Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on Sinead O’Connor’s latest news flash:
Sinead O’Connor is back in the news, this time hawking her memoir, “Rememberings.” It turns out that the chain-smoking perennially troubled entertainer says she has difficulty remembering what happened to her life after she ripped up a picture of Pope John Paul II on Saturday Night Live (SNL) in 1992.
O’Connor was roundly criticized for what she did on SNL, drawing condemnations from the likes of Frank Sinatra and Madonna. She says staged her stunt because she wanted to protest priestly sexual abuse. There is no reason to believe her.
In 2012, O’Connor told the press that she got the idea of ripping up the picture of the pope after singer Bob Geldof went on the British show, “Tops of the Pops,” and tore up a photo of John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John; one of his songs hit the top of the charts, moving ahead of a tune by the famous movie couple.
One of the stars of “Tops of the Pops” was BBC icon Jimmy Savile, the predator who molested hundreds of kids, including one as young as eight. He did this for 54-years, much of it occurring on BBC property. In other words, he was raping boys and girls before and after O’Connor’s so-called protest.
Did O’Connor know about Savile’s conduct? Not at the time. But she admitted in 2014 that she learned of his serial rapes before news stories surfaced in 2012.
In 2014, O’Connor told The Guardian that her interest in the sexual abuse of minors led her to learn of Savile’s behavior. “Because I was involved in the church struggle, I had to study it like a barrister. I read every report and document and biography of every person talking about it. When you do that, it’s like surfing, you end up at all the other stories and realise how it branches out.”
If she knew of Savile’s conduct before the media did, why didn’t she say something at the time? What explains her current reticence? She has no problem blasting the Catholic Church, yet she chooses to give the BBC a pass, even though it covered up Savile’s crimes. The woman is a phony. Her protest was never about sexual abuse; it was always a Church-bashing exercise.
It’s time the media stopped making Sinead O’Connor a hero. She is anything but.
Contact Rob Prinz, O’Connor’s agent: rprinz@icmpartners.com
