Reply #3: Ah Bite ME, who cares

[TayTay]

Fun article though. It's true, one of the side effects of running for Pres is getting a real and complete geneology done:


A JEWISH KERRY, AN IRISH FORBESCAN THERE EVER HAVE BEEN SUCH A FUSS ABOUT A FELLOW'S ROOTS AS THE CONTROVERSIES SURROUNDING SENATOR JOHN FORBES KERRY? WHEN HE WAS RUNNING FOR LIEUTENANT GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS MORE THAN 20 YEARS AGO, THERE WERE BOSTONIANS WHO OCCASIONALLY GROWLED: ``HE'S MORE FORBES THAN KERRY.'' THE IMPLICATION WAS THAT ALTHOUGH KERRY WAS A ROMAN CATHOLIC, HE HAD MORE IN COMMON WITH HIS PROTESTANT BOSTON BRAHMIN FORBES FAMILY THAN HE DID WITH HIS KERRY SIDE, WHICH MOST PEOPLE ASSUMED WAS IRISH.

Boston Globe, THIRD, Sec. Op-Ed, p A19 (02-14-2003)

By H.D.S. GREENWAY

In political Boston, where class and ethnicity smolder under the surface like a fire in a mine shaft, not being considered Irish enough could be serious, although Kerry never claimed to be Irish. His Kerrys were from Austria.

That the Forbes family originally came from Scotland, and therefore were at least Celtic, was not a mitigating factor as far as many of the Irish tradition were concerned. As Gerry Adams, the Ulster politician and former IRA man, once famously said: "A Scot is an honorary Englishman."

Now that we have learned that the senator is more Kohn than Kerry, Globe genealogists having ferreted out the information that his Kerry grandfather was born Jewish and changed both his name and his religion, controversy swirls anew with nonsense about how Jewish he really is or about what he knew and when he knew it.

John Forbes Kerry, of St. Paul's School, Yale, and Skull & Bones, survived those long-ago ethnic slurs and class antagonisms and went on to greater things. But now that he has announced his intention to oust George Walker Bush - Andover, Yale, and Skull & Bones - from the White House, ethnicity is back in the arena. Within days Kerry was discussing his Jewish roots with members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and saying he now had a personal reason to care about Israel.

But where does this leave the Irish? Are they to be excluded from the Kerry's family tree? Hibernians, do not despair! This just in! The Forbes family traces its ancestry back to the earliest Forbes, who was none other than one O'Connor Foibeiseach, who emigrated to Scotland from Ireland in 864 AD to found the clan. He came from what is now Northern Ireland, but fear not. Martin Luther and John Knox were not around in those days to complicate matters in Ireland. Foibeiseach, which means something close to Brave and Virtuous in the Gaelic tongue, (LOL!) was shortened to Forbes as Gaelic gave ground to English north of the River Tweed.

And that's not all. Irish history records that John Bennet Forbes, the Boston merchant, China-trader, and shipbuilder, sent ships of grain to relieve the Great Hunger that beset Ireland in 1847, the famine that sent its citizens by their thousands to Boston. No better friend did Ireland have in those bitter days.

I like to think that teams of Globe genealogists are beavering away on the family tree of Joseph Lieberman, also Yale, to level the playing field; perhaps to find a long lost link to Eamon de Valera, the Jewish prime minister of Ireland, or even the former Irish Guards officer, Vivian Herzog, who changed his name to Chaim and went on to become president of Israel.

I like to think of Howard Dean up in Vermont, yet another Yalie, digging into his family past searching for new and revelatory connections in order not to be left behind in the ethnic dust. Candidate John Edwards - North Carolina State, University of North Carolina - can certainly be expected to start negative advertising, pointing out the dangers of an obvious Yale conspiracy to take over the world. Yalie presidents of one stripe or another have sat in the White House ever since Ronald Reagan left town 22 years ago. Can the country afford another? At least Kerry can point to long lines of Harvard men in his family to deflect some of the fallout.

And speaking of Harvard men, Senator Kerry still has another ace up his sleeve. With the Democratic Party primaries less than a year away, we may soon be hearing more about Kerry's distant connection to Franklin Delano Roosevelt - Groton, Harvard, Fly Club - gained when a Forbes married into the Murray family, which in turn merged with Delanos. FDR's famous Aberdeen terrier, Fala, was named after Patrick Murray of Fala Hill, whose kilt the future president was forced to wear when he was but a wee lad. With connections like these who needs degrees of separation?