Sinead O’Connor (25) in honest and frank interview with Marian Finucane (rare)
VIDEO/Terry Pickard/Youtube
It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society
by SINEAD O’CONNOR
There are no media which block mockery of those perceived to be (whether mistakenly diagnosed by media, or otherwise ) mentally ill. They do not care to recognise how dangerous it is to do so.
It isn’t for me that I have been willing to keep putting my head above the parapet, and willing to keep getting the fucking shit kicked out of me.. as I do on the issues of mental health or child abuse. It’s because PEOPLE GET BULLIED WHEN MEDIA DON’T EDIT RESPONSIBLY AND PEOPLE DIE BECAUSE OF THAT BULLYING. (See Miley letter 4 on my site for suicide statistics.)
When editors do not act responsibly on the issue of mental health their readers kill themselves.
That’s the bottom line. Media create everyone’s reality. They create the world as we see it. The music. Who’s a lunatic. Who is sane. Who exactly are media to be allowed define what is sane?
Is having the close up HD slow fuckin motion face of Gaddafi being shot off on the front page in massive technicolor on all the bottom shelves of news stores so that every child in the universe can see it, sane?
Is that a sane practice? No. Did Britney Spears ever do anything like that? No. She fuckin’ didn’t.
Because she is a lady, not a whore for blood. She got made crazy by the media when there was fuck all wrong with her BUT the media. She got Kafka’d.
That’s what happens to her fans then. Those that love her won’t be inspired by her to be their beautiful selves. It doesn’t suit media’s idea of the future that young people grow up to make the world a loving place. So media fuck up the young people’s heroes. Then the young people are afraid.
And what’s the worst thing to be called? What is it everyone’s so afraid of? Being either considered ” crazy” or actually being “crazy”. And why is that such a terrifying thing to be considered? Because “Crazy” people get treated like shit. Not with love, which is what one’s grandmother would expect of one, in the presence of a person afflicted with a disability of any kind.
But as Krishnamurti said, “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society”. If people like Fowler and the other irresponsibly murderous-tongued media are sane, then I really wanna be crazy thanks. Because you know what? It’s not me going round killing people it’s media.
I recommend all readers to my website wherein you will find a link to a British information pack on mental health advocacy and human rights.
When the afflicted are mocked they die. When their heroes are mocked by their perceived mental afflictions, they die. Not the heroes, they never die, that’s the sad part. It’s the afflicted.
They have to hide. It’s like trying to walk up the street with two broken legs and make sure you walk like normal because if you don’t, people will come and smash up your legs and laugh about it when you scream. And no one will defend you.
That is why I consider I myself the defender of the mentally ill. I myself am not in fact mentally ill.
I have been the subject of a mis-diagnoses, which came about by a doctor who never met me, who on the phone to a general practitioner who was meeting me for the first time, said “from what I read about her in the papers I’d say she is bipolar”.
It suited me to believe it. The fact was I had a baby 5 months previously and his father didn’t want to know him. I was severely distressed by this and had taken myself to the doctor to say I was feeling depressed and not feeling like myself.
I have over the last three years, had three ‘second opinions’ in consultation with three hospitals.
The last results were in the last 6 weeks. All have confirmed that I never did have bipolar disorder. I was diagnosed by media. Because I’m the type of woman that media wouldn’t want being a hero. Because it doesn’t suit them to have women feel strong. And so they’ll use other women. Who’ll write venom about women. Kafka again.
Any woman who might inspire others to be themselves at any cost and to believe that there is a God despite religion, who can be called upon to immediately intervene, when people recognise that religion has them talking to the wall, has to be ‘crazied’. It’s been that way from creation.
I’m honoured to be one in an ancient historic line. Of female spiritual soldiers. Soldiers, not ladies, so don’t gimme any of the “If you’re not a fucking saint and perfect you can’t be a spiritual soldier” shit. Google Jesus mashing up the fucking temple.
Counterpunch for more
Sinéad O’Connor’s open letter to Miley Cyrus
by SINEAD O’CONNOR
After the 20-year-old claimed that Wrecking Ball’s controversial video was inspired by Nothing Compares 2 U, the Irish singer was compelled to warn Cyrus that she is being ‘pimped’ by the pop industry.
