What ‘Traditional America’ Is Bill O’Reilly Talking About?

11/13/2012

Did these signs exist? The point is, there are always newcomers

As the holder of an Irish passport (as well as my American passport), I think I can safely ask just exactly what Bill O’Reilly is trying to say.

O’Reilly tried to wax profound last week after President Obama was re-elected with help from African-American and Hispanic votes. (One perky guest on MSNBC suggested a new motto for the Republican party: “Hello, Brown People.”)

On Election night, O’Reilly said: “It’s a changing country, the demographics are changing. It’s not a traditional America anymore, and there are 50 percent of the voting public who want stuff. They want things. And who is going to give them things? President Obama.”

O’Reilly added, “The white establishment is now the minority.”

In noting the shift in America, O’Reilly seemed to be harking back to some golden era in America when the Cabots and the Lodges sat around the Boston Common and sang Kumbaya with the Flynns and, dare I say it, the O’Reillys.

Was there ever a time in America when we were all just one happy family? After the settlers took the country away from the native Americans, that is. There were always newcomers to the land and the voting booths. They were noticeable by their clothes and their accents, if not their color.

It isn’t quite clear to me whether some of my Irish ancestors (on my maternal grandmother’s side) ever ran into help-wanted signs that said NINA – No Irish Need Apply. Did those signs actually exist in large numbers in the 19th Century, as some people claim? In a way, it doesn’t matter. There are always newcomers, always outsiders. And it’s funny how new people want things, like work and housing and education and a chance to vote, without public officials in Ohio and Florida making it tough for them.

O’Reilly seemed downright lachrymose when confronting the new reality – that voters of color now tilt the majority and helped re-elect a candidate who, despite being Kenyan and Muslim and, worst of all, an introvert, just might be the smartest person in the political room. The country keeps changing. Always did.

Ed Martin

11/14/2012 03:31:06 am

Yes they did exist. Peggy's grandad, Ned Monaghan, came at twelve from County Fermanagh by himself. Eventually worked as a meter reader for the Boston area Gas company, He saved enough money to try to buy a house in Wellesley Hills but they would not sell to Irish/catholic, either one. A Protestant friend at the Gas company bought the house and resold it to them, where they lived out their lives. PS. We went to Ireland and after almost 100 years of not knowing of each other, Peggy found her family. I can still here the cry, "Sweet Jasus" from cousin Sheilah!

George Vecsey

11/14/2012 04:29:49 am

I'm sure the conditions existed. Your story is very American. The essay I linked on my site says it is hard to find examples of the sign itself. The sign I used is a contemporary sign, found on-line. The essay:
http://claver.gprep.org/fac/sjochs/irish.htm

11/15/2012 03:00:34 pm

you are right George, I jumped past the literal to the feeling, which was not your point.

John McDermott

11/14/2012 05:21:05 am

They didn't need to exist where I grew up. You just knew you weren't particularly welcome in certain circles. And I'll just bet that our President, like many before him, can trace at least some part of his family tree back to Ireland. President O'Bama...I like the sound of that.

Alan Rubin link

11/14/2012 09:28:10 am

Everyone should have some Irish in them. It is a rich and diverse culture.

My top reincarnation priority is to return as an "Irish Story Teller".

Ed Martin

11/14/2012 01:59:31 pm

Everyone should have some Jewish in them. It is a humane and diverse culture. Actually those of from the NYC area, have absorbed some of each, if not genetically, then through the air.

Brian Savin

11/14/2012 02:55:24 pm

My late business partner was born in Paris and remained a true blue "Frenchman" all his life, but married an American doctor, who is black, and much preferred living in the United States because the country inspired him in ways that invigorated him. He thought the U.S. (he hated it when anyone called our country "America" -- insult to the the Canadians and Latins in his mind) was very special because we were different. What made us different in his mind was that we were multi-cultural and actually a melting pot. That is why things happened here, innovative thinking, that just couldn't happen in Europe. And he would point to examples. I'll give one:

Alain was an economist, and he was amazed that markets worked here better than in Europe. One reason is that we invented the antitrust laws that worked to keep our markets working efficiently for the general welfare while in Europe monopolies and cartels were not just tolerated but encouraged as good social conduct by the industrial class (until recently). He thought our multiculturalism had brought with it very different ways of looking at problems by many different people and that prevented everyone thinking alike. He just loved it!

There was one thing I hated about Alain, I confess. The same thing I hate about you, now, George. Whenever he and I arrived at airport customs around the world, Alain would check the lines and pull out the passport for the shortest line. You Citizens of the World deserve some punishment in the afterlife. Or maybe I'll even write to Bill O'Reilly about it.

George Vecsey

11/15/2012 11:52:07 am

Thanks, guys. That was the general experience.
The link in my essay raises some interesting questions about NINA signs.
Brian, you are right. Nothing like arriving anywhere in the EU and just walking through. GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES
Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

What ‘Traditional America’ Is Bill O’Reilly Talking About?

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