The Rape of the Celtic Women

Judging by recent contributions from Frank Bruni and Joe Nocera, The New York Times has a stipulation in its employment contract that mandates stories where an Irish relative is the foil.

"My mother tells me that on the eve of her marriage to my [Italian] father, one of her [Irish] relatives pulled her aside and said, They’re not like us, you know.'”  -- Joe Nocera
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/05/opinion/joe-nocera-my-american-family.html

Joe wasn't entirely forthcoming here.  I can testify that the Irish and Italians are, in fact, different.  My Italian mother-in-law treats me like a king.  I love having her around.  She always takes my side in family disputes. I am waited on hand and foot.  My wife loves to cook for her husband although she seems to have been somewhat contaminated by American feminism, occasionally remonstrating that I should help with the housework.  My retort: "Your mother never said that to your father."  She remains mildly bitter about having to defer to her brothers and fetch water when they were too enthralled with watching the Three Stooges to get it themselves.  She's also bitter about knowing the Mass backwards and forwards in Latin and not being able to be an alter girl; and getting asked to write her brother's Columbus Day essay for the Boston diocese contest and not getting any credit for the winning essay.  She goes into a tizzy cleaning the house before her mother arrives.  What's the point, says I, as soon as she gets here she'll scrub and polish the place from bottom to top anyway, and when she's done she'll start all over again the next day.

It's a different story for a daughter-in-law.  Joining an Italian family meant being an Italian wife, learning to cook Italian, bearing children and waiting on the men.  My wife said she was a grown woman before she discovered her grandmothers weren't Italian (Spanish and Portuguese, in fact).  Her Irish sister-in-laws weren't about to buy into that, leading to years of empty seats at the Christmas dinner table  (more spaghetti with lobster sauce and cannoli for the rest of us).

While my wife was still in high school, her mother told her to learn to type.  She'd always be able to get a good job as a secretary.  Rebellion.  My wife refused to learn to type.  After Berkley and Yale, when she rose to a high level executive job, someone else did her typing.  Today she's a consultant with a disability since she now has trouble typing her own e-mails.   My mother-in-law's perspective wasn't a bad one, though.  She was a well paid legal secretary for Boston's wealthiest law firm.  It was a dream job... until one of the lawyers decided to be a woman and they told my mother-in-law, an old Italian lady, she'd have to share the restroom with a person who was still anatomically a man.  She just about had a heart attack.  The law firm offered her counselling to help her deal with the anxiety brought on by her prejudice.

There were other differences.  My wife's family consists of rock-ribbed Republicans while mine was and still is stalwart Wagner Democrats with brother Tim's Topeka Taxi Service driving Celtic Woman, Kathleen Gilligan Sebelius, all over Kansas during her campaign for governor.  Whenever my brother-in-law starts jawing about Roosevelt's Raw Deal, I love to point out that it was Wagner's New Deal as much as Roosevelt's and that my family (along with Farley and Flynn) gave America Wagner and Roosevelt.  Then I tell brother Paul that Wagner is the buddy my grandfather talked into running for the U.S. Senate.  You run and let Farley and the rest of us worry about getting you elected (as in you don't have a need to know, but we'll run a dry Republican against the wet incumbent in Republican primary and make sure the wet incumbent finds a job when he gets beat).

http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-smoke-filled-room.html

http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-aviator.html

As vexing as it was to set up an internet connection to air Kennedy-baiting Howie Carr for my mother-in-law during her Arizona visits,  I saw it as a small price to pay for spaghetti with lobster sauce, grandma's handmade raviolis and Uncle Joe's cannoli.   Forget the Mona Lisa.  The cannoli is my favorite Italian work of art.

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The alliance that gave us the culture we call Hispanic today began with Scipio before he was Africanus.  Hannibal, the Carthaginian, had the Romans on the ropes.  At Cannae (216 BC) he had destroyed their greatest army and along with it the best and brightest of Rome's best families.  Just as the Roman Senate was about to surrender, young Scipio and his friends stormed into the Senate and forced them to continue the war.   After his father and brother were killed in Spain, young Scipio was the only Roman left who would volunteer to lead the fight.  Arriving in Spain, his troops captured a beautiful young woman. 
 

