c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Andrew M. Greeley is a Roman Catholic priest, best-selling novelist and a sociologist at the University of Chicago National Opinion Research Center. Check out his home page at http://www.agreeley.com or contact him via e-mail at agreel(at)aol.com.)

DUBLIN _ There are a lot of people on this green and (temporarily) sun-drenched island who are angry at us”Yanks.” The people I encounter are furious that the American media virtually ignored President Clinton’s recent trip here. The Irish media covered the American media carefully and have stirred up this rage. Is Monica Lewinsky more important than Ireland, the people I meet demand of me.

My answer is that of course she is more important than Ireland.

And more important than Russia and Japan and Brazil and the United Nations and the world economy and social security and cigarette companies and handguns and campaign reform and everything else in the world.

Then my Irish acquaintances charge us with inattention to the President’s essential role in the Good Friday peace agreement. He’s a hero for that, isn’t he now, they ask. Why are you Yanks trying to destroy him? Why have you prevented him from getting the Nobel Peace Prize he deserves?

To which I am forced to reply that if the American media don’t care about Ireland, they certainly don’t care about Irish peace or about Nobel Prizes.

Why are you so hypocritical, they demand. You’re trying to destroy the man for his sexual behavior _ they see through the legal subterfuge about perjury _ yet you want to see every salacious detail on television and the Internet.

I tell them they don’t understand our Calvinist Puritanism. We are self-righteous moralists about sex but also obsessed with all its dirty details.

Well, at least, they say, they’ve caught that judiciary man (Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., chairman of the House Judiciary Committee) in his own adultery. If you hunt with the hounds, you’ve got to run with the foxes, don’t you now?

I tell them that Hyde is a virtuous and conservative Roman Catholic from the Chicago area and I regret the embarrassment to him and his family.

Yeah, they argue, but didn’t he commit adultery against two marriages?

It was 30 years ago, I say.

So what, they say.

I admit his sanctimonious righteousness on TV as he leads Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich’s partisan lynch mob is a bit disconcerting.

And, they ask, didn’t that Newt fellow dump his wife when she was in the hospital with cancer? Isn’t that worse than adultery? How come he gets away with being holier than the president?

I give up. There’s no way I can answer their questions.

Look, I observe, two-thirds of the American people agree with you.

Well, why don’t they do something about it? Do they like Monica Lewinsky and that Starr fella? Actually, they use some favorite Irish nouns and adjectives in their description of the two people, words which I cannot quote in this column.

No, I tell them, they certainly do not.

Then why don’t they put a stop to the whole mess?

They can’t.

What do you mean they can’t?

No one cares what the public thinks.

And your country is supposed to be a democracy.

Well, there’s an election in six weeks, I say.

And they could vote the so-and-so’s out of office and stop all the nonsense?

They could vote Democratic and get rid of the Republican majority in Congress, but they probably won’t, I add.

And why not?

Because the Democrats are against the president, too _ unless they happen to be African-Americans.

They throw up their hands in dismay. You Yanks, they say, adding several unprintable modifiers, are crazy.

I suspect my Irish friends, who like Americans and American, are more charitable than most Europeans. If you are an American abroad at this time in our national history, you are inevitably embarrassed. In a way it serves us right. We elected a majority of Republicans to Congress four years ago and now we’re paying the price.

DEA END GREELEY