And Liam Neeson is not actually Michael Collins either

You'll never beat the Irish...when it comes to our celebrities having a higher profile in the US than our politicians. For, in the planning for the Reagan funeral service on Friday:

Irish tenor Ronan Tynan has been asked by Nancy Reagan to sing at the funeral of her husband. Mr Tynan will sing Ave Maria and Amazing Grace.

but,

Other countries, however, held off final plans until their embassies in Washington received the official invitation to attend the ceremony at the [Capitol] rotunda on Thursday and the funeral on Friday.

Even Ireland, the home of Mr. Reagan’s forebears, who hailed from Ballypooreen in County Tipperary, had yet to hear from the administration.

"The funeral is by invitation only," said Josephine Doyle, administrator at the Irish Embassy here. "We don’t know whether it will be Prime Minister Bertie Ahern or President Mary McAleese. We’re waiting to be invited."

Since then, Mary got the invitation, but Ronan will still have the primo spot amongst the Irish at the service. And yes, that business about Reagan being from Ballyporeen. Given the Boston Globe's obsession with John Kerry's non-Irishness, we eagerly await their crack team analysis of this factoid, which doubtless they are working on as we type.

UPDATE: Whatever about Reagan's actual credentials as a Tipperary man, he has a spiritual descendant alive and well in Dublin. Various people have run the risk this week of raising Reagan's tendency to "remember" his role in events that he could not have been a part of, such as being in Europe during World War II. Lord Mayor of Dublin Royston Brady, a member of Ireland's permanent party of government, Fianna Fail, is also a candidate in the country's European Parliament elections on Friday. Now, not to put too fine a point on it, there's already abundant evidence that Royston is not the sharpest knife in the drawer, but such are the people who get elevated to stardom in Irish politics.

But two days before the election, the Irish media have performed the valuable service of airing a piece of supposed family lore claimed by Royston: that his father's taxi was hijacked and used by bombers in a devastating attack in Dublin in 1974. This claim, which is considered implausible, might be taken as a bit of harmless Zelig-like fantasising by Royston, except for the serious business that the crime remains unsolved, to the distress of the bereaved, and progress in solving it has been hindered by Fianna Fail's odd reluctance to press the British government for potentially valuable information on it. It is therefore unlikely that Royston will be able to let his "recollection" float above the facts in the way that Reagan managed.