House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, 81, marked St. Patrick’s Day in the most Nancy Pelosi way imaginable. Apparently the band U2 has a tradition of sending over a limerick each year, and this year, the poetry harkened to the somber mood and gloom of our war-torn world. So Pelosi recited the new bit of verse by U2 lead singer and famous Irish person Bono at the Friends of Ireland St. Patrick’s Day lunch. It was, as the SFGate put it in their headline, “as cringe as you’d expect.”
Were Pelosi and Bono no doubt well-intentioned in their messaging? Sure. But this sort of performance is exactly the kind of empty symbolism that privileged, out-of-touch people on the left are rightfully called out for. It feels like a “how do you do, fellow kids” bid to stay topical, only about war crimes. Yes, I’d rather have a Speaker whose sentiments are with Ukraine rather than GOP paid shills for Russia, but this all felt in catastrophically bad taste.
Invoke Russia’s horrific war on Ukraine, where civilians are being targeted daily and hundreds have died, and then introduce a performance by Riverdance: it’s no surprise that Congressional Democratic leadership is often seen as fiddling and twiddling their thumbs while everything burns.
“I got this message this morning from Bono,” Pelosi begins. “… Bono has been a very Irish part of our lives.” Right. So:
What also jumped out to me about this lyrical work is that neither Bono nor Pelosi nor any of their many handlers thought to question the Soviet-era phrasing of “the Ukraine.” Adding that “the” was, for decades, a specific tactic to undermine an independent Ukraine. “Not so long ago, most Americans didn’t know better. They spoke of a country called The Ukraine,” Franklin Foer wrote in a February 2022 article in The Atlantic succinctly titled, “It’s Ukraine, Not The Ukraine,” which everyone involved here would have done well to read. “By appending the article to the name, they were inadvertently insulting the nation, as if Ukraine were merely a region, an object of subjection.” Happy St. Patrick’s Day, I guess.
As Time Magazine explained in 2014, after the Maidan Revolution in Ukraine that culminated in the ousting of pro-Russia President Viktor Yanukovych and paved the way for Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s rise:
“Ukraine is a country,” says William Taylor, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ukraine from 2006 to 2009. “The Ukraine is the way the Russians referred to that part of the country during Soviet times … Now that it is a country, a nation, and a recognized state, it is just Ukraine. And it is incorrect to refer to the Ukraine, even though a lot of people do it.”
I don’t know, it just feels like maybe a single copyeditor or fact-checker could have caught this one before Pelosi broadcast the poem live on C-SPAN? Former ambassador Taylor had pointed out that Ukrainians in the diaspora were particularly sensitive to the phrasing in 2014—and we imagine that is only magnified a thousandfold now for millions who are suffering at home, living abroad, or have been forced to flee their country in recent days. “Whenever they hear the Ukraine, they fume,” Taylor said. “It kind of denies their independence, denies their sovereignty.”
Pelosi reading a poem about “the Ukraine” to a busy, chattering room just prior to Riverdance taking the stage feels like it should be a piece out of The Onion, only this actually happened. I was reminded of when Democratic leaders, including Pelosi, gathered in 2020 wearing Kente cloths to solemnly take a knee in George Floyd’s memory for the cameras, then failed to reform the brutal state of policing in this country.
To discuss Vladimir Putin’s ruinous war in Ukraine in conjunction with a St. Patrick’s Day lunch is not on the whole an outrageous idea. Ireland has a long and laudable history of standing with oppressed people and nations worldwide due to their own experiences, and Bono’s conflation doesn’t ring entirely hollow. But the method in which this poem was recited—it felt tacked on for political cosplay points right before a cheery dance number—speaks to how far removed wealthy politicians and celebrities are from on-the-ground atrocities.
You or I might write a sorrowful lament to express our feelings of helplessness about Ukraine (and here are some ways to help), but Nancy Pelosi is in a position of power to actually affect U.S. policy. Her recitation came a mere day after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy appeared in a video feed before Congress, giving an “impassioned plea” for additional aid from the U.S. and imploring President Biden to help defend Ukraine and impose a no-fly zone.
“You are the leader of the nation, of your great nation,” Zelenskyy directed at Biden in his Congressional address. “I wish you to be the leader of the world. Being the leader of the world means to be the leader of peace.” That is a sentiment worth repeating widely, at luncheon and everywhere else.
Across the political aisle, the Internet had a field day in response to Pelosi reading the poem.
Wait, what’s that? You wanted to pore over the poem in its entirety?
To sum this whole situation up neatly, here’s writer Walter Chaw. “Just learning that Pelosi’s proud grandmother recitation of the elementary school poem Bono wrote about Ukraine was followed by Riverdance,” Chaw wrote on Twitter, “and if at any point the Dems would like to stop being a Simpsons gag, that would be great.”
(featured image: Getty)
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