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Sinéad O'Connor ripping up a picture of Pope John Paul II on SNL in 1992 (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world to c/pics@lemmy.world

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Sinéad O'Connor 1966-2023

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[+] BettyWhiteInHD@lemmy.world 193 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

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[-] AttackBunny@lemmy.world 131 points 1 year ago

Which was recently proven true too. She was basically cancelled for being a good human and trying to call out some shitty things.

[-] RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 65 points 1 year ago

Some of the abuse was well-known at the time. The mistreatment of women and children in Church-run Irish schools and workhouses throughout the 19th and 20th centuries was increasingly well documented by the 1990s. Mass graves were discovered in the 1970s, although in the 1990s the church was still publicly denying any responsibility. Hence Ms. O'Connor's protest.

I don't know what Ms. O'Connor knew about the ongoing abuse of children by priests and the church coverup efforts. But I'm sure she wasn't surprised, as she was well-acquainted with the Church's perfidy.

[-] AttackBunny@lemmy.world 16 points 1 year ago

Iirc she was put into a catholic asylum type place when she was a teenager, and treated terribly. Presumably it’s where she saw up close and personal what the church was really doing.

It’s been a long time, but in the 80s, I recall the Catholic Church being known to be exactly what we know it’s to be now, but not in the same way. It wasn’t as widely accepted. As much as I despise this statement, it was also a VERY different time.

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[-] TopRamenBinLaden@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Thanks for bringing perfidy to my vocabularies' attention. What a good word.

"Don't give that Loch Ness monster perfidy!"

[-] SwingingTheLamp@midwest.social 4 points 1 year ago

Honestly, I have never imagined the Loch Ness Monster as faithless or disloyal before today.

[-] SulaymanF@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

It was well known in Ireland, but not in the U.S. That’s why it was such a shocking moment and National headline. It wasn’t until the early 2000s that the scandals started popping up across the US and people decades later realized she had a point.

[-] RickRussell_CA@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

So, I was in my 30s when O'Connor did her thing on SNL, and I definitely remember the context being discussed here in the US. There was a (brief) national conversation at the time about why she would do this, and a fair amount of attention on the 19th and early 20th century abuses by the church's schools and workhouses, where "women of questionable virtue" were held against their will and forced into labor. When O'Connor was interviewed about it, she talked about the abuse of women and girls.

I do agree that what the church calls "the crisis" -- the revelation that active pedophiles had been using their positions in the church to cover up their extensive crimes -- was not well known until the 2000s.

[-] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 12 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The issue was that it wasn’t really widely known at the time. Or at least, it was easier to handwave away as rumors and speculation. The church was still doing a pretty good job of keeping a lid on all their issues. So when she did it, all the Catholics immediately disregarded the protest and jumped on the “she hates God and Catholics” bandwagon. Some of the abuse was well known, but it wasn’t recognized to be anywhere near as pervasive and ubiquitous as it is these days.

She essentially made herself an easy target by not explicitly clarifying what she was protesting. Lots of people simply saw her ripping up the photo of the pope without any context as to why, so it was easy to take out of context.

[-] Syldon@feddit.uk 8 points 1 year ago

Sorry to disillusion you but this was well known in the 70's. It was a standing joke. People knew they just never confronted the issue because ethical standards were pretty low back then.

[-] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 4 points 1 year ago

Yes and no. It was known among the churchgoers. The altar boys knew which priests to avoid, and why. The parishioners knew, or at least heard rumors. And when a priest was suddenly transferred across the country/internationally, it was pretty widely accepted as code for “they got caught.” But they didn’t tend to talk about it outside of the church, and the news was still afraid to be labeled as anti-catholic if they reported on it.

So the general public only really heard the jokes, rumors, and speculation. And the church had the plausible deniability to allow them to screech about being unfairly attacked. And it worked. The church happily played the role of the victim, and the general public turned on her.

[-] Syldon@feddit.uk 1 points 1 year ago

The general public were the congregations that went to the churches. I was brought up in a catholic system in the 70's.

[-] AttackBunny@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago

Iirc she was a pretty young adult when she did it. Not the age bracket for thinking ahead.

I get what you’re saying, but at the same time, even young me wanted to know more about what she was saying because it was clearly real.

I also agree it was a different time and the way info was handled and disseminated was wildly different too.

She just got the absolute shit end of the deal though.

[-] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

I watched Goodfellas last week for the first time. Pretty sure that's who Joe Peeci really thinks he is. I liked things better when I only knew him for My Cousin Vinny.

[-] Vaggumon@lemmy.world 140 points 1 year ago

She called out the shitty catholic church, got her career ruined for it, and 2 months later all the molestation stuff came out. Not once did she get an apology. RIP, Nothing truly did compare to you.

[-] PagingDoctorLove@lemmy.world 57 points 1 year ago

I was just a kid at the time but still remember the media making a huge villain out of Sinead. They made it seem like she was mentally unstable, but she was just years ahead of everyone else. I'm sad that she didn't get to see this outpouring of support and appreciation while she was alive. She died far too young, and I hope it wasn't by suicide. I hope she wasn't in pain.

