Word: irishness
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...over-aged, childlike buffoon; brother James (Pat MacNamara), a reformed alcoholic and aspiring academic; and Harry (Frank Converse), the only realistic possibility, a Beacon Hill lawyer married into wealth and long ago estranged from the family. Compounding the tension is the elder McMillan (Carroll O'Connor), an aging Irish head-of-the-local who believes firmly in organized labor, romanticizes the good old days of socialism and, despite his elder sons' urging, is determined to win the upcoming union elections for the 26th consecutive year...
...debate was complicated and vitriolic, full of emotional arguments, thunderous Sunday sermons and Irish ironies. It split the medical and legal professions, divided the Republic of Ireland's political parties and prompted Prime Minister Garret FitzGerald to make a public apology for ever having started the fuss. But in a country of 3.1 million Roman Catholics, 96% of the population, the result was never in doubt: by a vote of 66% to 33%, the Irish electorate last week declared itself firmly in favor of a constitutional amendment that would ban abortions...
...Irish law already prohibits abortion, except in rare cases when a mother's life is in danger, under penalty of life imprisonment for both mother and doctor. That, however, was never an issue. Unlike previous referendums in Spain (1982) and Italy (1981), which resulted in liberalization of tough abortion laws, this poll did not ask Irish voters to make such operations easier to obtain...
Instead, the question last week was whether the existing ban should be enshrined in the nation's constitution. The amendment, its supporters argued, was necessary to prevent future parliaments from changing the law. Said Bernadette Bonar, a mother of four and a founder of the Irish pro-life movement: "We are trying to close the [abortion] door before it can be opened...
...native of Belfast, Brian Moore has a special talent for pungent portraiture of those Irish men and women who are, as James Joyce put it, "outcast from life's feast": desperate spinsters, failed priests, drunken poets-and expatriates, like Moore himself. But as the distance between Moore and his homeland widened, he produced, under the pseudonyms Michael Bryan and Bernard Marrow, some lamentable whodunits. By way of apology he once explained: "I tried to write as an American...