Now here’s a woman.

You know this woman is important because she is a member of Fail Valhalla?¢‚Ǩ‚Äùthose public figures that people everywhere immediately laugh at and dismiss the second their name is mentioned. Those are usually the important ones.

17 years after Ms. O’Connor ripped up a photo of the Pope on stage to protest institutionalized child abuse in the Church, I think it’s about time to get over it and re-evaluate her career. Think about that simple, potent symbolic action. This woman had perhaps the greatest voice of the 1980s. She could have easily ridden to riches and easy fame and still be cranking out a Christmas album every year of traditional hymns, and be bigger than freaking Enya. But, instead, she chose to use her fame to tell the truth.

Think about how gangster that is. This woman has bigger balls than every tiny-dicked rapper or wannabe “antichrist” ever to walk a stage. At the height of her fame, when she had the adoration of the world, she hit the point where most celebrities are faced with the choice to either compromise their vision and sell out completely to the machine, or kill themselves because “they can’t handle fame.” But instead of either of those oh-so-typical choices, Sinead picked up the flaming sword and used her opportunity to strike directly at the heart of evil and corruption. And mind you, this was way before Church sexual abuse scandals were headline news in the United States.

And, of course, they ruined her career and her life for it. Did she choose her martyrdom, as her own Imitation of Christ? Yes, she did. Is the world a better place because of it? There’s no way to say.

But my god… here’s a woman you can respect. So say I for all forgotten heroes, truth-tellers and enemies of the Child Rapists.

at the time of the incident i was only 12. so to me she was only famous for ripping up the foto. i didn’t realize she was already so world renowned . admittedly her name invokes a sense of ambiguity for myself.

Leave it to Mr. “I Love Kate Bush” to write this. If I used emoticons, that one would be a wink.

I think the point is that while her performance was ballsy, it was ultimately a gesture which changed very little. I agree that she deserves a lot of respect for choosing the route she chose as opposed to other, more lucrative avenues. But it didn’t stop any children from getting raped.

It also strikes me as important to point out that she didn’t use the time to educate people at all. She merely ripped up a picture of the Pope, made a cryptic statement, and that was about it. Most people watching probably didn’t have a clue what she was trying to say (beyond “Pope = bad” which is really far from the point), and so she might as well have ripped up a picture of Don Knotts as far as they were concerned. Wouldn’t it have been approximately a thousand times better had she articulated an argument against the Catholic Church with a little more substance than “FIGHT THE REAL ENEMY?”

Expressions of celebrity outrage can be awesome. But in the final analysis they are little more than one person shrieking at a wall. Movements of regular people are required for sweeping social change. I know of comparatively few people fighting for social justice who were inspired by their favorite celeb, and if that’s why they’re fighting the good fight, they usually don’t last long.

“Sinead picked up the flaming sword and used her opportunity to strike directly at the heart of evil and corruption.” Sounds more like she stuck it in her own heart. Her actions may have been brave, cathartic, and a million other things. But I think you would be very hard pressed to make a case that they were in any way politically efficacious.

Saying that if somebody makes a gesture of hope, but they don’t fix the problem they were criticizing, they fail, is being completely out of touch with reality, and an easy enough thing to say from a cobwebbed armchair. Is the man run over by a tank in Tianamen Square “meaningless” because he didn’t single-handedly defeat Communism or at the ... Read Moreleast hand out pamphlets against it? Is the monk who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War “meaningless” because he didn’t stop the war? No, and no.

Above should read:

Saying that if somebody makes a gesture of hope, but they don’t fix the problem they were criticizing, they fail, is being completely out of touch with reality, and an easy enough thing to say from a cobwebbed armchair. Is the man run over by a tank in Tianamen Square “meaningless” because he didn’t single-handedly defeat Communism or at the least hand out pamphlets against it? Is the monk who burned himself alive to protest the Vietnam War “meaningless” because he didn’t stop the war? No, and no.

I was horrified by the torches-and-pitchforks reaction to her simple gesture.

When you get right down to it, we’re talking about people who are too aliterate to even know what an iconoclast is.

Your post on Sinead O’Connor is pure poetry.  Thank you.

I love the songs she did with Massive Attack, so thus, she has done no wrong in my mind.

In addendum to my above statement…