To the editors:
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First, I agree with Wyman’s stance regarding the media’s backlash against Sinead O’Connor. But if O’Connor really wanted to make people think she picked a dumb way to do it. Because, of course, she didn’t say anything; she did something–she performed a deliberately “shocking” act meant to provoke the knee-jerk responses which Wyman decries. Sticking your middle finger in someone’s face isn’t a good way to initiate a conversation, regardless of the subject.
Third, the chief obstacle to social change is hatred, which, unless I’m mistaken, is what Christianity has always fought against from the beginning (i.e., Love thy neighbor). All of those missionaries caring for the victims of civil war in Africa or Latin America–why are they wasting their time? That nice old Mother Teresa, shouldn’t she kick back and relax in her old age? And Pope John XXIII, a man who rejuvenated the spiritus mundi (world spirit) more than any leader in this century, a man beloved by people of all races and religions at the time of his death in 1963–boy, what a meddlesome mensch he was.