[-] digdilem@feddit.uk 50 points 1 year ago

Poor lass. I don't think it was very easy being her.

[-] Mrkawfee@lemmy.world 52 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Her 17 year old son committed suicide 18 months ago. I can't imagine how awful that would have been for her.

[-] Arkatakor@lemm.ee 42 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

“It’s no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society” ~ Sinéad

[-] salient_one@lemmy.villa-straylight.social 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

That appears to be a paraphrased notion from Jiddu Krishnamurti's works, quoted and attributed to him in The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity (1975) by Mark Vonnegut.

[-] Arkatakor@lemm.ee 5 points 1 year ago

Oh, I was not aware. Thank you for clarifying and providing the author's work.

[-] zipsglacier@lemmy.world 38 points 1 year ago

Wild thing about this picture is that Wikipedia is basically the only permanent place it can be found. The post there says it's from Getty, with a link, but that link is now broken. SNL sure isn't letting this footage out. From the WP article: all the rebroadcasts of that episode use footage from the rehearsals, where she held up a different picture and didn't tear it up.

[-] Wenchette@lemmy.ml 21 points 1 year ago

I never understood how upset people got over a piece of paper being ripped up. It makes no sense to me

[-] kobra@lemm.ee 11 points 1 year ago

because they didn't want to see/know the truth

[-] teydam@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago

Just read about all this today in her obit, wow. What a complicated person. I love that she was proud till the end of her act, considered it a success, and told us all that people who get abused as children are gonna be fucked up for life like she was. Hr own son committed suicide. So much pain and sadness, but I think I want to get a poster of her as a reminder of this.

[-] altima_neo@lemmy.zip 17 points 1 year ago

Nothing ever did compare to her

[-] art@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

I knew in 1992 she was badass for this. The more backlash she got the more I was convinced she was right.

[-] xuxebiko@kbin.social 12 points 1 year ago

RIP, you brave beautiful punk soul.

[-] Alchemy@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago

This is a borderline rule 7, but for now I will leave it up. Play nice, be critical of an organization without getting this post closed.

Rest easy, Sinéad.

[-] Tandybaum@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

The video of Kris Kristofferson comforting her is amazing. Really made me love him even more.

[-] someguy3@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 year ago

Context?

[-] Grimfelion@lemm.ee 30 points 1 year ago

Of the picture? Or why it’s being posted about today?

Re: the picture - she was the musical guest (or host? Can’t remember) on SNL, and the protested/called out the pedophilia/abuse happening in the Catholic Church by ripping up a picture of the Pope on live TV. People got pisssssed and she got absolutely destroyed in the public eye. Turns out she was right. But it was never publicly addressed nor was she redeemed in any way in the public eye.

Re: why posted today - she died today. And is considered heroic for the above mentioned action so I would imagine OP was memorializing that moment on this the day of her death.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago

It's interesting that you ask that because that was the problem with her doing it in the first place- most people weren't yet aware of the depth of pedophilia scandals the Catholic church was embroiled in, so they just thought she was anti-Catholic. We should have known what she meant when she said, "fight the real enemy," but the news was just not that prominent, not in the U.S. anyway.

Please don't get me wrong, though. She absolutely did not deserve to have her life and career totally fucked because people didn't understand her message.

[-] Dad2DnA@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Most Catholics in the US were keenly aware of the abuse issues, it's just that they didn't talk about it openly, and the media was loathe to cover it for fear of being labeled anti-Catholic, as she was.

Source: My mother was a Catholic nun for 15 years before leaving the convent to marry my dad, also a devout Catholic. I was an altar boy, went to Catholic schools through High School, and grew up in the 80's and 90's. It was well known among the church and school communities which priests to steer clear of and why.

[-] Mic_Check_One_Two@reddthat.com 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

She ripped up a picture of the pope live on SNL, while performing one of her songs. It was a protest against all the child rape that the church has hidden. She basically got publicly destroyed for it. She became a pariah, and her career was ruined. It’s worth noting that she was Irish, and Ireland is mainly catholic.

Then a few months later, all the stories of the catholic rapes broke. All the kids (and former-kids-now-adults) started coming forward to say they had been molested by church leaders and the church had covered it up. People started coming forward with decades of stories. It was suddenly too much for the church to cover up. It was a big scandal.

But the damage to her career was already done, and she never got any kind of redemption. She basically went from being an A-list musician on the level of Beyoncé or Taylor Swift, to being completely unemployable overnight. And she never recovered from it even after everything she was protesting about was proven true. She died today.

[-] calhoon2005@aussie.zone 6 points 1 year ago

I remember seeing in the video for Nothing Compares 2 U on Rage (ABC) and just being floored by the intensity and honesty in her eyes. RIP Ms. O'Connor you were truly something.