US – Slugger O'Toole

Big Albert shines his light/ casts his shadow across the pond

Brian Walker on January 22, 2021, 12:33 pm

| Readers 1392

I knew nothing of Under the Albert Clock until I spotted a review of the podcast in the New York Times no less. Creativity and performance defies the lockdown. American sponsorship and other interest is very welcome. Any reaction? The New York-based Origin Theater Company commissioned the series, asking five female playwrights in Northern Ireland to use as inspiration Belfast’s landmark Albert Memorial Clock (a monument to Queen Victoria’s husband, and thus a symbol of Britishness), and to place their …

California surpasses the UK to become the World’s 5th largest economy…

Brian O'Neill on May 8, 2018, 10:07 am

| Readers 1712

It shows the massive size of the US economy that one State alone has just overtaken the UK to become the World’s 5th largest economy. As reported by NBC NEWS: California’s economy has surpassed that of the United Kingdom to become the world’s fifth largest, according to federal data made public Friday. California’s gross domestic product rose by $127 billion from 2016 to 2017, surpassing $2.7 trillion, the data said. Meanwhile, the UK’s economic output slightly shrunk over that time when …

Playing the Long Game – Conservative Evangelicals and the US Supreme Court

Jon Hatch on April 4, 2017, 7:27 am

| Readers 1196

Many observers of American politics are utterly befuddled by the reaction of many Republicans, first to the candidacy and then the actual presidency of Donald Trump. Why, so many wonder, do they tolerate, and even defend, a candidate who has so often been openly contemptuous of them and their party? He has belittled, insulted, denigrated, and bullied them, not to mention lied about them at almost every turn. And since he’s not demonstrated any discernible ideological core- other than the …

So is liberal capitalism dead?

Brian Walker on November 10, 2016, 1:26 pm

| Readers 578

Sure enough, the columnists are having a field day. If tweets are narrow- focus and the medium of choice for Trump and the alt-right, ( I don’t mean you dear), those prophetic souls who are favoured with space are laying it on thick with the broadest of brushes. Right now this is preferable to the pointillism of shifting policy. Hillary was always yesterday’s woman ; the Donald, monster that he is, tapped into reality. Oh, and “liberal capitalism” is dead. …

Northern Ireland & TTIP: Is it Deal or No Deal?

Paul Hagan on June 9, 2015, 8:55 pm

| Readers 761

While nowhere does acronyms like Brussels, one four-letter word has had everyone talking: TTIP, and now in public conscience like few others before it. For clarification TTIP stands for Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which is basically Brussels-speak for Free Trade treaty between the USA and all 28 EU countries. Free trade is nothing new to the EU or the European project, it was one of its founding aims after all, and to date it has been one of the …

David Carr dies…

Mick Fealty on February 13, 2015, 12:07 pm

| Readers 309

Very sad to hear of the death of NYT media hack, David Carr: If you’re gonna get a job that’s a little bit of a caper, that isn’t really a job, that under ideal circumstances you get to at least leave the building and leave your desktop, go out, find people more interesting than you, learn about something, come back and tell other people about it – that should be hard to get into. That should be hard to do. …

In losing touch with Ireland’s struggles is Irish America losing its social conscience?

Mick Fealty on March 15, 2014, 8:19 pm

| Readers 145

I’m not saying I agree with Andrew O’Hehir in every aspect of his column on Salon, particularly the sense that there is a singular and deterministic direction of travel in Irish American identity. But there may be something in the idea that 1998 and the Good Friday Agreement has heralded a slow disengagement with the cause of Ireland per se: As the title of Noel Ignatiev’s important if overly harsh academic study “How the Irish Became White” makes clear, Irish immigrants first …

Decommissioning advice for Damascus?

Brian Walker on September 10, 2013, 6:31 pm

| Readers 59

Is a de Chastelain-type decommissioning process soon to hit Damascus? Will our own international peacemakers rush over to give advice? But which side would they advise? Al-Assad or the Russians and their nominees? It took the good general 10 long years and a lot of guile from Gerry Adams, as that connoisseur of IRA strategy Ed Moloney recalled. Barack Obama should ask the Clintons what he’s letting himself in for. Off the hook perhaps?. Ten years is two and a half presidential …

Ireland’s Call as you may never have heard it before….

