Where were you October 3, 1992 when someone shouted, ‘Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!’?

Two days ago, a Time Magazine story headlined: “The Controversial Saturday Night Live Performance That Made Sinéad O’Connor an Icon.” I agree, it did , but that wasn’t the reaction at the time. Then, and probably up to the day she died, the reaction was pure hatred and scorn for her protest against the Catholic Church about a problem that had for years been obvious to everyone. Even her friends had nothing good to say about her on October 4th and afterwards.

She followed a long tradition of protest singers that went back to Pete Seeger, Joan Baez, Bob Dylan and almost everyone else who was singing during the Vietnam War years.

According to Time, “Speaking with the New York Times in 2021, O’Connor said she had no regrets, though the backlash was overwhelming. ‘I’m not sorry I did it. It was brilliant. But it was very traumatizing. It was open season on treating me like a crazy b-tch.'” 

Jeremy Smith, writing in Film said, “My memory is tainted by the ensuing smear campaign, a campaign that did not end until today, when Sinéad O’Connor died at the infuriatingly young age of 56 – and I’m probably a fool to believe this denigration will cease just because she’s not around to defend herself anymore. I’ve never seen a popular musician face such unremitting scorn. Not even close. But O’Connor — contrary to the narrative seared into our psyches by a media that could not bear her scorched-earth declaration that the Catholic Church is, charitable works be damned, a factory of institutionally abetted child abuse — never stopped speaking her truth. That continues to be our truth and our shame.”

Well said, and I hope that in time those who slandered her will one day see that she bravely spoke the truth, a truth that most people preferred not to mention.

–Malcolm