An American is going around Ireland for the next few days banging on about his Irish great-great-great grandfather to anyone who will listen.
And for once we’re only delighted.
At least he won’t be downing Guinness before it has settled and declaring that it “tastes like the old country” because the 46th President of the United States is a non-drinker. We must be thankful for small mercies where we can.
President Joe Biden is headed for Northern Ireland where he will be doing proper work by marking the 25th Anniversary of the Belfast Agreement with a key speech at Ulster University.
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He will also meet up with ‘that other lad’ Rishi Sunak.
Sunak might be the prime minister of one of the United States’s biggest military allies but we know Biden’s just doing it out of obligation, like popping in to your cranky old great-aunt when you’re in town to avoid upsetting Gran.
Then he’s back to us, the fun crowd where we’re throwing him a “homecoming” in a place his relatives left in 1850.
This is from us, a nation where the children of Irish who migrated to England in the 1950s are considered “Plastic Paddies”.
But when you’re a president of the United States having Irish grandparents three whole “greats” back is enough to be considered a true son of Éire.
In fairness, it’s a narrative he pushes himself. He reads Yeats and Heaney. He talks vaguely about “the Irish of” various things when summarising his life approach. There is a clear connection between the country his forebears emigrated from and his identity today.
However it would be unwise to suggest the President does this entirely to get on our good side on the off chance we’ll let him cut the line at the Book of Kells. In America, like other democracies in former British colonies, being “Irish” is shorthand for other identities like “Catholic” or “working-class” – key demographic dog whistles for groups who traditionally supported certain parties such as the Democrats in the US or Labour in Australia.
It stands for certain values – justice for the underdog, anti-elitism, care for the vulnerable and family-first sensibilities. Whether they deliver on them is another thing but it’s much easier to talk about how your relatives left Ireland and overcame hardship in a new country than it is to say make higher education free or healthcare universal.
Sometimes invoking ‘Irishness’ in these contexts is a way of showing people ‘you’re on their side’ without committing too much to what side that actually is.
But fair play to President Joe Biden all the same for returning to Ballina, where he visited before the call-up for the big job.
It is commendable what his trip will do for the town, particularly its discount variety stores selling miniature American flags.
In fairness Biden isn’t the type of distant cousin to turn up once, take a photo and then ignore your Facebook request. He invited his cousins the Blewitts over to the White House for St Patrick’s Day when some of us wouldn’t even invite our siblings in case they make a show of us in front of everyone at dinner. He looks like the type of relative who says: “the next time you’re over, pop in” and actually means it.
He’s set to visit Dundalk and Carlingford where another one of his ancestors is from. The international press described his ancestors being forced off the “wild”, “mountainous” and “windswept peninsula”, which I think is quite an unfair description of a town that has won a Bronze Tidy Towns medal, is a premier hen party destination and has one of the best big Tescos in the country close by.
Maybe we’re coming on too strong as we always do when American presidents visit? Are we grabbing our older cousin’s hand when they come over to show him our best Lego in the hope he sees we are cool enough to hang out with?
Some of us still have JFK portraits up on the walls. We made an absolute show out of ourselves when Obama came and we built him a fitting commemorative petrol station and combination SuperMacs/Papa Johns.
Hopefully this time we’ll play a bit harder to get. After all, we have a mutually beneficial arrangement with the US. We’re equals surely. They get to land military craft at Shannon and we land them with J1 students.
They have a strategic base in the North Atlantic on a neutral country’s soil and we get somewhere to send our young people to annoy someone else for the summer. It’s a win-win. Surely cousin Joey can put them up in his big white gaff, there’s loads of room and he seems sound.