So, what ethnicity is Katherine Maher, the CEO of NPR?
Ms. Maher is mostly of interest because her thought patterns are so typical of her sex and class during the Great Awokening.
Maher is an Irish name. (In case you are wondering, comedian Bill Maher is Jewish on his mother’s side and Irish on his father’s.) Ms. Maher’s parents and both of her sets of grandparents were all married in Catholic wedding ceremonies.
Both of her maternal grandparents were active in Catholic charities. So, she might be 100% Irish Catholic, although her father’s name of Gordon Roberts Maher strikes me as sounding more Orange Irish than Green Irish. Perhaps she’s 100% Irish and 75% Irish Catholic. (Her interest in improving Arab countries sounds rather Protestant, like basketball coach Steve Kerr’s Arabist ancestors. Her father spent some time in the oil shipping business and seems to have done business in the port of Aden in Yemen.)
She’s definitely lace curtain Irish rather than shanty Irish. For example, her maternal grandmother’s father owned an insurance company, an industry in which Irish Catholics early on tended to achieve financial success in America. Her paternal grandfather was an IBM executive.
Mark Wahlberg explains the difference between lace curtain and shanty Irish to Leonardo DiCaprio in The Departed:
