I’m recently back from the US, where I was promoting my book Martin McGuinness:The Man I Knew (no home is complete without one). That, and singing the praises of my six-week-old grandson to anyone who would listen. Like many Irish people, I have a love-hate relationship with the US.
Some of the hate targets are obvious. For example many people in the US are absurdly fat. Granted, some of this is the result of medical conditions. But a lot are not. Mind you, we’re doing our level best to catch up with them, but they’ve got a good lead, brought on mainly by the serving of HUGE portions in restaurants.
And the people tend to have some daft but unshakeable views. One Irish-American at a gig I did expressed his indignation and even rage that Gerry Adams should have been complimentary about that ghastly tyrant who’d oppressed his people for so long, Fidel Castro.
And the US has got itself a president who wears absurdly obvious make-up and never tires of telling people how good he is. He may not be a fascist leader but he certainly sounds and looks like one –the strutting gait, the curled lip, the ranting speeches.
But it’d be wrong to think that this presidency is the exception in every respect. Bill Clinton took time out from campaigning in 1992 to show solidarity with those who were executing what was probably a mentally-defective man. And then there was that Monica Lewinsky thing. Barack Obama, as far as we know, wasn’t a philanderer, but he did preside over ten times as many drone airstrikes in his first year of office than George W Bush did during his whole time in office. These were in Somalia, Yemen and Pakistan, where the number of civilians killed was between 300 and 800. George W Bush initiated the war on Afghanistan, the result of which was some 31,000 deaths. And the war protestors in the 1960s didn’t chant “Hey, hey/LBJ/How any babies did you kill today?” to improve their elocution.
That’s just some of the bad stuff about the US and its leaders. The good stuff? The weather; the sense of open space; the generosity of the people and their optimism.
New Yorkers, contrary to popular opinion, are a courteous lot. They may have rats living in the subway, but if you’re trying to go down the subway steps with a case or a baby-buggy, you’re sure to get at least three offers of help. In the subway, the intercom urges people to “stand up and do the right thing” by giving their seat to pregnant women, people with disabilities, the old – and they do. Plus they’re friendly: you’ll get their life-story if you’re remotely receptive to that kind of thing.
Like the man on the R train who told me he was Italian, he’d been a carpenter, was retired, used to drink with Tyrone men (“Hard to understand – those guys talk so quick!”)
Or the Hong Kong man whose niece and nephew studied at Queen’s University in Belfast, and became proficient in English with a heavy Belfast brogue. He spent ten minutes going out of his way to make sure we got the right train.
Or the man from the north of Ireland who manages two magnificent blocks of apartments just off Broadway. Film companies sometimes shoot there – he has a photograph of himself with Robert De Niro. The apartments start at around $2 million. He lives in one for free.
Or the self-effacing youngish man whose parents were from Moville and who offers us a lift back to Brooklyn after an event at the American-Irish Historical Society. It turns out he’s a cardiologist and that his car has gull-wing doors. Not a De Lorean, just an all-electric Tesla that can self-drive. He lives upstate and has five kids. When he tells people that last fact, they say “What’s wrong – you guys not get TV reception up there?”
Or the woman beside me on the Skytrain . She’s from Austin, Texas and she’s been to Ireland several times: Kerry,Galway, the Aran Islands. Her husband used to travel with her, but no more. He’s a police officer. You can’t take a gun on a plane, she explains, and without a gun he feels naked. One time she took him on the New York subway without his gun and afterwards he told her “Don’t you ever do that to me again!” I tell her statistics show New York city has undergone a major change and has now got one of the lowest crime rates in the US. The first time I say that she stares at me, when I repeat it she smiles. “You don’t believe me?” I ask. “ Nope” she says.
Only in America.
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