USA TODAY
October 8, 1992, Thursday, FINAL EDITION

Sinead: On the level

Joe Urschel


    I'm surprised at this big flap over Sinead O'Connor.

   NBC got 1,300-plus protest calls, Notre Dame students complained, and the
archdiocese of New York was outraged. All this because, after singing on
Saturday Night Live, she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II, saying, ''Fight
the real enemy.''

   Unfortunately, Jane Curtin wasn't there to deadpan, ''Thanks for sharing
that.''

   But this is nothing to get exorcised about. She didn't mean it. She never
does. There was a time Sinead thought the Irish Republican Army was swell. Now
she realizes she doesn't like them after all. Once she wanted to be a nun. Once
she said she was not going to record any more records. Didn't mean that, either.

   As she's said: ''I have beliefs and opinions but ... I could change them
tomorrow.''

   You may wonder why Sinead is so angry at the pope. Well, she says she was
abused by her mother and that was caused by the Catholic Church. She believes
the quest for material success caused the conditions that led her mother to be
abusive. Those conditions, she says, were caused by Catholics who made up ''all
the rules by which we live.''

   She doesn't like the church's position on abortion, either. She thinks the
church opposes abortion so there will be more kids around to abuse.

   Are you with me so far?

   Apparently she is more upset with the church than she is with her late
mother, who at other times she has cited as one of her greatest influences.

   And besides, ''People choose their lives before they are born ... choose
their parents and everything else, so I believe this is the life I chose.''

   Given that, I'd have thought she'd have chosen to be born Presbyterian. But,
hey, some of this stuff is beyond my grasp.

   This little contretemps and its attendant publicity has nothing to do with
the fact Sinead just released a new album.  She's not into the materialism the
Catholic Church invented to ruin the world.

   But we shouldn't press her on that point. She was once asked by the Los
Angeles Times why she didn't give her money away if materialism is so
corrupting.

   Her answer: ''That's stupid.''

   So I hope the mystery of Sinead O'Connor and what she was trying to say on
Saturday Night Live has been cleared up. But there is one more thing that folks
who don't follow rock music as closely as they should may still wonder. That is,
why did Sinead shave off her hair?

   And, unlike the complicated philosophical and sociopolitical questions we've
just discussed, the answer to that one is fairly simple.

   She did it to prove there was something underneath.