First you said:
I don’t think the people who simply booed are the focus of the OP. But then you said:
So at first turnabout is fair play, now it’s a double standard.
It is if ripping up a picture of a person you disagree with is wrong and requires and apology. And it did so it is. (And again, we’re not talking about just a few boos)
Dear Sinead,
I apologize for regarding you as an untalented publicity whore of the highest order. I’m so very sorry I misread you ingenious protest on SNL all those many years ago as a poorly conceived public relations stunt. Had I known you were attempting to shed light on the evils of the Roman Catholic Church, I truly feel I wouldn’t have been one of the great unwashed masses who didn’t know their place and heartlessly booed you off the stage at the Dylan tribute.
I truly regret referring to you as a ungracious anti-American cunt back in those days you refused to allow my Country’s National Anthem to be played at your concerts. I’ve now come to realize you were trying to call attention to my former President’s sexual indiscretions and abuse of power. My guilt over being so short-sighted makes me wish I could console you in a manner similar to Kris Kristofferson’s - cheap squeeze or not.
As news of the childhood abuses you suffered at the hand of your Mother first surfaced, my empathy for you swelled to levels unseen since Rosanne Barr’s tragic story first came to light. I’m not like those close-minded people (like the brother you grew up with) who considers you delusional. In fact, I my went through my pro-Sinead epiphany at about the same time as you converted to that sect of celibate Catholics. I find myself in complete accordance with you - and sincerely hope you’re able to abide to your commitment to stop breeding.
As a small aside, I enjoyed your full page ad in the Irish Examiner last year. I can only hope your campaign to eradicate head lice in Eire gets as much attention as Bono’s Third World relief efforts.
Have faith and courage, because nothing compares to you!
John Buck
How’s that? Anyone feel better?
Let’s us also not forget that the mad bint actually became a “Priest” for a while. Called herself Sinead: Mother Bernadette Mary and walked around Dublin in uniform collar and all.
Silly wagon.
From your second cite:
NBC was eventually fined $2.5 million dollars by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which had never before fined the network for content aired on Saturday Night Live.
What the fuck? Why should NBC (or anyone for that matter) be fired for saying “Fight the real enemy!” and then ripping up a picture of the then current Pope? Completely ridiculous.
That has to be absolute bullshit. Not only would it violate the First Amendment, but we all know that CBS’ $550,000 penalty for “Nipplegate” is the biggest fine ever levied by the FCC, by many orders of magnitude. I wouldn’t trust any website that pulls stupid figures like that out of its ass.
But yeah, the sexual abuses of Catholic priests (and the church’s pattern of covering it up) has gone back a long, long way – there was even a Canadian movie about it that nobody paid attention to. Heck, I wouldn’t be surprised if sex abuse wasn’t de rigour in the Church since 400 A.D. 
I don’t have a cite for it, but I read something about this picture ripping incident years later that put it in a different perspective. The photograph that she tore up was the very same photograph that had been in her mother’s kitchen when she was growing up. Her protest has a little less to do with the Pope, and a little more to do with her childhood, than we might know.
1992 was around the time when all the abuse allegations were already coming out in Ireland (before they started coming out in the rest of the world, I think). Ireland really was outraged by her actions (I was attending a very Catholic school there at the time), so although everyone knew what was going on in the Church, Ireland was not ready for such a gesture. I thought it was rather fantastic myself, but I would. I felt terrible for the way she was demonsied afterwards, although I think a lot more people respected her for that than wanted to admit it.
Yes, Sinead has been known to be attention-seeking and publicity-mad, although I do think she has calmed down in recently years. She was one of the first people to stand up in Ireland and say… ‘you know, it’s OK for women to have an abortion if they darn well want to…’ etc. and for that I give her credit.
Whatever other accusation may be fairly leveled at her, “untalented” is not one of them.
Yeah, those of us who understood at the time what she was doing were really mystified by those who didn’t. We had to wonder, were they just jumping on some sort of rabble-rousing bandwagon or were they really just not that bright?
One concert.
Since George HW Bush was in the Oval Office at the time of this incident, I’m curious as to what sexual indiscretions he indulged in.
I don’t feel any better about the Sinead incident, but I do feel better knowing that my impression of you as a person continues to be confirmed as completely accurate.
Well it’s a bit unclear since the OP said…“Back then, she was mocked, booed, harrassed and rididuled.”
I’m confused. The OP suggests that people who booed Sinead know owe her an “apology” because there of the sex abuse problems in the church. The notion is that the people who were booing her were booing her based on the veracity of her claims (which were since proven true according to the OP).
I suggested that the people were NOT booing because they necessarily disagreed with her stand (however vague) on sex abuse in the church…but because of the manner/timing of her “statement”. Apparently Sinead feels that the manner/timing of her statement was dumb as well. ("She claimed that her attack on the photo had been “a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel,” which she did “because I was in rebellion against the faith, but I was still within the faith.”)
I’m still confused…why is it wrong to boo (however many boos there were, does it matter) at a dumb stunt? Why do those people “owe her an apology”. What form should that apology take? Should all of the “boo-ers” pool together some money and take out an ad in the NY Times?
By the way…do the folks who boo at Amateur Night at the Apollo Theater in Harlem owe the performers an apology for hurting their sensitive feelings, as well?
Wait til you read my open letter to Chris Lowe and Neil Tennant 
I just wanted to pop in to say that when her head was shaved, I liked to think of her as Skin-Haid O’Connor.
No opinion on the issue, though.
The Petshop Boys? What the hell did they ever do to you?
Isn’t the proper question “What have they done to deserve this?”?
You Know Where You Went Wrong!
P.S. The page now allows you to watch their music videos!
Hee, what a coincidence…
Neil Tennant (Jimmy Fallon): These days, I work in an actual pet shop. But I’m planning a big comeback. In a west end town, a dead end world. The east end boys and west end girls…"
Female Senator (Ana Gasteyer): Please, Sir, stop singing.
Neil Tennant: “What have I… what have I… what have I done to deserve this?”
Female Senator: I said stop singing.
Neil Tennant: I wasn’t singing! I’m flat broke, and I work in a pet shop! What have I done to deserve this?
Now see, I heard that she did it to protest the church’s position on birth control and abortion.