Still 35 Cents–and Now Cheaper Than Ever!
The Tribune’s Jeff MacNelly drew a wicked cartoon last week. Sinead O’Connor had torn up a picture of the pope on Saturday Night Live, and MacNelly imagined four priests watching the show. “Shame!” cries one. “Tearing up a photo of the Holy Father!!?” “Poor, pathetic little bald girl,” sighs the second. “Probably abused as a small child by some trusted authority figure,” the third muses. And the fourth thinks, “Wonder what she’s doing Friday night.”
Meanwhile, at the Sun-Times, columnist Richard Roeper hailed O’Connor’s act as “a moment of truly great television. . . . I can’t remember the last time something I saw on the small screen reached out and grabbed me with such force.” He defended the moment as more than great sensation. “She pushed a red-hot button and not without cause. Sacrilegious as this may sound to some, the pope and his church are not above criticism.” Dozens of calls came in, the Sun-Times would later report. Two were from a local Catholic of modest prominence named Eric Bower, who tells us he called Roeper a “bigot” on his voice mail and then asked Ray Coffey, who runs the editorial page, if it was now the paper’s formal policy to endorse attacks on the pope.
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“I didn’t read the thing yet,” Bower says Coffey told him, referring to Roeper’s column, “but in my opinion anybody who watches Saturday Night Live is part of the moronic culture.”
They looked everywhere for a Catholic with a scrap of public stature willing to do such a damn fool thing. One dignitary who said no now calls the idea “despicable.” Tom O’Connell, Bower’s successor at the Catholic League, says he told Braden, “I’m not into retribution. I don’t believe it’s the Christian thing to do. It’s not me.” There was no way Braden could bring it up to Andrew Greeley without treating the thing as a joke, and Greeley said he’d be happy to tear up a picture of George Bush.
Well, it wasn’t the photographer’s suggestion. And though Braden asked Bower to pose, it wasn’t his idea either. The plot was hatched in the glass offices where the senior editors dwell. The photographer was so embarrassed to be a part of it he wouldn’t let his name run under his picture.
“Red Sox Wade Boggs, on the $93,000 paid for the World Series ball that went between the legs of Bill Buckner and kept Boston from winning the championship: “I guess that’s the Mona Lisa of memorabilia as far as baseball collectors go. That was a monumental play, something that allowed the Red Sox not to win the World Series, so I can see the high price for it.”‘ –Dave van Dyck, writing this summer in the Sun-Times
However Jim Hoge actually felt about this legendary flimflam, few reporters minded Weinstein’s powers of enchantment. We hoped someone as nimble would use them on us.
