rockefeller centre

Isn’t Sinead O’Connor overdue a massive, grovelling apology from absolutely everybody?

In 1992, Sinead O’Connor ripped up a photograph of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live as a protest against paedophilia in the Catholic Church and the complicity of the church hierarchy. It was viewed as an act of career suicide. The following day, steamrollers crushed hundreds of her CDs outside Rockefeller Center to huge cheers from protesters. On the next SNL, presenter Joe Pesci quipped that “if it had been my show, I would have gave her such a smack.”

A few days later, O’Connor was booed off the stage at a Bob Dylan Tribute in Madison Square Garden. (That last clip is particularly well worth watching, by the way, both for the virulence of the abuse directed towards her, and the courage with which she stands up to it.) Read the rest of this entry »