But the discussion started out, and continued, with the Dreadful Violent Irish and the Poor Downtrodden Protestants, and I'm sorry, but that's not the half of it.

You know this, and I am therefore yelling at the wrong person.

There was a sea change in thinking about the IRA in the US quite a while ago. Otherwise many of the advances you site would not have happened.

Just as a "for instance":

I don't know how long you've been in the US, but if it's been long enough, you might remember a TV drama called "Lou Grant", which followed that character (played by Ed Asner) into print journalism from the TV newsroom of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show". It was on the air from 1977 until 1982.

One episode dealt with an assistant editor who happened to be Irish-American, and with an Irish-American bar that he frequented. Men who he eventually came to understand were somehow connected to the IRA were also regulars there. Eventually, he dissociated himself from their company. At the end of the episode, several of them came in to announce that another violent act had been committed in the name of Irish nationalism. The woman who owned the bar (played by Rue McClanahan) listened to the news, and said to the assembled cheering patrons, "A child has died. That's no reason to celebrate." And on that note, the episode ended.

Television, contrary to what some of its critics think, doesn't lead public opinion; it follows. If the tide of Irish-American opinion had not already turned against IRA violence, it would never have been possible for them to broadcast that episode on St. Patrick's Day, 1980.