In the weeks and months after Sinead O'Connor tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on live television, commentators in the media sought to explain the motives of her protest. Very few, however, made use of the traditional tools of journalism: interviews, research, and textual analysis. Instead, most commentators seem to have consulted their own imaginations.
I remember that moment. I was sitting on the couch with my best friend Scott, at his house. We took it seriously-- looked at each other in silence for a moment, then talked about it. I got chills....DeCurtis and Roeper provided their own speculative reasons for O'Connor's protest plucked from American headlines at the time, like access to contraception, abortion, and the Troubles. Almost entirely overlooked in the controversy was the text of O'Connor's protest—a Bob Marley song, "War," with lyrics taken from a speech by Haile Selassie. O'Connor had replaced out-of-date lyrics about apartheid African regimes with the phrase "child abuse, yeah," repeated twice with spine-stiffening venom.
Also inexplicably ignored were O'Connor's own words, in an interview published in Time a month after her SNL appearance:
Her interviewer seemed confused by the connection O'Connor was making between the Catholic Church and child abuse...It's not the man, obviously—it's the office and the symbol of the organization that he represents... In Ireland we see our people are manifesting the highest incidence in Europe of child abuse. This is a direct result of the fact that they're not in contact with their history as Irish people and the fact that in the schools, the priests have been beating the shit out of the children for years and sexually abusing them. This is the example that's been set for the people of Ireland. They have been controlled by the church, the very people who authorized what was done to them, who gave permission for what was done to them.
I didn't understand what her intentions were-- I assumed she was referring to politics in Ireland and women's rights.
Funny how the reception of ideas changes over time. Back then, the interviewer couldn't comprehend what she was saying about child abuse in the Catholic Church. Now, it's beyond well-known-- it's a cliche.
Anyway, I thought it was an interesting article. And as for Sinead, well, I'm still a fan.
. And then when they come back, they can 
