The Washington Post
October 5, 1992, Monday, Final Edition

Singer Stuns 'SNL' Viewers;
Sinead O'Connor Tears Up Pope Photo

John Carmody, Washington Post Staff Writer


   Controversial rock singer Sinead O'Connor shocked the "Saturday Night Live"
studio audience into silence over the weekend when, on completing the song
"War," she produced a picture of Pope John Paul II, tore it in half and threw it
on the floor.

   The Irish-born singer has criticized the Roman Catholic Church's stand
against abortion and earlier this year took part in an abortion-rights march
through Dublin.

   NBC reported yesterday afternoon that it had received 496 calls in New York
protesting O'Connor's action, an unusually high number for a late-night show.

   The song, a chantlike a cappella protest of racism and other forms of
injustice, says in part: "Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and
another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned,
everywhere is war. ... Until the color of a man's skin is of no more
significance than the color of his eyes, I've got to say war!" It concludes with
the line "We have confidence in the victory of good over evil."

   After she intoned those words Saturday night, O'Connor, 26, wearing a long
white lace dress, very close-cropped hair, a nose stud and a silver necklace
with a Star of David, held up a color photo of the pope, began tearing it and
said, "Fight the real enemy."

   At a dress rehearsal earlier in the day she had torn up a picture of a child
at the end of the song. (The song also contains an indictment of child abuse and
exhorts her listeners, "Children, children, fight!") Staffers assumed it was
another picture of a child she put on the stand next to her when she began her
song late in the broadcast.

   "It goes without saying that the network does not condone what Ms. O'Connor
did," NBC Vice President Curt Block said yesterday. "Whatever her motivations,
they were of a personal nature and certainly did not reflect the opinion of the
network or the 'SNL' staff. We would never authorize anything like that."

   In 1990 O'Connor made headlines when she walked off the show to protest the
appearance of comic Andrew Dice Clay. Block said yesterday that she had since
been on "SNL" twice without incident.