From: L-Bueno@cup.portal.com (Louis Alberto Bueno)
Newsgroups: soc.rights.human
Subject: SINEAD O'CONNOR AND THE PERILS OF FREE SPEECH
Date: Wed,  4 Nov 92 22:58:09 PDT
Organization: The Portal System (TM)
Distribution: world

PISANI COMMENTARY: SINEAD O'CONNOR AND THE PERILS OF FREE SPEECH
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By Joe Pisani
(c) 1992, Greenwich Time 11/02

           A month ago Irish pop singer Sinead O'Connor was a happy woman _
or as happy as a woman with a bald head can be. She had a new hit, a new
haircut and a gig on ``Saturday Night Live.''
           Then she exercised her freedom of expression _ which is a
constitutionally guaranteed right handed down by our Founding Fathers to
the politically correct _ and presto, her life changed.
           She tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II during a network TV
appearance and said, ``Fight the real enemy,'' causing an outcry worse than
the time she shunned ``The Star-Spangled Banner'' at a New Jersey concert.
           Eventually, even middle-aged hippies with graying ponytails were
booing her off stage. To them, she apparently was the real enemy.
           That's life. Or that's one of the consequences of freedom of
expression. Or maybe, just maybe _ and this is only a theory _ that's
``divine retribution,'' as the religious fundamentalists would say.
           If it is divine retribution _ and I don't want any complaints
from the watchdog group, the National Council of Churches, for talking
about God without its prior approval _ then we better look out for this
pope fellow, who obviously has more power than he gets credit for.
           After she tore up his picture, NBC's switchboard almost
short-circuited from the calls pouring in. A week later, Oscar-winning
actor Joe Pesci appeared on ``Saturday Night Live'' with a taped-up picture
of the pope and said, ``She was very lucky it wasn't my show because if it
was my show, I would have gave her such a smack.''
           There was also a demonstration in New York City, where a
steamroller crushed a pile of her CDs and cassettes as part of a protest by
the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations.
           Arnold Burns, president of the group, said, ``She has every
right to do and say what she wants, but decent people have every right to
come together and say it's in bad taste and disrespectful.'' It was yet
another demonstration of freedom of expression, but Sinead's people
compared it to book burning.
           Apparently only some people have a right to freedom of
expression; when the politically incorrect try to exercise that right, it's
called ``censorship.''
           Sinead, whose new album has plummeted 20 spots on the Billboard
charts, was also chastised by Madonna, the pop diva whose religious
sensitivities inspired her to exercise her right to free speech by rubbing
a crucifix against her crotch in the music video, ``Like a Prayer.''
           She said ``ripping up an image that means a lot to other
people'' was wrong and encouraged Sinead to sit down with the church
hierarchy and reconcile their differences. It was a noble idea from one of
the pop world's brightest luminaries.
           But a rapprochement was not to be. During a concert honoring Bob
Dylan, aging hippies in the audience booed until Sinead left the stage in
tears. Despite their middle-age paunches, they could still muster that old
indignation, which of course shouldn't be taken as an endorsement of what
the pope represents but rather as a healthy sign of their enduring ability
to profane pop icons.
           Commenting on the Dylan concert, Liz Smith, the gossip columnist
who is beholden to both the culturally elite and culturally deprived, said:
``It seems to me a country that celebrates free speech shouldn't keep
people from speaking freely. And excessive booing is a form of
censorship.'' Does she expect Miss Manners to rewrite the First Amendment?
           More to the point, an item in The New Republic called Sinead's
act ``another interesting example of the new acceptability of anti-Catholic
bigotry on the left, which seeks not to debate the Church's public
positions but to vilify the symbols of Catholicism.''
           As if to lend credence to that theory, a group of the singer's
supporters wearing Sinead O'Connor masks stood outside St. Patrick's
Cathedral in New York City last week and tore up pictures of the pope while
Cardinal John O'Connor _ of no apparent relation _ was celebrating Mass
inside.
           And in an interview with the New York Post under the headline,
``Sinead: The Church Made Mom Beat Me,'' she blamed her troubled childhood
on the pope.
           It was touching but tortured logic from a woman whose
much-publicized problems have apparently done little to sensitize her to
the importance of respecting the beliefs of others. It was she, the
self-proclaimed champion of the oppressed, who a few weeks earlier in a
Rolling Stone interview, had defended convicted rapist Mike Tyson and
described his victim as a ``disgrace to women'' and ``a b----.''
           Then, in an open letter explaining her pope-bashing, she invoked
the name of God and condemned the church for the kind of intolerant
behavior that has become her trademark, all of which goes to prove you
can't see the picture if you're in the frame.