Maureen Dowd: The Wearing of the Green

Maureen Dowd is a columnist for the NYT.

...In leading a reconciliation with Ireland, reaching a white-gloved hand across the bloodstained tide, the queen has restored a luster dimmed by her 1992 “annus horribilis” and her insensitivity after the death of Princess Diana.

Her elevation to Ireland’s Prodigal Mother began last year when Liz, as The Irish Daily Star calls her, arrived for a four-day visit to the Irish Republic — the first by a British monarch in a century — wearing an emerald green suit, surrounded by ladies-in-waiting not reading “Fifty Shades of Grey” but wearing 40 shades of green....

Niall O’Dowd, the editor of New York’s Irish Voice and Irish Central Web site, was here and was struck by the utterly changed world.

“This will end Irish and British what-abouting,” he told me. “What about my suffering? Who suffered the most in this conflict? We must just say one death was too many and all are responsible. There’s no moral high ground here.”...