"My name is Barack Obama, of the Moneygall Obamas, and I've come home to find the apostrophe we lost along the way."
You can find clearer versions of the speech that Obama gave in College Green today, but you'll be hard-pressed to find one that gives a better sense of the love and enthusiasm that the crowd felt for him:
Here, in a bit of the speech with better audio, is Obama speaking about the emigration of his great-great-great-grandfather from the Emerald Isle to America:
(This is a story dear to my heart, because it is the story of my great-great-grandfather, who married a Boston girl and stayed in Massachusetts.)
The Irish have greeted Obama with a tremendous outpouring of love and respect. For one thing, Obama gave them mad props - speaking about their love of freedom and independence, and how it was an inspiration to Americans. He connected with them genealogically, and spoke of the 37 million descendents who are Irish-Americans. He treated them with respect, as a valuable ally, instead of an economically broken country of losers. They returned the esteem and affection. A friend from Ireland emailed me this morning:
Wow. Obama and Michelle are in the next village over and they are absolutely wowing the people and the press. Diving right into the crowds and hugging the elderly, holding babies, shaking hands with everyone. People are saying "welcome home Mr President" and similar things. Absolutely stunning. No matter what the real or imagined impetus behind it all is, I have to say it is just utterly impressive.
But you would never know from the coverage in our own national newspapers.It is only by going directly to the Irish news sources that you will get a real sense of the welcome that the Obamas received, and of the regard which their graciousness, good humor, and strong support of the country earned for them. Here in the US, you will probably find plenty of coverage of the trouble that the Presidential armored auto had getting caught up on a bumpy Dublin road - because that gives an opportunity for ridicule to our press corps, and certainly to the Right Wing propaganda crews. The Irish people, themselves, though, cannot understand the almost insane hatred of a minority claque of opposition voters.
To get some insight into the President's triumphant and heartwarming visit to Ireland was like, just take a read of some of the dozens of articles here at the Irish Independent News.
The family my husband and I have created was made possible by Irish immigrants on both sides of our combined genealogies. So tonight, in honor of the President's sojourn to the land of our commonly shared heritage, we will hoist a Guinness (even though he says it's by no means as good as that on home ground) and join him in crying Slainte to him and to the land of our forebears.