Mick Fealty on June 13, 2013, 2:06 pm

| Readers 63

Don’t you just hate American candour… We never ever get to hear Irish rugby players render Ireland’s Call in their own voices… Check this about here, but don’t say you weren’t warned… (most of the US players had the sense not to try, and those who did were largely drowned out by the crowd..) Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a …

Fracking: The problem regulating an unpredictable industry

Mick Fealty on March 29, 2013, 10:20 am

| Readers 70

Fracking, eh… This is just one of the issues we’re likely to see come up at the Fermanagh G8… We plan to do more on the subject, but in the meantime here’s a story from Oklahoma… tks put you off your cornflakes… Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: …

Friday Thread: Wealth distribution in the United States

Mick Fealty on March 8, 2013, 2:00 pm

| Readers 53

This has been around for a while, but as it’s just been picked up by Mashable it’s doing the rounds… H/T Alasdair McKenzie on Google Plus. Mick FealtyMick is founding editor of Slugger. He has written papers on the impacts of the Internet on politics and the wider media and is a regular guest and speaking events across Ireland, the UK and Europe. Twitter: @MickFealty

US Gun Control or why policy detail matters…

Mick Fealty on January 31, 2013, 9:49 am

| Readers 54

P O’Neill with a great spot off Cspan on the gun control debate. It’s a snippet from the Senate Judiciary Committee: O’Neill comments: Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, thinks he has scored a massive point by showing that the Washington DC murder rate went up in the years after a gun ban was introduced. The Baltimore police chief Jim Johnson — an actual law enforcement official — points out that Northeastern cities experiencing this phenomenon were being swamped by …

“Grass-roots hatred is a much greater threat than it used to be”

Mick Fealty on January 9, 2013, 9:46 am

| Readers 47

There are some odd parallels between here in Northern Ireland where we have two parties who seem not to be able to agree the slightest matter of political substance, and the US Congress where nothing is agreed ever unless they cannot avoid it. The result in both places is, as they say in the jargon, somewhat sub-optimal. In his sign-off at the Atlantic Magazine Robert Wright shares some useful thoughts: [1] The world’s biggest single problem is the failure of …

“Honey, it’s not a Glock. It’s just a shotgun.”

Mick Fealty on December 19, 2012, 11:25 pm

| Readers 65

Via Audrey Carville on Twitter, this great blog essay, on guns: But more importantly, who was going to take this gun? I had to call someone, I couldn’t just keep this gun. That’s how fucked up my thinking was at the time: it was all about the gun. When the 911 operator picked up, I was downright professional. I stated my name. I stated my location. I stated the nature of what I was calling about. “You see,” I said, …

After #Election2012: Time to strike with a moderately hot iron?

Mick Fealty on November 7, 2012, 9:23 am

| Readers 40

Okay, Ruarai makes some interesting points about the implications of this election for the Republican party, or which some more later. And I hope Gerry Lynch will give us a more granular view of what happened both at the executive level and out in the country at council and Gubernatorial levels (30 out of 50 Governors in the US are now Republican). Kellyanne Dignan who is one of our regular US panelists points out that whilst Mitt Romney is most …

America’s standoff between the shills and the gamblers…

Mick Fealty on November 2, 2012, 1:14 pm

| Readers 38

I’m afraid there will be no #DigitalLunch today due illness (mine) in the kitchen… So I’ve a couple short posts to share that I’ve collected over the last few days. One of the things that’s been exercising comment in America is the dominance of number cruncher in chief Nate Silver, who’s dominance of the prediction market this time out has been frustrating some of the old schools hacks and shills. In the Atlantic, Conor Friedersdorf points out that this came …

The day the western world stood still… 11th September 2001

Mick Fealty on September 10, 2012, 11:05 am

| Readers 76

On the day… Tomorrow is the eleventh anniversary of 9/11. I still remember my own experience of those events clearly. It was just after lunchtime in the River Path offices. All of us were in the large open plan area, heads bent over our glass topped desks and absorbed in a dozen different tasks. Then from far side of the office I heard someone say, “turn the television on”… and the next thing consternation from the tiny annex where the …

Historic decline for gun control in the US from 60% down to just 24%

Mick Fealty on July 26, 2012, 3:09 pm

| Readers 47

If there is one fault with the progressive view of politics it is that the people, en masse, rarely concur. And in the US beyond the Beltway, the people are rarely inclined towards even the most optimistic forms of historical determinism… Nicholas Kristoff starts his own (self described) tirade on the subject with some telling stats: Since 1959, Gallup has asked Americans if they favor banning handguns. When the polling started, 60 percent said yes; the latest poll showed support from a …

Black, Jewish, from Ohio and three times World Step Dance Champion…

Mick Fealty on March 17, 2012, 3:39 pm

| Readers 565

So whilst St Patrick’s Day is proving a severe test for the diversity challenge in Northern Ireland, in rural Ohio Irish culture finds little less difficulty in opening doors to new and diverse populations… Meet Drew Lovejoy, 17 years of age, from Greenville, three times world champion in Irish Dancing… “I was like, ‘Yeah, right,’ ” his mother said, shaking her head. “You’re biracial and you’re a Jew. We thought you had to be Irish and Catholic.” He said, “I was …

Trouble with the Troubles in the Irish Diaspora…

Mick Fealty on January 5, 2012, 8:53 am

| Readers 779

I was talking to a friend in Limerick, who’s particularly well networked (virtually and in real terms) with the Irish diaspora. One of the things he suggested is that that the troubles plays a much larger role, certainly within the Irish diaspora in the states than is often appreciated at home, to the point where there are some profound disconnects between the diaspora and the reality on the ground, ‘back home’. As Richard McKibbin found recently, whilst those attitudes may …