Leprechaun Hats Decorated with a Bit of Stars and Stripes: Ireland Greets the Emperor

During the G8 Summit in June, held in Enniskillen in Northern Ireland, just across the border of the Republic, local councils."painted fake shop fronts and covered derelict buildings with huge billboards to hide the economic hardship being felt in towns and villages near the golf resort" where all the mucky-mucks met. Besides this Potemkin-village festival of capitalism, there was the obligatory effusiveness -- in the North and the Republic -- about the American Emperor and his wardrobe, woven from the glittering fabric of peace. Speaking for the less wishfully astigmatic, Irish Teachta Dála (Member of Parliament) Clare Daly excoriated the Taoiseach (Prime Minister) for his "unprecedented slobbering," and demanded the recognition of some naked truth.

Full video and transcript

Coming Clean: Irish Prime Minister Makes an Extraordinary, Moving Apology for the Magdalene Laundries

   

                             Daily Mail                                             Still from The Magdalene Sisters

If you don't know the story of the Magdalene Laundries, or have not seen the harrowing 2002 theatrical film The Magdalene Sisters  -- well, it’s another story of infuriating injustice, one of the hidden horrors of European Christian theocracy that you find hard to believe and don't really want to know about, so I hesitate to say that you should, but, yeah, you should. It’s been largely disregarded because its victims were poor, helpless women. Here’s the description of the institutions from RationalWiki:

A Magdalene laundry, also known as a Magdalene asylum [named for Mary Magdalene, the supposed prostitute], was a house for women who had "fallen" from "moral correctness"…

These asylums were a network of laundries operated by the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland and elsewhere, and run by the Sisters of a range of orders. Many women lived and died in these institutions with little hope of escape. The only way they could be freed was by being claimed by a relative. Often, family members were told that the women had moved away, and would be impossible to find because they had assumed new identities.