Instead of accepting her as a prize of war, Scipio returned her unharmed to her fiancé, the Celtic chieftain Allucius.  This won Scipio the allegiance of Spain's Celts and meant defeat for Carthage as Scipio and the Celts defeated first Hannibal's brother in Spain and then Hannibal himself on the battlefield of Zama (202 BC) outside the walls of Carthage.

It wasn't long before the marriage between Italy and the Spanish Celts went up in smoke.  A long guerilla war humbled the Romans.  Another Scipio was sent to set things right.  He laid siege to Numantia (133 BC) and after a stubborn fight the Celts and their women committed suicide rather than submit to the Italians and slavery.


The Last Days of Numantia - Alejo Vera

Boadicea, Queen of the Iceni.



"Boadicea's husband Prasutagus was ruler of the Celtic Iceni tribe. He ruled as a nominally independent ally of Rome and left his kingdom jointly to his daughters and the Roman emperor in his will. However, when he died, his will was ignored and the kingdom was annexed as if conquered. Boadicea was flogged and her daughters raped by the Italians and Roman financiers called in their loans."

Boadicea led a great uprising against the Romans and almost drove them out of the British Isles, but was defeated at the Battle of Watling Street (61 AD) after the Romans rallied and sent in their legions of Anglo-German mercenaries.  Rather than accepting capture and submission to Rome Boadicea committed suicide.

My great Aunt Margaret, part of a clan of independent Celtic women, was more successful in her battles with the Romans.
http://holycross-and-clarencethomas.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-god-father-and-tom-dewey.html

The Death Penalty and Ethel Rosenberg

One day the subject of the death penalty came up at the breakfast table.  My father blurted out: "I'm against it.  There's no such thing as equal justice!"

The sphinx talks!  And the floodgates opened.  In his days as a lawyer he'd seen too many prosecutors railroad people.  Ethel Rosenberg!   I nearly fainted.  My father, the devout Catholic, who told me bedtime stories about his friend Jack Roth hunting down Rusky spies, is going to defend Ethel Rosenberg?   "Your Great-Aunt Jo was friends with Ethel Rosenberg."  Disbelief.   We're talking about the sweet old aunt who gave us boxes of chocolate chip cookies when we came to visit.  The woman ever present with Rosary beads in her hands.  The woman who religiously sent money to Catholic missionaries in the Philippines.  The Aunt Jo whose sister was a leader of the Silk Stocking district Republicans.  The Aunt Jo who left you the Standard Oil stock from her inheritance?  That Aunt Jo was best friends with the infamous Rusky spy, Ethel Rosenberg?

Your Aunt Jo didn't need to, but she worked in the New York public schools.  She had an office job at the one where Ethel sent her kids.   Ethel, he went on, was a devoted mother.  She'd arrive early at the end of the school day to spend time chatting with Aunt Jo before taking her boys for religious instruction.  That SOB Roy Cohn railroaded Ethel to promote his own career.  The United States of America executed some little kids' mother because an ambitious creep who got his buddy appointed as trial judge wanted to become a big shot lawyer and power broker.

Then the sphinx looked as though he was going to fly into a rage and start pounding the table.  They tried to railroad my Uncle George [the debonair bookmaker] for the murder of Arnold Rothstein!  They tried to force him to give up the real killer, but he didn't know or wouldn't tell.  Your grandfather was beside himself worrying that his brother would get sent to the electric chair.  George didn't flinch and called the prosecution's bluff.  People blamed my father and his friend Jimmy Walker for fixing the trial, but they didn't have anything to do with that.  My Aunt Marion and her friends passed judgment on George and set him free.  Marion belonged to a bridge club and the presiding judge was the husband of Marion's bridge club friend.  The presiding judge appointed a "sympathetic" judge who directed the not-guilty verdict that saved George.

Poor Ethel.  Roy Cohn was holding her hostage, trying to break up a big spy ring by wringing a confession out of her husband.  Her husband called Cohn's bluff.  Cohn didn't flinch.  My grandfather was gone, Jimmy Walker was gone, Aunt Marion was gone.  New York's Irish women didn't pull the strings anymore.   The Roy Cohn had usurped their power to appoint prosecutors and  judges.  Aunt Jo couldn't save Ethel.