and visible in politics, business and community affairs.

Hegewisch guy says, "Read it? I dated his sister!"

BUT in a certain way, I don't want to begrudge him his FUN. Or some kind of sense of BELONGING. I don't want to psychologize my dad too much here, but I'm resolutely American and have a huge reservoir of (pop)cult objects and ideas that I feel at home in and that animate my life. He's found his. I just wish he could see how plastic and American his need to plumb the depths of his Hibernian soul is, to make Irishness his THING.

The IRA gets most of its funding from the US; the mere fact that bars such as this one exist shows there is at best a tolerance and at worst a glorification of such things among certain people. I am sad that Americans had to deal with terrorism on their own turf before some of the more bigoted, pointless ones got a picture of how loathsome it is.

Mary: March 17.

The whole terror and violence thing is not news to many American immigrants -- all my ancestors dodged bullets, literally, to get here.

Sorry if my "because the IRA makes them sad" comment sounded dismissive, Mark, cause it's not how I meant it -- and it wasn't meant to necessarily imply that these borrowed-heritage-Irish folks are anti-IRA, either, but whether they're for it or against it (I've met both), "sad" seems to sum up how they feel. I'm deliberately understating cause I was being dismissive of their feelings: it has never come across to me as genuine sympathy for or outrage at either side, but simply a way to lend drama to one's life by associating oneself with an "exciting" ethnicity.

(And of course, I'm not suggesting Americans shouldn't have any feelings about the IRA, or aren't entitled to them -- I have family in Belfast, so I heard a lot of debate about the IRA from people who'd lived in Ireland long before I was hearing it in the college cafeteria, which might be why I have so little patience for what I see as jaded kids trying to snort an emotional high off of someone else's tragedy.)

Marc C, am I wrong cause it really sounds like you are actually glad that America got its lesson on terrorism.

Oh, and I am Danish, Scottish, and either Mexican or Native American or some blending thereof (my great-grandmother had a little affair and my paternal grandmother was the result - the great-grandmother never settled on who it was that she slept with - the story changed based on how much alcohol she had consumed and who was present to listen o the story).

What's the Commitments quote? "I'm black and I'm proud"? Yeah. That was how it looked in high school, but that could've just been in response to House of Pain, too.

... not that I'm suggesting HoP were a bunch of actual badasses ...

I *do* think a number of (though not, I'm sure, a majority of) Americans, from its leaders downwards, did not have a well developed sense of the emotional impact of terrorist activity before September 11th, and I was conjecturing this may now have changed. This, I think, may be a good thing.

Tep, thanks for the explanation. I guess in my ire I didn't really try and understand what you were saying.

What I do apologise for are my insensitive comments about moving onto Al-Qaeda in my first post. It was unnecessary and spiteful, although it was purely an outburst caused by the anger I was feeling once again.

I'm of Italian origin. Perhaps I should have just concentrated on that side of things :)

I would say that the Oklahoma Bombing (1994?) was the US's real first-hand taste of large-scale terrorism. They had to retrofit all the federal buildings and tightened up a lot of security measures.

Have they rebuilt the Pentagon yet?

I have a hard time asserting what other individals think, let alone a majority, for reasons I explained upthread. At least this is true for me, I shouldn't speak for others.

And yes, they have rebuilt the Pentagon, though I'm not sure if everything is back to normal in that particular section.

Yes.

I'm at least half-flippant (tiltant?) in most of my posts anyway, so it doesn't bother me to clarify when need be :)

"jersey shore" is an ethnicity in and of itself.
― Tad (llamasfur), Wednesday, February 5, 2003 3:34 AM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol six years before Snooki et al. prescient me.

fuhgeddaboutit

This is interesting for someone like me who is 2nd generation Irish but who looks more Jewish/Arabic in appearance.

"DNA analysis of the Neolithic woman from Ballynahatty, near Belfast, reveals that she was most similar to modern people from Spain and Sardinia. But her ancestors ultimately came to Europe from the Middle East, where agriculture was invented.
The males from Rathlin Island, who lived not long after metallurgy was introduced, showed a different pattern to the Neolithic woman. A third of their ancestry came from ancient sources in the Pontic Steppe - a region now spread across Russia and Ukraine."

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-35179269

Not many Americans I know are all about bragging up their German ancestry. Hard to imagine why.

I'd read a few years ago that the main traces were back to modern day Turkey so its not hugely surprising xp