{"id":89257,"date":"2023-08-04T17:25:24","date_gmt":"2023-08-04T17:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/04\/meeting-sinead-oconnor-in-a-cracker-barrel-parking-lot-1998\/"},"modified":"2023-08-04T17:25:24","modified_gmt":"2023-08-04T17:25:24","slug":"meeting-sinead-oconnor-in-a-cracker-barrel-parking-lot-1998","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/04\/meeting-sinead-oconnor-in-a-cracker-barrel-parking-lot-1998\/","title":{"rendered":"Meeting Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor in a Cracker Barrel Parking Lot, 1998"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p><span class=\"lead-in-text-callout\">Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor was<\/span> seated amongst the Amish folks. Whoever gave her that table most likely knew what they were doing. It was 1998, the suburbs of Indianapolis, and O\u2019Connor was in town to perform at Lilith Fair music festival that night; many of the other patrons were in town to <em>go<\/em> to Lilith Fair. Everyone needed pancakes and a few minutes to play that game with the wooden triangle and the golf tees.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">My friends and I\u2014all decidedly in the going-to-Lilith Fair contingent\u2014pondered saying anything to one of the artists we\u2019d driven from Ohio to see. As O\u2019Connor headed for the door, three of us sprang up without thinking. In the parking lot, my friend Jess meekly shouted \u201cSin\u00e9ad!\u201d O\u2019Connor stopped; we talked. She was kind, signed an autograph, asked if we were coming to the show. There were jokes about whether she could see us at the far back of the crowd. The whole thing took maybe four minutes.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">I can\u2019t prove any of this happened. It was before digital cameras and smartphones\u2014things that broke teenagers couldn\u2019t afford anyway. If something similar happened today, it\u2019d likely be on TikTok or Instagram immediately. Maybe there would be tweets. We just told the story to whomever would listen for the next year.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">When O\u2019Connor died last week, at age 56, my instinct was to not include it in this column. It felt wrong, like trading her kindness for clicks. But then Pee-wee Herman actor Paul Reubens died, the same day as <em>Euphoria<\/em> star Angus Cloud, and seeing their fans and friends remember them shifted things. Many <em>Pee-wee\u2019s Playhouse<\/em> fans grew up pre-internet, but <em>Euphoria<\/em>\u2019s base is decidedly plugged in, and both groups remembered the actors online in equal measure. So did culture critics, who also wrote in-depth about O\u2019Connor.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Committing memories to social media, or the internet broadly, is the best tool available for adding them to the public record. This is far from perfect, especially since these forums are also full of harassment and misinformation. But they do allow stories to spread in ways not available 40 years ago.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"BlockquoteEmbedWrapper-sc-SdiGL gzzTVu paywall blockquote-embed\">\n<div class=\"BlockquoteEmbedContent-esRbGs ea-DDJW blockquote-embed__content\">\n<p><em>The Monitor is a<\/em> <em>weekly column<\/em> <em>devoted to everything happening in the WIRED world of culture, from movies to memes, TV to Twitter.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"paywall\">And sometimes that\u2019s necessary. As word of O\u2019Connor\u2019s passing spread, the world was reminded of her voice, her resilience. Musician Bob Geldof shared some of his last texts with her onstage. She was called a \u201cfeminist killjoy\u201d in the best sense of that phrase. It was noted that she was ahead of her time in speaking out about issues like abuse in the Catholic Church, which she criticized by tearing up a photo of Pope John Paul II during a 1992 <em>Saturday Night Live<\/em> performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">This was a decade before <em>The Boston Globe<\/em> would win a Pulitzer for investigating sexual abuse by priests, two decades before a movie about that investigation\u2014<em>Spotlight<\/em>\u2014would win two Oscars. In the 1990s, O\u2019Connor was ridiculed for what she said and banned from <em>SNL<\/em>. In a subsequent episode, Joe Pesci said during his monolog that he \u201cwoulda gave her such a smack\u201d if he was host that night. Upon her death, lots of people went back to watch her performance. Pesci\u2019s monolog is on the <em>SNL<\/em> YouTube page; O\u2019Connor\u2019s performance isn\u2019t.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Maybe if tech\u2019s many tools for debate had been around in 1992, things would have been different. Maybe better, maybe worse. Maybe O\u2019Connor wouldn\u2019t have talked to teenagers outside restaurants if every interaction she had landed on TikTok. Maybe some things are better left as memories. Maybe, as so many <em>Euphoria<\/em> stars have done on Instagram, it\u2019s best to remember someone\u2019s kindness and let go.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor was seated amongst the Amish folks. Whoever gave her that table most likely knew what they were doing. It was 1998, the suburbs of Indianapolis, and O\u2019Connor was in town to perform at Lilith Fair music festival that night; many of the other patrons were in town to go to Lilith Fair. Everyone [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-89257","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-technology"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.2 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Meeting Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor in a Cracker Barrel Parking Lot, 1998 - Ghanamma.com<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2023\/08\/04\/meeting-sinead-oconnor-in-a-cracker-barrel-parking-lot-1998\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Meeting Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor in a Cracker Barrel Parking Lot, 1998 - Ghanamma.com\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Sin\u00e9ad O\u2019Connor was seated amongst the Amish folks. 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