An article originally posted to History News Network and republished by Newsweek this week denounced conservative "loudmouths" of Irish ancestry.
"Once the biggest names, faces, and voices on television were Huntley and Brinkley, Cronkite, Murrow, even John Chancellor and Dan Rather, all sober, serious Americans—and all Protestants too," wrote Franklin & Marshall College professor Van Gosse.
"Now we have angry loudmouths with names like O'Reilly, Hannity, Buchanan, and, lurking back there with his Cheshire smile, the dissolute but scary Bannon," Van Goose wrote.
Gosse noted that Irish-Americans were once reliable Democratic voters, but by the 1960s "Catholics, especially Irish Catholics, had finally made it and become fully 'white,' a long process indeed. Having fought their way to full inclusion, many were intent on pulling up the drawbridge."
Gosse lamented that Irish conservatives could not be more like Irish-American William Z. Foster, "the most important figure in the history of the American communism, buried in the Kremlin Wall after a state funeral in 1961."
He noted that the "conservative loudmouths" identified in the article "do not represent all Irish-Americans." He went on to point out what specifically each of the identified men have brought "to the Irish-American portrayal of white anger." He characterized their various backgrounds before stating "none has any connection to Ireland or organized Irish-American life."
"To the devil with Bill O'Reilly and Bannon," he said. "They're no more Irish than I am."
The op-ed came only a few days after MSNBC hosts Lawrence O'Donnell and Joy Reid insisted White House chief of staff John Kelly must be a racist because he grew up in an Irish neighborhood in Boston.