As a grizzled and cynical member of Generation X, I’ve been surprisingly touched by the recent death of Sinéad O’Connor, who was one of the best of us.
I was never in the target demographic for her music, so I can’t say I listened to a whole lot of it, but I did love her voice. More than that, I appreciated her attitude.
I remember all the hubbub in 1992 after she ripped up that picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. Desecration of images of authority figures is generally fine by me, although, not being a Catholic, I just mostly wondered what it was all about.
I don’t recall the media at the time doing much to explain her position, choosing instead to vilify her and portraying her as a crazy person. It was the era before the internet, when there really weren’t a lot of voices to be heard beyond what corporate entertainment wanted you to hear.
That was the same year Bill Clinton got mad accolades for attacking Sister Soulja. Marginalized voices were to be put in their place.
It wasn’t until years later that I read an article that went into depth about the abuse Sinéad O’Connor experienced growing up, including the outright theft of children from young mothers she witnessed during the time she was a resident of one of Ireland’s infamous Magdalene Laundries. She had a right to her anger.
Sinéad was blowing the whistle on church-sponsored child abuse and trafficking at a time when these horrors were only beginning to come into the public light. And she paid a heavy price for it, her songs virtually disappearing from radio play for years afterward.
These days, our discourse seems to be overrun by reactionary charlatans who falsely attack LGBTQ+ people and public schools as being supporters of grooming, indoctrination, and pedophilia, while conspicuously ignoring the mountains of documented evidence showing how conservative religious hierarchies have enabled these very same things.
Alas, I don’t really expect Moms for Liberty, Ron DeSantis, or any of the various QAnon types and New Hampshire Republicans to have a whole lot to say in Sinéad O’Connor’s memory.