O'Bushwhacked in Dublin

On my recent trip to Dublin with my unforgettable sister, KP, I was thinking about how I had never been so comfortable with my American accent abroad. I hadn’t been overseas since 1999. Maybe it’s getting older that makes you just not care. I didn’t apologize for how I talk or feel bound to explain it or anything. I am who I am.

We were looking for the next haunted church on our packed “Death and Drag Tour 2008,” standing kind of in the middle of an intersection. An old man with a forest-green wool coat and cap, wearing three-day stubble and dried soup speckles on his chin, carrying a cane, saw us hesitating over our map and asked if he could help us find something.

At first his impression was of the kindly, gallant, avuncular Irish bloke with a pipe in his mouth of postcards and legend. This guy said “’tis” and was Straight from Central Casting (“We need a ‘Twinkle-eyed Old Irish Sod’...stat!”). The stereotypical Irish brogue that people use humorously outside Ireland to imitate the Irish is not exaggerated, they sound exactly like that.

But then on a dime, he descended into a curious, unmotivated assholishness, repeating back to us the name of the street we said we were looking for, but corrected (we said “St. James St.” to which he responded in that “uh, you’re an idiot” tone: “Ah, yes, James’s St.”), then offered to show us how to get there.

Pointing around the bend with his cane, he gave us the usual bullshit British Isles–style directions (everything is always “just here, ’round the corner there” but in reality it never is, it’s always hideously, fiendishly far away) that really didn’t even make sense. He invited us to follow him instead, but he walked at about five steps per minute, causing us to feel an awkwardness about... where to stand while he was “leading” us.

“Where ye from in Europe, then?” he asked. I said, “America.” His demeanor changed immediately, on the final “a” in the word America, from that odd disdain covered with phony kindliness ... to rage.

“How many millions has that bastard – excuse me, young lady [more fake gallantry] – Bush, killed? Hmm? How many millions?” he bellowed. I wanted to answer *maybe* 200,000 – that would be Iraqis and American-coalition soldiers combined, plus some Afghans and miscellaneous. That's an unforgivable sum. But not millions, and not killed personally by Mr. Bush, though I understood what the old man meant. Not answering him engendered more awkwardness, because after all, I’m a stickler for facts and I’m not going to take the “respect old people” thing into the realm of trafficking in wild hyperbole with them.

After a few more shouted questions it became clear he wasn’t getting the answers he wanted, but then we didn’t know what he wanted. Did he want us to say, "Oh, you're so right. We and all Americans are just demonic warmongers from hell. Thank you, sir." Or did he want a debate? Out of a lingering deference to his oldness, we put up with his ranting, though frankly I was getting a little put off by being reduced to a baffled whipping boy for Mr. Bush’s misdeeds, and not being believed when I protested that I DON'T SUPPORT MR. BUSH OR HIS POLICIES.

“We didn’t vote for him,” I insisted. “That’s what ye all say!” the implacable old sod yelled into my face.

Then he demanded to know why the Supreme Court had handed the 2000 election to Mr. Bush. Why. Why? We didn’t have a good answer for him. KP said, “They’re majority-Republican-appointed” or something like that. Then we moved out of the intersection and he gestured over to the right, around the corner. “Here, come ’round here, I want to talk to you about politics,” he said, looking around suspiciously like we were being followed.

I said, “We’re voting for O’bama!” To which he replied sourly, “Who’s that, the Republican?” This sounded the final gong on our abortive “political discussion.”

He kept turning again and again to the side as if to try to compose himself, yet he found he just couldn’t control his exaggerated, 19th-century-actorish indignation. But I think he sensed we were disturbed, bored and annoyed. My patience was worn to the nubbins by our failure to connect with this old man, and even old leprechauns with dried soup on their chin can pick up on that when it happens.

So, with no real segue except an implicit “here’s another outrage!,” he closed by asking us in a doomsday voice did we know what the Irish government had just done to the pensioners (or somesuch)? It was, of course, something “political” and infuriating to him. He ominously dared us to read it for ourselves, whatever it was, which, like the ugly American swine that I am, I don’t care about.

Moving himself backward and away at five steps per minute, he waved his arm in disgust at us and muttered out to a dwindle, leaving us only with those initial dubious directions and an earful of bombastic brogue: We equal Mr. Bush because we are Americans. All Americans are Mr. Bush. No grays here, just blacks and whites.

We were still in the process of shrugging this ugly incident off when, 10 minutes later, across town, we were again looking at a map… and, oh look, here’s an old woman saying, “Whar ye tryin’ to go? The river?” (The river was plainly visible about 100 feet from where we were standing.) I told her we didn’t need any help, but thanks ever so much, in a nice tone of voice. She said where ya from we said America and in the same unhinged howl as her soup-splattered countryman she lit into us about the evils of Mr. Bush. I really wasn’t listening this time. I made my own dismissive hand gesture at her.

In an apparent reference both to him and to the fact that I had declined her help with the map, she sputtered, “Yer the second American that’s let the Irish down!” It was such a clever, thought-provoking line that I couldn’t tell if maybe she was wowing us with her comedy, but when she turned and rejoined her friend and gestured back at us as though we were something horrible, then with broad stage mannerisms tried to “warn” another group of passersby that we were American, trying to incite a riot, really, I realized she was serious. “Don’t get lost in Ireland!” she hollered back at us from down the street, a veiled threat. I felt like we had time-travelled into a medieval village and were about to be rounded up and put in the stocks then burnt at the stake.

I’d read about the ferocious anti-Bush sentiments people encountered in foreign countries. Now I’ve experienced them and obviously it hurt my feelings, because I’m berating, in writing, these two old folks.

But I loved Ireland, and found everyone to be lovely except these two. They can go rot in whisky barrels buried under the River Liffey.

They’d probably like that.

I’m sure when I go back — and I will, because excepting these two rude old clueless Celtic cranks I was charmed silly by Ireland — I’m sure I’ll get my Yankee ass kissed, because we elected a biracial butterfly in the USA, so all is forgiven. But I don’t deserve any special credit for that, just as I don’t deserve the wrath of the leprechauns for Mr. Bush’s stuff.

Read more SM SHRAKE at You Wanna Know What? and The Shrake-tionary.

Tags: Barack Obama • Dublin • George W. Bush • International Opinions of the United States • Ireland • Politics • tourism • whisky

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