The video reminds me of the wave of euphoria and optimism which swept the globe, when, 40 odd years after institutionalized segregation in the American South–in buses, schools, cafeterias and water fountains–Americans redeemed their dark history of slavery and segregation by electing a black man as their President.
I thought of Wordsworth’s lines on the French Revolution,
Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,
But to be young was very heaven!--Oh! times,
In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
Of custom, law, and statute, took at once
The attraction of a country in romance!
P.S. I enjoyed this comment on the Youtube video, “I’m not just as Irish as Barack Obama, I’m even more Irish than him, ’cause I’m actually Irish!”
. So on these pews, inside this very church, the president’s antecedents on his Irish side worshipped here on a regular basis.”
Obama’s links to the Church of Ireland also stretch further south to Kilkenny city, where another branch of the family claims a connection to him. Jane de Montmorency Wright said she had traced Obama to the former Anglican bishop of Kilkenny, John Kearney. “The president’s ancestor was a bishop here in Kilkenny city where he is buried in St Canice’s cathedral, so there will be plenty for him to see,” she said.
Hayes and Moneygall’s other 299 residents are expecting droves of other Americans to follow in the president’s footsteps. A few hours earlier two couples from Chicago, the base from which Obama launched his presidential bid, turned up to have their pictures taken outside the bar.
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