Dear Miley,
I wasn’t going to write this letter, but today i’ve been dodging phone calls from various newspapers who wished me to remark upon your having said in Rolling Stone your Wrecking Ball video was designed to be similar to the one for Nothing Compares … So this is what I need to say … And it is said in the spirit of motherliness and with love.
…
The music business doesn’t give a shit about you, or any of us. They will prostitute you for all you are worth, and cleverly make you think its what YOU wanted … and when you end up in rehab as a result of being prostituted, ‘they’ will be sunning themselves on their yachts in Antigua, which they bought by selling your body and you will find yourself very alone.
None of the men ogling you give a shit about you either, do not be fooled. Many’s the woman mistook lust for love. If they want you sexually that doesn’t mean they give a fuck about you. All the more true when you unwittingly give the impression you don’t give much of a fuck about yourself. And when you employ people who give the impression they don’t give much of a fuck about you either. No one who cares about you could support your being pimped … and that includes you yourself.
Yes, I’m suggesting you don’t care for yourself. That has to change. You ought be protected as a precious young lady by anyone in your employ and anyone around you, including you. This is a dangerous world. We don’t encourage our daughters to walk around naked in it because it makes them prey for animals and less than animals, a distressing majority of whom work in the music industry and it’s associated media.
You are worth more than your body or your sexual appeal. The world of showbiz doesn’t see things that way, they like things to be seen the other way, whether they are magazines who want you on their cover, or whatever … Don’t be under any illusions … ALL of them want you because they’re making money off your youth and your beauty … which they could not do except for the fact your youth makes you blind to the evils of show business. If you have an innocent heart you can’t recognise those who do not.
The Guardian for more
Sinead O’Connor tore up Pope John Paul II’s picture
WIKIPEDIA
“On 3 October 1992, O’Connor appeared on the American television programme Saturday Night Live (SNL) and staged a protest against the Catholic Church. After performing an a cappella rendition of Bob Marley‘s 1976 song ‘War‘ with new lyrics related to child abuse,[70] she tore up a photograph of Pope John Paul II taken from her mother’s bedroom wall eight years prior,[71] said ‘fight the real enemy’, and threw the pieces to the floor.[72] O’Connor later said she felt the Catholic Church bore some responsibility for the physical, sexual and emotional abuse she had suffered as a child. She said the church had destroyed ‘entire races of people’, and that Catholic priests had been abusing children for years. Her protest took place nine years before John Paul II publicly acknowledged child sexual abuse in the Catholic Church.[73]
“The protest triggered hundreds of complaints from viewers. It attracted criticism from institutions including the Anti-Defamation League and the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations, and celebrities including Joe Pesci, Frank Sinatra and Madonna, who mocked the performance on SNL later that season.[71][74] Two weeks after her SNL appearance, O’Connor was booed at the 30th-anniversary tribute concert for Bob Dylan at Madison Square Garden in New York City.[74][75] In her 2021 memoir, Rememberings, O’Connor wrote that she did not regret the protest and that it was more important for her to be a protest singer than a successful pop star.[76]Time later named O’Connor the most influential woman of 1992 for her protest.”
Wikipedia for more
by DAVID HOLMES
You Knew Sinead O’Connor Was Right, Even Then
“People say ‘oh, you fucked up your career,’ but they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me.”
“I don’t know no shame,” Sinéad O’Connor sang in “Mandinka,” her first hit song, from her 1987 debut album The Lion and the Cobra, “I feel no pain.” If the first claim was true— which for anyone raised Catholic anywhere is a skyscraper-sized “if”— the second was demonstrably false. Sinéad O’Connor’s life and career and art were about pain: exorcising it, escaping it, endlessly searching for ways to transcend her own and to spare future generations theirs. She never got relief, and she never got a reprieve; loss and abuse visited her in wave after wave until the very end. The news of her death today, at the startlingly young age of 56, a year and a half after the death of her son Shane, feels at once like a shock and an inevitability.
