Rosie O'Donnell and "South Park" Have the Fighting Spirit

Reporting on my recent honeymoon in Ireland

He thinks that he belongs on Mount Rushmore. He believes that he deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. Meanwhile, he presides over what he calls the “obliteration” of Iran’s nuclear facilities. And he has shown zero ability to rein in Putin regarding Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine. Nor has he stopped Netanyahu from slaughtering and starving the Gazan people, nearly two years after Hamas attacked Israel.

One can understand why Rosie O’Donnell, who has stood up to Trump’s bullying for decades, might want to live in Ireland at this point in time.

Having just returned from my honeymoon there, I can report that Ireland remains a nation of vitality and cheer.

Famed for their conviviality and fighting spirit, the Irish are an ancient people, who have contributed mightily to the planet in so many ways, through storytelling, verse and prose; through athletic prowess in sports as varied as boxing, Gaelic football and hurling; and through world leaders who at least partly trace their roots to Ireland.

One of the great Irish exports, it seems to me, is optimism.

We all have a bit of the Irish in us, and perhaps Carol, my reddish-haired bride of partially Irish descent, and I have an extra dose of it.

I grew up watching old Warner Brothers movies from the 1930s and ‘40s, films to which I was introduced by my dad.

My family is Jewish, but, even as a little boy, I was immediately drawn to the fighting spirit of James Cagney, one of the Warner Brothers stars, who had a distinctly Irish quality to his acting style.

When he played George M. Cohan, an Irish-American, who was born on the 4^th of July, Cagney hoofed and sang not only like the vaudeville star that he had been before he became an icon of cinema, but also like an Irishman of lore doing a series of jigs and chanting in a proverbial Irish tenor.

Cagney was one of my heroes when I was a boy, and so Carol and I, on our 11-to-12 day sojourn, considered streaming his movies on the TV in our hotel room.

Ultimately, we decided not to do so. We were too busy enjoying the treasures of the isle itself, although we were, it must be said, somewhat jetlagged for a few days, before we started to venture across the country once known as Hibernia and to check out various museums and places of interest in Dublin, where we stayed.

During our honeymoon, we got more than a taste of Cagney when we strolled across the Liffey River and heard traditional Irish music at the Temple Bar and other pubs, in one of which a middle-aged woman did some steps on a side stage, while we ate our fish and chips and lamb stew.

Her footwork and moves were reminiscent to a degree of square dancing as well as traditional Celtic step-dancing.

Although neither Carol nor I typically drink, we did hoist a black and tan at the Temple Bar, and we consumed a full pint of Guinness at the top of the Guinness storefront, a warehouse with a modernist flair, which rises seven stories with one of the best views of Dublin and the nearby Wicklow Mountains, from which the water for the beer is sourced.

While at the Guinness storefront, we spoke with a lovely woman from Mumbai, who was enjoying her travels in Ireland; we assured her that most Americans feel, as Rosie O’Donnell and Carol and I do, that our nation’s chief executive is a malignant narcissist, as evil as he is incompetent.

South Park had it right in depicting our solipsist in chief in bed with Satan.

I have long contended that Trump is Putin’s lackey and that Putin is essentially the devil.

But Putin, like Satan, does not seem to be paying Trump any mind, as the Russian autocrat continues to bomb Ukraine in spite of Trump’s demands for a cease-fire to take place in 10 to 12 days.

Garry Kasparov had it exactly right many years ago when he said that, were Trump to become president, it would be a Putin-Trump administration in that order.

Our nation’s solipsist in chief can claim that President Obama committed treason, but such a claim, clearly a lie, is, of course, a projection that carries no weight, for any critical thinker knows that it is Trump who has betrayed our nation.

As I wrote in the HuffPost in a piece in December 2016, “Exit Trump, Pursued by a Bear,” Trump has no loyalty to anyone, not to our country, not to his, ahem, wives, and certainly not to God.

The only exception would be that Trump is loyal to those whom he perceives to be more evil and therefore more powerful than he.

