Sinead O'Connor, RIP

I don't listen to music and knew little about Sinead O'Connor. 

She died today at age 56.

She converted to Islam in 2018 and changed her name to Shuhada' Sadaqat, but she continued to use her Sinead O'Connor as a stage name.

I was watching Saturday Night Live the night she tore up the picture of Pope John-Paul II. I thought nothing of it and was surprised that so many people got whatever religious undergarment they wore in such a bunch over it.

I don't remember how they phrased it, but the Catholic Church put out a statement comparing it to voodoo, that tearing up a picture was something like sticking a pin in a doll.

Of course, that cuts both ways. Why were idolatrous Catholics so protective of a graven image? 

That was in 1992. In 2017, I posted this:

Okay, so one time, Sinead O'Connor, who was abused as a teenager in a "Magdalene Asylum", tore up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live. David Spade reported in his memoir that he picked up a piece of the picture as a keepsake. But, he said, he was later called into an office by network security who wanted it back. Someone on the crew had apparently picked up the remaining pieces and sold them to Inside Edition which pasted the picture back together minus Spade's piece and showed it on TV.

So how was it that Joe Pesci appeared on the show the next week and claimed in his monologue that he had demanded that the picture be pasted back together? He held it up to the audience and showed it to them, it missing a corner piece. It was Inside Edition that pasted it together and it had nothing to do with him.

Pesci later appeared on David Letterman's show and repeated the story, again bearing false witness....

Joe Pesci violating the eight commandment was kind of beside the point, but it was years after the event and I had just heard an interview with David Spade promoting his book.

Here's a better article by Gary Leupp from 2010:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2010/03/22/fight-the-real-enemy/