Posted: Wednesday, 10 March 2010 10:56AM
Time For The Wearing Of The Hoods
Steve Corbett Reporting
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
On March 17, as he has done each year for many years, U.S. Sen. Bob Casey will don his fine tuxedo and bow tie for a night out with the 1,200 or so lads of the Lackawanna County Friendly Sons of St. Patrick.
Casey will leave his hood at home.
Unlike Klansmen of old, the blatant form of discrimination that the senator and the other Friendly Sons practice is widely accepted in his hometown.
Even most of the best and brightest women in Scranton will not stand up to these men and hold them accountable for barring women from the annual dinner where Northeastern Pennsylvania’s most powerful and politically connected men gather to network and connect.
The only women in attendance will be the women working as servers, the women hustling among the men with plates piled high with ham and cabbage, the women struggling to help themselves and their families on the small wage they receive from the hall where the formal dinner is held.
Whether women who could do something to help their sisters but choose not to act are brainwashed or just don’t care is not the point. What matters is that Casey and his men call the shots around here.
And on this night, the theme of the political and business culture rings out loud and clear.
No women need apply.
At the same time the men are doing business, campaigning for elected office and patting themselves on their backs, a couple of hundred supposedly enlightened women will attend their own Irish dinner and call it a victory.
They will argue that they don’t want to attend the men’s dinner. They will argue that they are liberated and independent and stand alone in the world of business and politics. But they are mistaken. In Northeastern Pennsylvania hard coal country, nobody stands alone in the world of business and politics.
And nobody gets anywhere without the men who call the shots and bar women at the door to equal opportunity.
When it comes to prejudice, however, Casey is not alone.
Three federal judges, Richard Conaboy, William Nealon (after whom the federal courthouse in Scranton is named) and James Munley have long been associated with this men-only organization.
Even though the federal code of ethics that regulates the behavior of federal judges prohibits participation in clubs and organizations that practices “invidious discrimination,” these astute men of the law ignore even the mere appearance of impropriety that harms the fabric of the nation they serve.
Instead of holding them accountable, the rich and powerful in the community fawn over them and their marvelous grasp of the law. Instead of challenging them to do what is right, the people they serve enable them to foster the fierce segregationist practice of the Friendly Sons. Instead of standing up to them we bow down to them.
I don’t think that’s what the Irish rebels of 1916 had in mind when they rose in armed revolution to fight oppression.
These wise leaders and martyrs even began their sweet proclamation of independence with the words “Irishmen and Irishwomen: In the name of God and the dead generations of which she receives her old tradition of nationhood, Ireland, through us, summons her children to her flag and strikes for her freedom.”
“Her old tradition of nationhood.”
“Her children.”
“Her flag.”
“Her freedom.”
In the glorious Irish struggle for liberty, without which Casey would have no nation to serve in the Senate and we would have no land of the free in the good old U.S.A., even the country itself is symbolically female.
Yet sacred Mother Ireland and all her historical sacrifice matters little to the Friendly Sons who have turned their backs on the emerald banner of justice for all.
As Paddy’s Day approaches and another year of bigotry masked as tradition imposes its malicious message of discrimination, I reaffirm my fight against oppression. I refuse to let the lads get away with their insidious and invidious intolerance that keeps even Casey’s wife and daughters from sharing their common heritage.
Injustice and prejudice is wrong. And if unfairness is tradition, that tradition is bad.
Casey, Conaboy, Nealon and Munley – all men with Irish blood in their veins, could raise the beautiful banner of wisdom and culture and unite against the shrewd bigotry that continually humiliates women.
The Friendly Sons would likely not attend a function that bars Jews or blacks. Casey in particular would no doubt loudly protest if his friend Barack Obama were barred from any event because of his race.
But the senator has no problem barring women because of their gender, of controlling them simply because they’re women, of standing firm with the spirit of the segregationist South as a friendly son of bigotry.
Maybe Casey and the lads should bring out the green hoods after all. I imagine they’re irked by my decades of harping criticism. If they wore their hoods, we won’t know who to criticize, now would we?
Of course it will be difficult for these male chauvinist Paddy’s pigs to slurp down a big trough load of ham and cabbage through a small opening in the hood. But keep trying, lads.
In America, anything’s possible.
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Corbett
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