WhatFinger


The Donald, O'Reilly and Obama

A Basically Honest People



I have long had a sneaking admiration for an English nobleman – not something to which most of those of us of Irish ancestry would ordinarily tend to admit. One of my heroes is Lord Melbourne, who at the age of eight, to the dismay of his parents, had not uttered a single word. That ended one night at a dinner party when the lady seated next to him at table asked “Little boy, why do you not speak?”

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His young Lordship looked at her and said his very first words – “Because Madam,” he said, “I have absolutely nothing to say.” Some years later he observed “The Irish are a basically honest people; they seldom speak well of one another.” He was right on target. In that tradition allow me to speak critically of a onetime fellow Long Islander, the loquacious Bill O’Reilly, a Nassau County native but, as he once told me, a onetime resident of neighboring Suffolk County, L.I., that his Dad was among my fellow Brooklyn Prep alumnus, although he was a few years ahead of me at the Prep. He went into the Navy in WWII and I soon joined the better part of the U.S. Naval Service, the Marine Corps. (I had to get that in. It's obligatory Semper Fi). I must admit that on the single occasion Bill and I spoke – when I was doing a profile of him for Newsmax - Bill was both gracious and friendly. That having been said, allow me to have at him. Albeit gently and admiringly. In simple terms, Bill O’ tends on occasion to be what we used to call a smart Aleck. I attribute that failing to the unfortunate fact that he graduated from Harvard University, not a fit place for any proud Mick. He could, instead, have attended one of the many fine N.Y.C. Catholic colleges such as Manhattan College where most of my father’s family, including my grandsire matriculated and my late Uncle Joe, a Basketball Hall of Famer, once coached. Bill’s smart-alecky attitude was on display when he took on “the Donald,” as his ex-wife calls Mr. Trump. He appears to have been offended by the Donald’s expression of doubt about Barack Obama’s true birthplace, noting as Mr. Trump has, the President’s adamant refusal to reveal his birth certificate. Hey Bill, that’s a reasonable question to ask a man who serves in an office, one of which iron clad requirements is that the president be a native born American. Mr. Obama says he is, and insists he has a birth certificate to prove it. He will not, however, show it either to the Donald or to the American people. He has, in fact, allegedly spent a cool two million America dollars on lawyers assigned to fend off inconvenient questions about his birthplace. As the Donald has said, the President could easily end all questioning about his citizenship by making his birth certificate public. He has instead, spent that two million dollars on those lawyers. As Mr. Trump has said, Mr. Obama’s grandmother insists he was born in Nigeria – not as far as I know, part of the United States of America. It’s in Africa, also known as the Dark Continent. Grandmothers tend to know where their grandchildren were born. Mine sure did. Both of them. That should be enough to make even a Harvard Graduate somewhat dubious about Barack Obama’s real birthplace –a question the President could easily resolve by letting us see his birth certificate, which, like most of the records of his past, is shrouded in mystery and not available for viewing by the Donald or the rest of the American people. I don’t know where he was born, He says he was born in Hawaii. I’ll take him at his word, but like the Donald, I’d really like to see my President’s birth certificate. The Donald is now spending a few of his trillion or so dollars on a bunch of gumshoes he has nosing around in Hawaii and possibly elsewhere looking for the evidence that the President was born in the 51st State. In case Bill O’ is not aware of Mr. Trump’s background, the Donald is one tough cookie who does not give in without putting up one helluva fight. From what I know and admire about Mr. O’Reilly, if Mr. Trump proves he is justified in questioning Mr. Obama’s qualifications to serve in the nation’s highest office I’m sure Bill will be the first to admit he was mistaken about the Donald. Faugh ‘a ballagh, Bill O’


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Philip V. Brennan -- Bio and Archives

Monday, Jan. 6, 2014:
Former columnist, Marine Corps hero, and Washington insider Phil Brennan passed away on Monday. He was 87 years old.

Born in New York City, Brennan served with the Marines during World War II before tackling a series of jobs in the nation’s capital, beginning with a campaign to win statehood for Alaska. —More…</em>


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