Posted 2:59 PM by Robert

Culture Clash

A New Yorker magazine article notes:

One of the lucky charms that [Teresa Heinz Kerry] wears on a necklace (another is a four-leaf clover that Kerry gave her one Valentine’s Day) is a religious medal that her dying mother received from her confessor.

John Kerry gave his wife a four leaf clover on Saint Valentine’s Day?! A man who spent decades impersonating an Irishman still can't figure out that it's called a shamrock ("seamrog," Irish for "little clover") and that you give them on Saint Patrick's Day? You give your sweety little heart-shaped things on Saint Valentine's Day, Senator.

One can just imagine him scribing the gift card that way, too:

Dear Tere - Here's a nice little Saint Valentine's four leaf clover for your charm necklace! - Your Jonhny-pooh.

Can we talk? I mean, privately? Is the man some kind of exotic well-feathered idiot? Speak freely, I promise I won't tell. Heck, he probably saved it up and gave it to her in Lambert Field.

Of course, Saint Patrick's shamrock has three leaves - not four - and is said (dubiously) to have been used by the Saint to explain the the idea of the Christian Trinity – that in the one God there are three divine beings: the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Nothing in any of that has ever stopped the Irish or Fibonacci (who, of course, is Irish on Saint Patrick's Day) from considering the four-leafed variety to be the especially lucky ones. Three leafed clovers were also sacred to the pre-Christian Irish Triple Goddess, such as Brighid (later reconstituted as a Catholic saint). The lucky four leafed clover was symbolic of the wheel of the seasons. Some say that the four leaves can represent Hope, Faith, Love and Luck. White four leaf clovers were thought to drive off ill-intent. Sure and begorah, Senator! Top o' th' mornin' to ya!

Sheesh!

And now this:

Less than two years after voting to give Bush authority to invade Iraq, the Democratic candidate said ... "Saddam Hussein was a brutal dictator who deserves his own special place in hell," he added. "But that was not, in itself, a reason to go to war. The satisfaction we take in his downfall does not hide this fact: We have traded a dictator for a chaos that has left America less secure."