Bush : Descendant of Traitors and Warlords

I know that it is unsportsmanlike to kick a fellow while he's down; but it never stopped Karl Rove, did it? Anyway, here is a gratuitous cheap shot at Bush which somehow eluded me when it was first published in January 2005. Being an Irishman with both a personal and a professional interest in my heritage (see the ad for my book in the sidebar below), I have a particular interest not only in our tradition of patriotism but our tradition of opportunism and selling-out to the highest bidder.

It seems George W. Bush has a couple of pretty prominent Irish ancestors--well, ancestors from Ireland, one Irish, one a Norman mercenary.

The US president's now apparent ancestor, Richard de Clare, Earl of Pembroke - known as Strongbow for his arrow skills - is remembered as a desperate, land-grabbing warlord whose calamitous foreign adventure led to the suffering of generations. Shunned by Henry II, he offered his services as a mercenary in the 12th-century invasion of Wexford in exchange for power and land. When he eventually died of a festering ulcer in his foot, his enemies said it was the revenge of Irish saints whose shrines he had violated.

Quite a pedigree, to be sure. But wait--it gets better (or, according to your point of view, worse): he's descended from Strongbow through his daughter, Aoife, who was married to a man whose name is synonymous in Irish history with treason and opportunism:

The genetic line can also be traced to Dermot MacMurrough, the Gaelic king of Leinster reviled in history books as the man who sold Ireland for personal gain.

Even before MacMurrough earned the title of Ireland's worst traitor by inviting Strongbow's invasion to save himself from a local feud, the Irish chieftain had a reputation for gore. One English chronicler told how MacMurrough, recognising the features of a personal enemy poking from a pile of severed heads after a battle, snatched up the rotting flesh and tore it with his teeth in a "hideous frenzy".

I swear. You can't make this stuff up.

Oh, it's a terrible thing to kick a man when he's down. Terrible altogether.