Fighting Our Real Enemies

 

 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…

+ Before shredding the pope on live TV, O’Connor had already infuriated the guardians of American political morality by refusing to perform in venues that opened the evening with the Star-Spangled Banner. Sinead was also one of the first white artists to condemn the racism of the music establishment–from the Grammys to Rolling Stone to MTV–which ignored if not denigrated what would become the defining music of our time: hip hop. After hundreds of thousands of cases of clerical abuse (including her own), O’Connor was proved 100% right about the Catholic Church and the Pontiff who sanctified and covered up its crimes against children. But being right is often cold comfort and doesn’t lessen the pain from the wounds that have been inflicted on you. She was the real thing and paid price for being it.

+ I should note that this wasn’t the first time Ruth Fowler had gotten us in trouble. She’d written a piece ostensibly on Angela Jolie’s double mastectomy which had provoked the overwrought ire of the ISO (now defunct). I wish Ruth would get us into more trouble. You meet the most interesting people that way.

COUNTERPUNCH