As an artist, she was the voice of an Ireland summoning the power to shake off a theocracy. At the time of her birth in 1966, the Catholic Church had such control over the Irish government that divorce and remarriage were illegal (and remained so until 1995), so her father had to emigrate to America after leaving her mother. Such a thing as a “home for fallen women, operated by nuns” existed— a “Magdalene laundry,” as they were known— and Sinéad was sent to one at age 15 for shoplifting. It gave her a chance to work on her music, is the bright side.
Esquire for more
Fighting Our Real Enemies
by JEFFREY ST. CLAIR
+ About 10 years ago, an irate Sinéad O’Connor rang up the CounterPunch office and threatened to sue us over a piece we’d run. Becky sensibly gave her my number. I was walking the dog when my iPhone buzzed.
“This is Sinead.”
“Sinead who?” I inquired, playing for time.
“Who the fuck do you think, asshole!”
“Oh, O’Connor,” I muttered. As if there could be any other.
It turns out this was the beginning of a fraught but beautiful relationship.
I let her unload on us for about 40 minutes and then said, “Why don’t you write that up for us?”
“You want me to write for you?”
“Absolutely,” I said.
“Thank you, thank you! Nobody’s ever responded that way to one of my calls before,” she said. And she did.
Over the next few months we got a few pieces from her that were funny and smart and wicked. She’d call up 5 minutes after she emailed it Dublin time and say, “Jeffrey, did you get the damn piece, yet, I haven’t heard from you!”
“Uh, Sinead, it’s 4 am here.”
“Sorry, I’ll call back.”
She was beautiful, brilliant and one of the bravest people I’ve ever encountered.
And now she’s gone.
Fuck.
+ I found my notebook from the day of that first call from Sinéad. There’s a funny bit I’d forgotten. After we’d smoothed the waters & she agreed to drop her suit and write for us instead, O’Connor said: “One more thing, Jeffrey [the fierceness returning to her voice] You’ve got to promise never to run another story by that fucking c-word (she could outswear Lemmy from Motörhead) Ruth Fowler!” Fowler had written the offensive piece. I replied, a little tremulously now: “No. I promise not to banish you no matter what outrageous thing you write or what nasty shit they say about you and I won’t ban Ruth, either.” She sighed. “OK, a girl has to try. Bye lover.” Bye lover. How could I have ever forgotten?
+ After a couple hundred thousand cases of abuse by priests and nuns (including her own), there’s no doubt now that Sinéad O’Connor was right about the Church and the Pontiff who sanctified and covered up its crimes against children.
+ O’Connor: “I feel that having a No. 1 record derailed my career and my tearing the photo put me back on the right track.”
+ Question: Did ripping up the photo of John Paul II define your career?
Sinéad: “Yes, in a beautiful fucking way. There was no doubt about who this bitch is. There was no more mistaking this woman for a pop star. But it was not derailing. People say, “Oh, you fucked up your career.” But they’re talking about the career they had in mind for me. I fucked up the house in Antiqua the record companies wanted me to buy. I fucked up their career, not mine. It meant I had to make my living playing live, and I am born for live performance.”
+ When Frank Sinatra said he wanted to slap her for disrespecting the Pope, O’Connor retorted: “It wouldn’t be the first time he’s hit a woman.”
+ This a capella performance of War by Sinead a few nights after all hell had broken loose from her SNL gig is one of the most courageous acts I’ve ever seen. Mercilessly booed by 24,000 Born Again Bob Dylan fans & only Kris Kristofferson would come to her aid. What a bunch of frauds.
+ Only Sinéad O’Connor had the guts to go to a Bob Dylan Tribute and sing a Bob Marley song, highlighting how far Dylan had left those sentiments behind, while Marley, like O’Connor herself, only got more radical until his death.
+ While Bob Dylan snarled out anti-Palestinian hate songs like Neighborhood Bully, Sinéad O’Connor boycotted Israel…
Counterpunch for more
The Soul Crushing Death of Sinéad O’Connor, Who I Should Have Helped
by RANDY BLAZAK
Sinéad and I had been out dancing at a Dublin disco called The Pink Elephant. It was our first date. I remember how she laughed when we saw the heavy metal band Def Leppard in a corner booth. Word was they were living in Ireland as tax dodge. Dublin was not very metal in 1985 and they were delighted that someone recognized them. “Def Leppard?” I burst out with my big American voice. “You guys are my little brother’s favorite band!” They all looked immediately deflated. Sinéad let out a big laugh. “Jesus, you’re vicious,” she said.
