Sinead Answers Her Critics

LAST WEEK I was told that the person who called The Irish Sun to report that myself and a certain "Mirror journo" appeared to have been "canoodling" at the Late Late Show, was actually the manager of one of Ireland's "Top" bands. Am appropriately horrified!

My own manager would never DREAM of setting the tabloids on other artists! HOW low can you go? Sheez man, that hurts bad, bad. You need to watch out now, silly man, because your Frankenstein has vowed to turn on you. The very people you called think you are a shit for calling and are now digging for shit to print about YOU! NOT on my instructions, but because even by their standards, you stooped a bit low there. And you fucked with one of their people. Tut tut tut. Call me when it gets bad and I'll make you a cup of tea.

In thirteen years of experience as a professional in the music industry, the only times that I have ever been used badly or exploited shamefully or not paid what I should have been paid or approached most unprofessionally with requests for jobs, it has been Irish MEN doing the exploiting.

We Irish have a two-facedness and a quick-flip-of-the-head-after-a-good, like NO other race. We are like snakes.

Now, put this in your pipes and smoke it . . . All media people in Ireland. Except the nice fair ones who don't kiss ass, but don't fuck it either . . . without asking permission.

You shame your mothers and daughters and sisters and all women when you shame and exploit me. You make them afraid to stand up for themselves for fear they'll be beaten to a pulp as you have so often beaten me. And I ain't takin' it any longer.

It's time for you all to learn some respect for women generally, by all appearances, whom in me, you have used very badly for your own gain for thirteen years while not even respecting me. You all have necks like jockey's bollocks and I am really owed some serious apologies around Dublin Town which I hope will be forthcoming. Some day, or some night, or some lifetime.

I realise one cannot demand respect, but hey, I have EARNED respect, and am actually a very loved artist of the Irish people and you all misrepresent those people when you misrepresent me. I have a lot of respect from all those who see through your exploitations of me, and who know me well through my records, enough not to be swayed by your lies. And your making of me into a prostitute who doesn't even get a percentage of what she earns for you all.

If I do not sell records, how come every major label in America were falling over themselves to sign me last year? How come then, that the number one record label in America signed me for eight million dollars?

How come indeed do you all butcher me daily if I am not both a success and an inspiration in this world. If I am not an extremely powerful woman.

Do you think women don't notice how you use chauvinistic women journalists to bring us down? We are neither blind nor stupid. But no one can extinguish the fire that is woman and even if you knock one of us down another will get up. We're kinda like "weebles" see, we wobble but we "don't fall down".

"Behold I left an open door before you which no one can close" . . . You can't stop this, media men, because it's started and so it's been done. Women have been treated like shite for too long in Ireland and the world over. And taught to treat each other like shite. By big fish in small pond. Who can stand that a little young upstart like me should jump up out of that crushing, killing pond where there was no room for her to breathe. That she should want to LIVE and make her life MEANINGFUL?!!!!? Well, that's just a crime, isn't it? In Ireland.

YOU guys are sad. YOU guys are "The Crazy Ones". You look into the mirror which I am and you see yourselves. You judge yourselves when you judge me. You fear your own craziness. Your own freedom. Your own Griefs. Your own Irishness. Shame on you, for shaming all women through me. I do not deserve the brutality to which I have been subjected for thirteen years.

Just exactly where do you guys get off? How dare you DRIVE a woman crazy and then mock and berate her for feeling crazy. Trouble with me is, I ain't crazy. YOU are! It's YOU all who are "a few frigging wafers short of a mass"! You could do more than anyone with getting your butts back into church! I hope you'll let me have the privilege of serving you as your post-Modern Priestess.

Sinéad / Mother Bernadette Maria O'Connor