(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Torn Photos and Rage: What Sinead O'Connor Taught Me [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.'] Date: 2023-07-28 I could not believe what she’d done. I didn’t even like Saturday Night Live very much. I was watching it specifically for her, for her brilliant voice and fierce lyrics. I’d loved the rage and the storm of The Lion and the Cobra album. I’d loved even more the fury and the restraint of I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. But here Sinead O’Connor was, standing on television, tearing up a picture of the Pope. The Polish Pope. Okay, by this time I was a confirmed, though not vocal, atheist. But I was still cultural Catholic — I’d spent my life moving around, chasing my military father across the country. If you were going to have a religion, it should be one where doing the work mattered, not just saying you believed the right things. And I am Polish-American. My mom emigrated when she was a teenager. So, yes, while I kept a book of Polish jokes as a teenager and told them at the dinner table, that was all right, because I was Polish (and a little shit). You, however, better show some respect for the terrible food and great classical music that is Polish culture. Yet here was one of my favorite musicians acting just like the high school assholes I had defined myself against. She had to have a good reason, right? Right? Except no one talked about the reason. The reaction, sure. we got macho posturing and gleeful tut-tutting and opportunistic bashing. But no reasons. She did what she did because she was evil or female or entitled or any number of other empty words. People don’t work like that. People who plan protests, who walk onstage knowing they are going to set their careers on fire, have reasons. They aren’t always good reasons, but they did what they did because they choose to do so to make a point. But no one seemed interested in the why. Everyone seemed interested making their own points. I don’t think we had internet at the house back then. If we did, it was Prodigy dial up, pre-World Wide Web. I was working two or three jobs at the time to make way through college, so I did have internet access at school. I may have done some Gopher-ing, but I suspect my research was mostly done in the library through newspapers. Slowly, over months, I found the why. I learned about the priest sexual abuse scandals, and the Irish Catholic schools and orphanages scandals. The was a reason, and a good one, for O’Connor’s rage at the Pope. But that’s not what I learned from her. A famous person protested a cruel injustice, and the media spent no time that I could discern explaining the protest or the injustice. I had to excavate through foreign press and back pages of national newspapers to learn the truth. I should not have had to do that work. The press should have done their job and informed me. Clearly, our press is not wired to tell the truth about those in power, even when the famous try to force their hands. That, though, was not the only lesson. Because I did, eventually, learn the truth. And I doubt I was the only one. And I haven’t been shy about sharing it, nor have I been shy about questioning what I am being told or digging into other “whys”. Protest, rage, anger — they work, even in this fallen culture. When people call on you to calm down, to be polite, to not make be so angry, remember Sinead and her torn picture. Remember, yes, how the press destroyed her career. But also, maybe, remember the people she inspired to dig deeper, to find out a truth that no one else would tell them. And maybe look around for others tearing pictures. Or tear a few of your own. [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/7/28/2183531/-Torn-Photos-and-Rage-What-Sinead-O-Connor-Taught-Me Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/