"The Local" is an Irish restaurant and bar in downtown Minneapolis.
In any Irish city, "the Local" is the the preferred local gathering place.
It is the honor of The Local on Nicolet Mall in downtown Minneapolis
that it serves more Jameson whiskey than any other bar in the world.
When Ted Kennedy died, Mari and I agreed that we should repair
to the Local, and hoist a Guiness and a Jameson to Ted Kennedy.
Today, after a short day at work, Mari drove from St. Paul,
and I took the light rail; a kind of Irish pilgrimage.
Today, for a few moments, we two Norwegians were Irish,if not in the tangled snarl of our genes, then in our appreciation.
It has been a grand day to remember Ted Kennedy.
We sat outside, on the walking mall which runs drunkenly
north-south, or east-west, on the lopsided Minneapolis
downtown streets, paralleling the river, not the pole star.
They were Swedes who did that, but I will wager they
had been drinking Irish whiskey when they tried to point north.
I have been musing about our respect for the Kennedy brothers;
we derivative Norwegians, who once given the chance,
stole from every seaside monastery on the Emerald Isle.
The Vikings stole more than chalices and crosses.
There is a reason for the red-headed Norwegians along the coast.
Something of our pillaging ancestors has become Irish.
It was the Kennedys who came to embrace Barack Obama
to carry forward the tradition of public service of their family.
They came, those rough-haired descendents of St. Patrick,
to make Barack Obama a member of their political family,
and he a participant in theirs; Irish and African they came,
and Swedish, too, from a Kansas grandfather.
As we sat there, it was impossible not to think about
the people in our country who have decided that Obama
should not be allowed to speak to our children in school;
to encourage them to learn, to respect their commonalities,
to hang tough, and study hard, and to imagine a future.
In the night, while we were asleep, did aliens come
and take away our neighbors, and leave behind bigots?
How have we come to this pathetic state of affairs
in which fevered parents and slimy politicians
are afraid that our President will corrupt our children?
Where has common sense gone?
How can it be that responsible school administrators,
given a choice between allowing a President who cares
for education who wants to encourage a generation to learn,
and parents and neighbors who think that our President
is a Nazi, or a Communist, or an alien from Kenya,
will seriously debate whether they can rearrange
the school day to allow the kids to hear the President?
We are listening to pure, simple racism.
The fanatics are covering themselves with sheets
of absurd arguments, anything, everything,
to muffle the damnable voice of their fear and prejudice.
How can it be that our ancestors,
who thought in their ignorance and isolation
that they were superior human beings,
still think that the color of their skin,
or the whiskey or aquavit or fermented palm
they drank, the language they mutilate
or the religion they drank like Kool-Aid,
make them superior to people like Ted Kennedy,
or Barack Obama, or the people who cannot
afford to live where they live, comb their hair
as they do; who know our schools need help?
For a few minutes today, Mari and I were Irish,
not because Irish is better or worse, but because
if we cannot be Irish, or Hmong, or Black,
or Hispanic somewhere inside, some of the time,
we will have denied our essential humanity
by denying it to people with their own differences,
and their own claim to belong to the human family.
We drank to Ted Kennedy.
We drank to our whole family.
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