The other day in work someone laughed at a customer mispronouncing a word. I said “it’s a perfectly cromulent word” and nobody got the joke.
A little bit of me died inside
Watching Cook Like a Chef on RTE and Mark Moriarty was using potatoes tonight. And dear god the amount of butter used could have given 50 people heart attacks.
Butter really does make everything taste better
Los Angeles, 1946. Maureen O'Hara stood before an immigration clerk, holding papers that would make her an American citizen.
She’d passed every requirement.
The exam was finished. The process complete. All that remained was a signature.
Then she looked down at the documents spread across the desk.
Everywhere she had written “Irish” had been crossed out. Her nationality. Her heritage. Her identity. Gone. In another hand, one chilling word had been inserted instead: “English.”
Again and again.
Irish erased. English inserted.
The woman who fought pirates onscreen and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with John Wayne felt something fierce rise inside her chest.
“I’m terribly sorry,” she said, her Dublin accent cutting through the cold air of the Los Angeles immigration court, “but I can’t forswear an allegiance I don’t have. I have no allegiance to England at all—I’m Irish.”
The clerk stared back, confused and irritated.
This wasn’t how these meetings were supposed to go.
Maureen FitzSimons had been born in Ranelagh, Dublin, on August 17, 1920. She came to America as a teenager after Charles Laughton spotted something extraordinary in her screen test. He persuaded her to shorten her surname, offering O’Hara or O’Mara.
She chose O’Hara.
But she never chose to stop being Irish.
By 1946, Hollywood knew her as the fiery Queen of Technicolor. A woman who performed her own stunts and refused to be reduced to decoration.
But the American immigration system saw only one thing: a British subject.
The reasoning was painfully simple. Ireland had still been tied to the United Kingdom when she was born. Even after the Irish Free State emerged, much of the world—including the United States—continued classifying Irish citizens as British subjects.
To Maureen, it wasn’t paperwork.
It was erasure.
The clerk sent her before an immigration judge, certain he would settle the matter. The judge repeated what the records said. Washington considered her English. Her papers would reflect it.
Maureen stood her ground.
“I cannot accept American citizenship under those circumstances,” she said.
Washington was contacted for confirmation.
The answer returned unchanged: English.
“Your Honor,” she replied, calm but blazing, “I’m not responsible for your antiquated records in Washington. Thank you very much, but I cannot accept citizenship under those conditions.”
She turned toward the door.
She would rather leave without citizenship than sign her name beneath a lie.
Then she stopped and faced the courtroom one last time.
“Do you realize what you’re trying to do to my children and grandchildren?” she asked. “You’re trying to take away their right to boast about their wonderful Irish mother and grandmother.”
The judge threw up his hands in defeat.
“Give her anything she wants on her papers,” he snapped.
Maureen walked out with documents finally marked Irish.
And from that day forward, thousands of immigrants would no longer have their identity erased by the word “British.”
Because one woman refused to let the world decide who she was.
@Ginger_Tucci Eh WTF? This shite is a thing? What the fuck is going on in the world. Can no one bring their so sons up any longer with just a little bit of respect for women and people in general. And a little bit of empathy? This is just so fucking hideous
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To be in win the chance of winning the prayer enter the raffle.
$100 per entry
In a move I can only describe as pure genius I locked myself out of the house today.
It’s also slightly disturbing how quickly a locksmith can open your door