Iirsh history is no mystery....


Elizabeth Platt ([email protected])
Tue, 29 Dec 1998 19:56:29 -0800 (PST)


On Mon, 28 Dec, 1998, [email protected] (MISS PATRICIA M HEFNER) wrote:

> Subject: re: U2: Irish or British?
>
> Elizabeth, you're putting me through that damn Irish history class term
> paper of mine!! :-)

Feel free to crib from my posts if you want; just give me a plug in the
footnotes! :)

> Seriously, this is important stuff. If you don't
> know the history of a country, you'll never understand its present.

Say what? I've been reading about Irish history and current affairs for
20 years now--and I think I understand the present just fine, thanks very
much.

> You
> don't have to read ten books from the campus library (groan....currently
> having an attack of Academic Memory Stress Syndrome!! :-)). One or two
> books won't bite.

One or two? Try 'em by the score--and don't forget various periodicals,
newspaper articles, and hearing the personal histories from people who
have been eyewitnesses to events in recent years. You seem to feel that
what I wrote was somehow in error--in what way? What I sketched over is
actually pretty much a standard view of Irish history, albeit from a more
"republican" perspective. I hope to heaven that you don't think I should
be wallowing in the crypto-fascist stuff cranked out by the likes of Conor
Cruise O'Brien and Ruth Dudley-Edwards! Or any of the other "historians"
and writers who orbit the Sunday Independent. Er, you don't--do you?

And I hope to heaven you're not a U2 fan who read Dunphy's "The
Unforgettable Fire", and actually thought he knew a thing or two about
Irish history and "present day"? The man has his head so far up his ass,
he could tell you what shape his liver's in... >:)

Slan,

Elizabeth Platt
[email protected]



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