PhiloeBedoe: What always pissed me off about the pope ripping picture stunt was the idea that in her mind this was fine but 2 years earlier she boycotted a SNL show because Andrew Dice Clay told some pussy jokes.

You can't see the problem in your logic? In the case of Dice, she was upset about a man spewing hateful jokes, making women his victim. In the case of the pope she was upset about the Catholic church victimizing children. Andrew Dice Clay was not trying to enlighten us to a horrible travesty that was continuing (and probably still continues). He was just doing it for gratuitous reasons, laughter, and profit.

PhiloeBedoe: I'm saying if you expect the right to free speech then give that same right to others, even if they do tell JOKES, that you don't agree with.

Right...free speech...the same thing she expressed by boycotting the show.

By now, the history of sexual and physical abuse in the Irish Catholic school system is familiar. As late as 2007, the Church controlled 93% of the schools in Ireland, giving most children no hope of escaping the often-sadistic system

Wow.

It was sad to see her star obliterated after her SNL showing. I liked her music.

At age 15, Sinead O'Connor was caught shoplifting and was sent to an institution much like those investigated in the Commission Report, a Magdalene laundry full of teenage girls who had been judged too promiscuous or uncooperative for civil society. "We worked in the basement, washing priests' clothes in sinks with cold water and bars of soap," O'Connor has written of her experience. "We studied math and typing. We had limited contact with our families. We earned no wages. One of the nuns, at least, was kind to me and gave me my first guitar." On the grounds of one Dublin Magdalene laundry, a mass grave was uncovered which included 22 unidentified bodies. These institutions have since caught the eye of the United Nations Committee against Torture.

After 18 months, with the help of her father, O'Connor escaped from this brutal system. Very quickly, her voice carried her to stardom. Her former captors were the "enemy" O'Connor spoke of when, as a 25-year-old with a once-in-a-lifetime live television audience, she tore the picture of the Pope and exhorted her viewers to "fight" him. The picture she tore, in fact, had belonged to her abusive mother, then already dead. "The photo itself had been on my mother's bedroom wall since the day the farker was enthroned in 1978," she told the Irish magazine Hot Press in 2010.

Redemption? One can only hope.

AverageAmericanGuy: I always figured it was some kind of Northern Ireland Protestant/Catholic thing.

She wouldn't get too much guff for tearing up a picture of Benedict today. But John Paul II was a beloved figure. A kind of Reaganesque figure for the Catholic Church.

JPII is still rightly revered: given the hidebound nature of the organization he loved, served and led,
he was amazingly open minded. He had a commitment to social justice and interfaith dialog that few
people in history, let alone Catholic Popes, have ever shown.

Unfortunately, he was not an administrator. He had 'field experience', but in his heart he was an
academic and a mystic. His experience in WWII and being a church leader in an officially atheistic
nation gave him a lot of hands-on skills, but it also put him outside of the group-think of the mother
church, and that meant that when he was elected Pope he had to rely on people like the current
Pope Benedict XVI to keep things running, and those men were as concerned with the protection
of the temporal and political power of the church as they were with matters of faith.

Now, I'm not going to let JPII off the hook: even as a lapsed Catholic I do great admiration for him
but in the final analysis even if he was infirm to varying degrees during the last years of his papacy,
the fact is that he had to have known about the more unsavory practices that the church was a party
to and didn't do anything about it (that we know of). He was just as much an enabler as Benedict XVI
was (Though I truly believe that Benedict XVI was a full-blown accessory to these criminal priests who
actively and knowingly protected them and is still doing so by not allowing their crimes to be
answerable to civil authorities).

It sickens me that the Church has waived their rules to fast-track JPII into sainthood because they are
pretty obviously trying to keep the faithful distracted from the real problems in the church (though,
really, the faithful don't care, which only compounds the tragedy of it all).

Any hope for reform of the church died with JPII for at least the next 2 generations (not that there was
much hope to begin with, sad to say).

CommieTaoist: I remember watching it live and actually being impressed by it in a, "wow, that took balls" way. Today such an act wouldn't bat an eye but for the time, and to a 13 year old boy, it was an interesting moment. It wasn't until much later that I learned she had a justifiable issue with the Catholic Church and hence the pope and hence her action was at least marginally meaningful and not, as we would call it now, just attention whoring. I don't know if I would even classify it as comparable to radio shock-jock type stuff. That said, she knew what she was getting into and everyone is responsible for their own actions so I don't feel bad that her career tanked afterwards, that's life.

Her career didn't tank afterwards because of that, it tanked because she never had another hit. And since her one hit was a cover, she didn't have a whole lot going for her.

It reminds me that there was a time when the Catholics were far far more influential in this country than they are now. A time that I'm glad is gone.

I'm kinda thinking she coulda cashed her check and 15 minutes, but she did shiate (rationally or irrationally) on live TV, and she went for broke.

Most of us would choke, but everyone remembers what she did, and possibly some altar boys felt a little less alone, knowing only what they know, and still can't speak of.

If Sinead brought them a little silent support that evening, then I feel her mission has been met.


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jaylectricity: PhiloeBedoe: What always pissed me off about the pope ripping picture stunt was the idea that in her mind this was fine but 2 years earlier she boycotted a SNL show because Andrew Dice Clay told some pussy jokes.

You can't see the problem in your logic? In the case of Dice, she was upset about a man spewing hateful jokes, making women his victim. In the case of the pope she was upset about the Catholic church victimizing children. Andrew Dice Clay was not trying to enlighten us to a horrible travesty that was continuing (and probably still continues). He was just doing it for gratuitous reasons, laughter, and profit.

I'm not judging Clay's act or Sinead's protests of the Catholic Church or trying to compare or equate the two. I'm saying if you expect the right to free speech then give that same right to others, even if they do tell JOKES, that you don't agree with.

The English Major: fusillade762: Didn't Nora Dunn or some other cast member boycott, too?

Yup. I think that was her last show. The behind the scenes stuff about the Dice Clay incident is quite interesting. And I'll say this for Clay; he is quite articulate and is very self-aware of his persona. I remember watching it the night he hosted and how even our local news was reporting on Dunn's dunderheadedness.

Also, it's just an act. He's a nice guy.