Could Obama really be O'Bama?

[JODO 2]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070516/ap_on_...u/ireland_obama

Could Obama really be O'Bama?

By SHAWN POGATCHNIK, Associated Press Writer 1 hour, 5 minutes ago

DUBLIN, Ireland - Everybody knows presidential hopeful Barack Obama (news, bio, voting record) is blessed with the gift of the gab. Turns out it might be the Irish in him.

The junior senator from Illinois, seeking the Democratic nomination for the White House, has made much of his background as the son of a Kenyan father and American mother. Far less publicized is the European side of his family tree — including, new research has found, a great-great-great grandfather from the heart of Ireland.

A genealogy Web site, Ancestry.com, has spent months looking to pin down the origins of Obama's ancestors — including Fulmouth Kearney, who immigrated to the United States at 19 and has ties to Obama's Kansas-reared mother, Ann Dunham.

Kearney is a common name in Ireland with roots in many counties. But the Utah-based organization got lucky when it made a call in March to Canon Stephen Neill, a parish priest from the Anglican-affiliated Church of Ireland.

Neill had just inherited rolls of baptisms, marriages and deaths dating back to the 1700s from a late parishioner, who had kept the records in her home. In the index he found Joseph Kearney, Fulmouth's father, a cobbler in the village of Moneygall, County Offaly — which, back in those days of British rule, was known as King's County.

Neill hadn't been told by Ancestry.com researchers why they wanted to know about the Kearneys of Moneygall. When he called them weeks later with his find, he was surprised to learn that Fulmouth was an ancestor of the Democrats' rising star.

"Everyone here says he's going to have to call himself O'Bama from now on," Neill said in an interview. "People are fascinated that such a remarkable man, and a potential president of the United States, could be connected to such a tiny, unremarkable place as Moneygall."

The village today is home to about 300 people, has two pubs, a Catholic church, and a Gaelic sports ground. A busy highway cuts through the middle.

[almaty 19]

cool...the luck of the irish for the junior senator of illinois

[mawilson 2,133]

Could Osama really be O'Sama?

[Saddle Bronc 124]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/us_ele...008/7713759.stm

Dublin invites O'Bama back home

By Mark Simpson

BBC Ireland Correspondent

In the race to jump on the Obama bandwagon, the Irish have been quick off the mark.

Never mind the US President-elect's 87-year-old grandmother in Kenya, what about his great-great-great grandfather from Co Offaly?

No sooner had the new president's victory been confirmed, than he was being invited to visit by the Irish government, and to retrace his roots in the small village of Moneygall, on the road between Dublin and Limerick.

The village has a population of less than 300 and only has two pubs, but the locals reckon they could cope.

A welcome song has been written already.

The chorus goes: O'Leary, O'Reilly, O'Hare and O'Hara, there's no-one as Irish as Barack Obama. From the old Blarney stone, to the green hills of Tara, there's no-one as Irish as Barack Obama.

For extra effect, when the song and lyrics appear on YouTube, an apostrophe magically appears to give O'Bama (sic) a more Irish feel.

So will the 44th President of the United States follow his immediate predecessors Bush and Clinton by visiting the Irish Republic?

On the face of it, there's very little chance of it happening. By his own admission, he has quite enough on his plate with two wars, a global economic crisis and a planet in peril.

Shoemaker

But optimists will point to a comment Mr Obama made on the campaign trail.

Talking to ITN's Northern Ireland-born Washington correspondent John Irvine, Mr Obama put his hand on Irvine's shoulder and said: "There's a little village in Ireland where my great-great-great-great grandfather came from so I'm looking forward to going there and having a pint."

Before the Irish start rolling out the red carpet and putting up the red-white-and-blue bunting in Moneygall, this comment needs to be seen in context.

It was five-second soundbite, said with a smile during hundreds of hours of interviews on the campaign trail. What's more, Mr Obama got his Irish connection slightly wrong - it was his great-great-great-grandfather rather than his great-great-great-great-grandfather.

So what is the family link?

A Moneygall shoemaker called Fulmouth Kearney is Mr Obama's great-great-great grandfather. He emigrated to the US in 1850 at the tender age of 20.

He married Ohio-born Charlotte Holloway. They had eight children and so began the American family tree which culminated with Ann Dunham marrying Kenyan-born Barack Hussein Obama Snr, and the birth of Barack Jnr on 4 August 1961.

The Irish connection may be a distant-distant-distant one, but it didn't stop residents of Moneygall celebrating this week's US election result with a party at Hayes pub, and pouring a special pint in honour of their famous "son".

One of the local businesses already advertises itself as based in "the ancestral home of Barack Obama".

The village is reporting a flickering of interest from American tourists, with a couple from Indianapolis persuaded to interrupt a holiday in Limerick with an hour-long trip north to Moneygall.

Ian and Christy Walker told the Irish Times: "We went down to breakfast and the hostess said: 'Do you realise that Obama has Irish roots?' So we had to come to Moneygall."

They were the first, but they probably won't be the last post-election visitors. And if the dollars keep coming, Moneygall will live up to its name.

Ireland is more than 3,000 miles from the White House but there is a long-standing presidential appeal. John F Kennedy came to visit in 1963, Ronald Reagan came in 1984, while Bill Clinton made three trips and George Bush came in 2004.

Between them, Mr Bush and Mr Clinton made four presidential visits to Northern Ireland, largely because of their involvement in the peace process.

How much attention Barack Obama pays to Northern Ireland will become clear on 17 March when, by tradition, he marks St Patrick's Day at the White House.

Mr Clinton used to throw a big party. Under Mr Bush, the occasion was always a more sober affair.

Given his mounting in-tray, Mr Obama may be too busy to do anything.

He is, we are told, a serious man for serious times.

But if things settle down in the Oval Office, there is a pint waiting for him on the bar at Hayes pub in Moneygall, and it's already getting warm.

(eh, makes sense that his ancestry is "black Irish")