Obit

Never let it be said that there are no class divides in Irish America, or that the mutual contemptuousness of every class of Irish people for the other has not been successfully transplanted from the old country to its primarily urban and now suburban home in America.

Mark Wahlberg's Boston Irish character in Martin Scorsese's movie The Departed has naturally a deep contempt for the Boston Irish character played by Matt Damon for precisely these reasons, and expresses his natural contempt with succinct force from the first, as people of his station so often will.

When I first came to regard William Buckley, courtesy of his television program Firing Line and appearances on other talk shows of the time, I recognized in myself the upwelling of the sort of contempt for the man proper to my class of Irish Americans toward a man of his, and carried that contempt with me down all the years till now.

I say farewell to William F. Buckley, Jr., and to my contempt for him as well, satisfied that it no longer has its proper target. I reserve the right to my contempt for what he's left, however.