[aculeus]

Fascinating Irish in America history.

From John Hughes to Bernard Law ... ugh.

[Wallace T.]

The movie was pretty poor. For $70 million, Martin Scorcese produced what was essentially a "spaghetti Western." Even some of the background scenes looked similar. With that kind of money, even adjusted for inflation, Sergio Leone could have produced over a dozen spaghetti Westerns. Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef (as they looked 35 years ago) would have been far better in the roles assigned to Leonard DiCaprio and Daniel Day-Lewis. Eli Wallach would have been a far better two-timing cutthroat than the lightweights they hired. (No doubt his Irish accent, overlaying his real life New York whine, would have been funnier than his Mexican one.) Ann-Margaret or Ursula Andress (again, circa 1965) would have been better as the "soiled dove" than Cameron Diaz was.

On top of that, the movie had a gratuitous "token Negro," class warfare nonsense, and blatant Protestant bashing. FReepers, save your money by avoiding this horrid movie and contribute to the latest fund drive for this Web site!

[MonroeDNA]

I guess I¡¦ve been around here for about 5 years or so now. Time sure flies!

When Jim Robinson started this site, it was because he was fed up with the liberal media, and how they would not let people worldwide know about the corruption of the Clinton Administration. A few of us, equally concerned, (with great luck) found it fast.

In the early days, FR was a day-to-day operation, always on the brink of bankruptcy. Jim kept on, and we chipped in when it became too much. We knew how important this site was, and is. Sometimes, it came down to the wire, and we wrote checks, and sent them in, as best we could.

Look at it now. We all get our best information from this site. It is huge, with thousands of posters, and millions of readers. Yet Jim still keeps it alive because of his conviction, and he is absolutely NOT making a profit on it. He just believes. As do we.

BTW, did you know that the founder of this site is in a wheelchair (sorry Jim; I know you think it doesn¡¦t make a r*ts a$$ difference. Hey, some folks out there need to come down a peg¡Xlike I have.).

Think of it! In the darkest days of the Clinton Administration, there was a lone internet site where people with integrity, brains, and sheer gumption could discuss the dangers faced by the US. Not on CNN, for sure.

Earthmovers like Drudge, Ann Coulter, Rush, WFBuckley, his brother, Savage, Buchanan, both houses of Congress (many) check in to see what we think.

The opposition checks it out, too. Like the NY times staff, CNN, etc. Trust me, they all come here to read. Even YOUR post. You know by now how they are whining about Rush? We¡¦re next, as soon as they figure out how they can trash this site without it getting a million hits.

I¡¦ve been broke; I¡¦ve been not broke. I¡¦ve slept in my car. I know how it feels to be squeezed tight with bills. You¡¦re not alone, and you have friends here. ƒº

If you love this site as much as I do, please, please sign up for automatic payment of just $3 per month. Don¡¦t be embarrassed if you think this is too little. It absolutely is not. You $3 a month folks are our grassroots movement heroes. Be proud. We¡¦ll thank you for it, and are so glad to have you on board.

I know things are rough out there. But you are tough, and a member of the greatest grassroots freedom movement in 100 years. Together we are making history, and will change the world, as we already have. The best is yet to come. Would you please, please consider signing up for just $3 a month? Please? You will make a world of difference, to, well, the world. Be proud.

[Happygal]

Haven't seen the movie yet, but plan to this week this time. I'll get back to ye, when I have.

Thanks for the ping :-)

[maica]

Michale Barone has written a very instructive book about immigration to America: The New Americans

The chapter comparing the Irish experience in the nineteenth century to the AfricanAmerican in the twentieth century is quite thought-provoking.

[wardaddy]

Interesting. I haven't seen the movie...2 in diapers makes it difficult for sitters for movies.

I know it covers the WBTS draft riots, does Martin gloss over the massive lynchings of black freedmen and escaped slaves by NYers?

[Peter Libra]

Due to my own boycott of Hollywood I have only seen two movies in two years. The Count of Monte Christo and Gangs. If anyone has read these books by John Updike ,the first two Rabbit series set in 1958 and 1968 in Pennsylvania. (Rabbit Run and Rabbit Redux), they may compare this criticism.

The story may be sordid, it may even be slightly degenerate to some extent. One saving grace though,both in these books and the film, is that what they have in common is that the imagery is absolutely superb . It is many, many years, since such a re-creation of a scene long gone, has its equal in movie making.

Worth seeing for that alone. Yes, the Irish have come a long way. I seem to remember as a kid a 1940's movie, with the St Patricks Day parade. Judy Garland gave it all she had, singing. It's a great day for the Irish. Fortunately we were given a legacy by the photographer Jacob Riis (sp) which tend to bear out something of the despair of the immigrant, even thirty years or so later.

[Bonaparte]

Stern: "...the Civil War was... an intensely moral struggle to free the slaves, in which Americans of all backgrounds gave their lives."

Stern may know about the history of immigration, but needs to catch up on Civil War history. From Paul Craig Roberts --

The War Between the States was not fought over slavery. Lincoln fought the war to preserve the Union. In the second year of the war, Lincoln told the abolitionist Horace Greeley, “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery.”

The South wanted out of the Union because the tariffs that protected Northern manufacturers were a drain on Southern agricultural incomes. It is true that there were bloody-minded abolitionists in the North and hotheads in the South, but the Civil War was not fought over blacks.

The war was more than half over when Lincoln, reluctantly and under great pressure from the Radicals, issued the Emancipation Proclamation, a lukewarm document that freed only certain slaves in certain states. Freeing the slaves was a special project of the Radicals and abolitionists, a goal they accomplished only after the war's end. But "historians" like Stern will perpetuate the same myths forever.

[visualops]

I enjoyed that read, thanks.
I'll wait for cable, mostly because my movie $$ are reserved for the really great stuff like LOTR.
The teasers didn't much make me want to see this, except for DD-L. At the very least I expect his performance to be intense, as always lol.
As dramatic and provocative as the gang wars may have been, I do think are far more interesting movie would indeed have been the story of the Irish (and other) immigrants who made great strides in a relatively short period of time. Really a lesson to be learned there, and reminded of as often as necessary.

[nutmeg]

Gangs of New York ping.

This article appears in the current issue of City Journal, published by The Manhattan Institute.

[Clemenza]

“Dagger” John Hughes

In addition to defending poor Catholics, the future Archbishop Hughes was also founder of Clemenza's alma mater in the then rural Bronx. There is a nice statue of him in front of the old Rose Hill Estate (now the administration building). Although the neighborhood around it has changes, the university remains a "green" campus just as it was when Dagger John founded it (the dorm I lived in was built shortly before the Civil War).

In the university's early years, a frequent visitor to John Hughes and the other Jesuits was a writer who lived in a small cottage nearby, one Edgar Allen Poe.

[Clemenza]

As I have stated on other threads, I LOVED the movie, despite some historical inaccuracies. The 1863 draft riots are rarely talked about in high school history classes (especially in the early 1960s, when my parents were in school), despite the fact that they were the most violent civil insurrection in American History (other than the "War of Southern Arrogance" of course).

[Freee-dame]

bump