An Irishman

From A treasury of American anecdotes; sly, salty, shaggy stories of heroes and hellions, beguilers and buffoons, spellbinders and scapegoats, gagsters and gossips, from the grassroots and sidewalks of America by Benjamin Albert Botkin. 

Ex-Ambassador [Joseph P.] Kennedy has no illusions about being a Proper Bostonian. He would settle for the privilege of not being referred to in the Boston press as an Irishman. “I was born here,” he says. “My children were born here. What the hell do I have to do to be an American?”