With the news of the passing of Sinéad O’Connor, so many memories of our time together have come flooding back. Her pain is well known to the world, but her impish humor less so. I’m both unsurprised by the news and crushed beyond repair. So much that I can barely write this. Hers was a life of pain that seeped into her music and now that pain and music are silent.
…
At this point there had been murmurings about the abuse of children by Catholic priests but I got a first hand testimony of the reality of that sick norm for Irish families from Sinéad herself, just 20 years old at that moment. I won’t go into detail, but it was clear that she had a legitimate anger rooted in very real trauma. And her emphatic point was that her experience was widespread in her homeland. She told me about the Magdalene Laundries and the role the Pope, John Paul II, played in protecting pedophile priests. It was heavy, so the Guinness and dancing helped to keep our heads above water.
…
And that’s what happened in 1992 when she tore up a picture of the Pope on Saturday Night Live. I knew exactly what it was about. I immediately remembered our conversations in Dublin about John Paul II’s role in protecting child abusing priests. But the larger public flipped out, seeing it as some type anti-Catholic action. It got ugly fast. Two weeks later I saw the audience at Madison Square Garden boo her off the stage at the Bob Dylan tribute concert, (I was watching it on Pay-Per-View.) and my heart broke watching this crowd, who was there to honor that greatest protest singer, scream their hatred at this young female protest singer. Maybe it was because she was bald.
Watching the Wheels for more
Sinéad O’Connor Was a Voice of Strength in the Darkness
by SAM SODOMSKY
VIDEO/Sinead O’Connor/Youtube
Remembering the 56-year-old Irish singer-songwriter, whose captivating voice and outspoken spirit made her a beloved and misunderstood figure in pop.
In June 1997, Sinéad O’Connor released Gospel Oak, a brief collection that stands among her finest work—and easily her most hopeful. “I’m finally on top of the hill, and I can see the other side,” she said upon its release, “whereas before I was right down the bottom.” The EP includes personal mantras that seemed to write themselves (“This Is to Mother You,” “I Am Enough for Myself”) and political messages that play like love songs (“This Is a Rebel Song,” “Petit Poulet”). The sense you got was an artist who, having used her art as an outlet for rage and sorrow and self-immolation for a decade at that point, had developed a more nourishing perspective that she wanted to share with her audience. She named the record, fittingly, for the neighborhood where her therapist’s office was located.
In a catalog best known for its unflinching ballads about heartbreak and grief, Gospel Oak is the music I have returned to most by O’Connor, an artist whose astounding voice and painfully honest songwriting have always been weighted by the context surrounding them, even before her death this week at the age of 56. There might be no figure in popular music whose messages were so frequently and violently misunderstood, a fact that applies as much to her underrated back catalog as it does to her more commonly discussed controversies in the public eye.
Motherhood always seemed the role that O’Connor accepted most naturally. An enduring subject in her songwriting was the abuse she suffered at the hands of her own mother, a devout Catholic who died in a car accident just as O’Connor’s career was beginning to take off. From the teardrop rolling down her cheek in the “Nothing Compares 2 U” video (which emerges after she sings the word “mama”) to the Pope photo she destroyed on SNL (it was taken from the wall of her mother’s house, which O’Connor had been tasked with clearing out before arriving on set), so many of her pivotal moments draw a direct line to this tortured, severed relationship.
Having her own children, then, was both a spiritual reset and a means of mending ties. “One of the things I get from Buddhism is that somehow your mother can be born in your own daughter,” she told The Guardian after the birth of her first daughter, Roisin. “The Catholic idea is that my mother will be punished and burn in Hell. But I prefer the idea that, through Roisin, I will be able to teach her something about loving and being mothered.” She continued: “My daughter is the first girl in our family who’s going to be loved for being a girl.”
Pitchfork for more