Paramount may have made a deal with the devil or his disciple, but South Park and Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and others thankfully have called out Trump and Paramount for the corrupt nature of their quid pro quo, which took place while Carol and I were overseas.

Separately, during our honeymoon, neither Carol nor I was surprised that the Irish called out the Israelis on the hideous war crimes and genocide being perpetrated against the Gazan people, a war that our nation’s chief executive blustered that he could end in one day, just as he blustered that he could end the war in Ukraine in 24 hours.

Just about everywhere that Carol and I walked, we saw posters wrapped around poles, posters that read, “Free Gaza.”

And Aer Lingus, the Irish national airline, had its stewards stroll the aisles of the airplane with a donation box for the Palestinian people.

The Irish will never lack for spirit.

But that is not to say that they do not have their own problems.

51% of women in Ireland have mental health challenges, as a billboard announced to us, when we entered the capital city from the airport, a billboard that we saw on buses and throughout Dublin.

We took a couple of those buses out to the countryside and experienced the beauty of the 40 shades of green, the mountains where sheep roam freely without the fear of predators, where cows have plenty of room to munch on grass, unlike California, where some cows seem to be trapped in muddy surroundings in the golden state’s central valley.

Still, Ireland has experienced its own traumas. It was ruled by the British Empire for some 900 years. Since its independence, it has had its periods known as the Troubles, internal conflicts within the emerald isle. And even though St. Patrick is credited with banishing snakes from Eire hundreds of years ago, there are ghosts and goblins that haunt this island, witches and modern-day demons, like the Informer.

It is not a perfect place.

The food may be a bit heavy on potatoes and butter.

But the people are a hearty and friendly bunch, who, lest we forget, helped to save civilization when their monks transcribed the Gospels and produced the Book of Kells, an illuminated manuscript on display at Trinity College, a book that was penned on vellum with artistic flourishes long before the printing press and other forms of modern technology.

Those Irish monks had a pluck about them, like James Cagney and Rosie O’Donnell, and they had a painstaking devotion to God.

Carol and I had a delightful time on the Emerald Island, from whence so many Americans hail.

There was even an Irish-Jewish museum, which discussed the history of the chosen people in Eire, a history that evidently dates back to Norman times and that includes Joyce’s Leopold Bloom; Chaim Herzog, whose father, Isaac, was the first chief rabbi of Ireland, where Chaim was born, before he later became president of Israel in the 1980s, a position now held by his son, Isaac; and perhaps even George M. Cohan, whose last name is not so different from Cohen, the last name of the holiest of the Israelites.

Yes, maybe George M. Cohan, born on the 4^th of July, an American patriot of Irish descent, had a Jewish lineage as well. It is more than possible.

James Cagney, the Warner star, who portrayed Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy, grew up with Jews in New York and knew how to speak Yiddish.

Perhaps, one of the best metaphors for Irish inclusiveness and strength, was the sculpture of Gaia, a sphere of the Earth, a massive globe, that was as blue as Ireland is green, and that was on display in the high-ceilinged Long Room at Trinity College’s library.

Gaia is an ancient Greek goddess, heralded for her role as the mother of the Earth, the mother who helped to create our planet.

Ireland, too, is heralded as a woman in the documents, also on display at the library, that proclaim her independence as a republic.

All of which is to say that each one of us, if we open up our minds to love, can embrace others of an ethnicity, religion, race, sex, sexual orientation or anything else that is different from our own.

We will always have some people who seek to divide and conquer, to distract, to project, to destroy and to spew chaos.

But most Americans, like most human beings on our planet, want to live in peace, not a fraudulent peace that is proclaimed by a bully and a liar.

Rather, we want to live in a world, where peace is based on light and truth, enforced by the rule of law, and where the freedoms that we all hold dear, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of the press, continue to prevail.

I can report that such freedoms still do prevail in Ireland, as they can in our country, if we summon the free will, the love, the fighting spirit that has long been a hallmark of the Irish.

It is also a hallmark of every member of our species, for at our best, we can all empower ourselves to make wise decisions and to persevere with the Holy Spirit, the spirit given to us by God.