The Irish Find What They’re Looking For

By MAUREEN DOWD
NYT

MONEYGALL, Ireland

THE unsentimental president is about to get a sentimental education.

Not everyone in Ireland is sure that Barack Obama has roots here as well as in Africa. “I have me doubts,” said an immigration official at Dublin Airport.

But don’t have the gall to tell that to Moneygall, a farming town 86 miles southwest of Dublin that is besotted with the wonder of being the ancestral home of the 44th American president.

This blocklong village (population 298) in County Offaly has erupted in a paroxysm of partying and marketing. Not since Jay Gatsby has there been such a frenzy of self-invention.

(More here.)