It is a glorious thing to be a pirate king

The Baltimore Sun

Gov. Martin O'Malley is on the cover of next month's Irish America magazine, which was throwing a dinner in his honor last night at the New York Yacht Club. Let's just say that Patricia Harty, editor-in-chief and co-founder of the 23-year-old publication, is a fan.

"Martin O'Malley is easy on the eye - very easy on the eye," Harty begins her piece. "He's handsome, young, and he's got talent. He paid his way through college playing music - Irish music. ... He's an orator in the truest sense. His speeches bring to mind Lincoln, J.F.K. and his brother Bobby, with whom he has been compared, and Martin Luther King.

"O'Malley is Governor of Maryland; he could be in Hollywood, or winning Grammy Awards, or at least making tons of money as an entertainment lawyer. But he's in public service."

The article is primarily a Q&A;, covering territory that's mostly familiar to O'Malley watchers (even those without blogs dedicated to the sport): biography, homeland security, Hillary Clinton.

The new stuff:

O'Malley said he hasn't been playing much music lately but also said O'Malley's March has "recorded the guts of an underground CD. ... [W]e don't know if it will ever see the light of day," he said. But it has a title: Banished to the Basement.

Asked if he will run for president someday, O'Malley said, "I am primarily interested in being the best governor I can be and as effective as I can possibly be." Primarily?

O'Malley's oldest child is named for "Grace O'Malley, The Pirate Queen, from whom O'Malley is descended." The 16th-century Grace chopped off her long hair and persuaded her sailor-father to take her to sea, according to that most reliable of on-deadline research tools, Wikipedia.

That family history, like all Irish history, is foreboding - for both Maryland taxpayers and a governor in need of a nickname.

"[T]he O'Malleys were a great seafaring family and taxed all those who fished off their coasts, which included fishermen from as far away as England," the wiki entry states. "Their leader bore the ancient Irish title of The O'Malley."

First, show up; second, dress for success

This week's Tawes Crab, Clam and Pol Bake in Crisfield attracted three people who'd like to unseat Rep. Wayne Gilchrest, but not Gilchrest himself. (He was said to be at work in Washington and sent reps, who handed out cardboard fans that said, "I'm a Gilchrest fan.")

One of them was state Sen. Andy Harris, a Republican challenging Gilchrest in the primary. Decked out in a yellow polo shirt with his name on it, Harris said that Wednesday was the first time he'd made the pilgrimage, even though he's been in politics for nine years. A Hopkins anesthesiologist, Harris said he usually can't get time off in July because that's when all the new residents start at the hospital, and they need all hands on deck to supervise them. Harris is working only part-time while he campaigns, so getting a day off this year wasn't a problem.

The two Democrats in the race raised questions about their fitness to dress for hot weather. Christopher Robinson wore a buttoned-down dress shirt with long, eventually rolled-up, sleeves and what surely was the only tie at Somers Cove Marina. (It was red and quite attractive, but still!)

The Cambridge defense attorney said he'd come straight from court. At least he'd left his jacket in the car. "That would have been silly," he said.

Robinson's rival for the Democratic nomination, Queen Anne's County State's Attorney Frank Kratovil, was in short sleeves, but his shirt was black. It wasn't has hot as it looked, he said. "This is like the Under Armour," he said.

Connect the dots

Nicole Richie was spotted getting takeout for two at California Pizza Kitchen in Annapolis Mall this week, according to the celebrity gossip site perezhilton.com. The gal who answered the phone at CPK confirmed it. The order: spinach-artichoke dip and Thai chicken pizza. Richie's boyfriend, Good Charlotte's Joel Madden, hails from Waldorf. ... WMAR's "town hall" meeting on crime aired last night - minus two panelists who probably would have taken center stage. One was Baltimore Police Commissioner Leonard Hamm, who was supposed to appear but got the boot instead. The other was former Commish Ed Norris, who was invited to the show, then uninvited after some of the other panelists objected, said David Silverstein, WMAR's news director. The station decided to do a separate segment with Norris, so he probably wound up getting more attention. "I think it's pathetic frankly," Norris said. "This is a really serious problem with people literally dying and the fact that people won't sit on a panel with me for political reasons is disgraceful." ... Three ex-governors met at Jimmy's restaurant in Fells Point this week for breakfast, confirmed Jimmy Filipidis, son of the owner. Bob Ehrlich, William Donald Schaefer and Marvin Mandel were there about an hour, eating eggs, greeting fans and, no doubt, talking politics. ... At the Tawes, lobbyist Bruce Bereano showed no signs of suffering from the O'Malley administration's professed Bereano ban. Wearing a peachy-Hawaiian shirt, he rattled off the names of more than a dozen current and former state lawmakers who stopped by his tent. Mandel, Comptroller Peter Franchot and a couple of members of Team Ehrlich - Dennis Castleman and Paul Schurick - also popped in, Bereano said.

Copyright © 2021, The Baltimore Sun, a Baltimore Sun Media Group publication | Place an Ad
72°