fun

The primary

Dear Barack,

Your cousin Kevin's such an ijit, and because he holds the dual nationality I can't say which side of the family should be more ashamed of him, the Irish or the Americans. Now you were raised in Hawaii and Indonesia, on the antipodes from the Gaeltacht, so at least you have an excuse. Kevin grew up here in Armagh and moreover was interned at Long Kesh, and still he hardly speaks two words of Irish.

I can only say the Lads found him a useful fool: they let him mix the gelignite in this little shed, and never let him get close to an Armalite or know any dangerous information. In fact they spun some wonderful Irish fiction to him, in order to mislead the Brits just in case, but to no avail. He wouldn't talk when they got him, so he was tolerated around the H-block, just barely.

So anyhow, we round up all the American citizens in the neighbourhood and have a terrible time trying to explain to Kevin that, just like Irish is a different language from English, the American system works differently from what we have here in the Six Counties. No, they don't have a Daíl, much less a Taoiseach -- that much we have a relatively easy time explaining to him. It's the concept of voting against a Republican that wasn't penetrating his thick skull. It took and old photo of Maggie Thatcher and Ronald Reagan together, and a reference to the almanac that shows that Reagan was a Republican, to begin to suggest to him that Republican is not atall the same thing in Ireland and America.

So we get him registered all proper, and we get him oriented, and we all go down to the Democrats Abroad primary, and what does he do? He sees a stack of provisional ballots on the table and insists on getting one. "No," we tell him. "You want to make sure your vote counts." But he's adamant. "I'm for the Provos, and you'd give me a Stickie ballot? You want me to betray the movement?"

"Do you see any Stickies in the room?" I says. "Well, I dunno," he says.

As it turns out, the chairwoman at the polls won't let him have a provisional ballot and that's that.

After all was said and done, the Lads came through for you, I'm happy to say. I tell you, though, it was quite a chore delivering the votes in Armagh this time.

Your uncle,

Seamus O'Bama