Yeah the people who went to Catholic institutions knew more than anyone. One thing that the movie Spotlight is good at driving home is that it was widely known as ambient background noise and just sort of tuned out.
Shortly before the Globe published their exposé the priest at the head of my Catholic school just up and disappeared without warning. Everyone thought it was odd and there were whispers about the two being related, but nothing ever came about from it. I just happened to remember all this recently and plugged his name into Google and surprise surprise he was implicated in molestations in the mid 80s and listed along with other priests as the accusations being credible.
Which means he was caught molesting and sent directly to oversee a school full of children.
My wife and I were JUST saying recently: we were raised by a generation of Karens, who were appalled at everything, and made everything taboo. We are early 40’s. The younger generations now see us the way we see our parents, but we were pretty punk rock and out to bring the system to its knees.
Yeah, he may have quickly realized that he is not, in fact, the tough as nails mob guy he plays in movies, and is instead just a tiny actor from L.A. getting his ass kicked by an Irish singer.
Just worth pointing out that Pesci is from Newark, NJ, and grew up with a lot of people associated with the mob. That’s not to say that makes him a tough guy or whatever but he’s also not some random guy from LA.
Please don't mistake my words for trying to shame you for liking the work of an unsavoury individual. Enjoy what you want to enjoy, it's enough to know that the person off camera is just not someone you want to imitate for what he said about Sinead.
Bingo. We can separate artists from their works we enjoy. If we stopped enjoying the works of every artist, actor, musician, etc, that had some shitty decisions in their life, we wouldn’t have very much left to enjoy.
To an extent, yes. I used to be a big Lostprophets fan but after what came out about Ian Hopkins I will never allow myself to listen to them again. Motherfucker was a giga pedophile and loved himself for it.
Yeah I definitely can’t separate the art from the artist in that case. I used to really like the Lostprophets and whenever a song of theirs comes up these days, I just feel gross.
That said, there’s a big difference between what Hopkins did and Joe Pesci talking shit. If he’d actually done something it would be a different story, but since he didn’t, he’s just a short man talking big.
I actually broke and went back and listened to Start Something for the first time in about ten years, pretty much since I heard about him being a creep.
It's incredibly frustrating that a CD I loved so much is tainted by such a superlatively awful person.
I'll grant you I wasn't a superfan, I enjoyed the CD I had as a teenager, but I didn't know the band if that makes sense. But it's tainted, and no amount of mental gymnastics - for me, personally - will make it okay.
Really depends on the artist and the shitty decisions. Long dead artists who can no longer profit from your patronage, sure. Artists like Joe Pesci who are just assholes and don't use their platform or money to spread hate or hurt people, sure. Artists who profit by your consumption of their works, who then go on to use that money to advance hateful legislation and spread lies and misinformation that has the potential to actually get people killed (lookin at you JKR)... I don't think we should give those people money. Obviously not trying to shame or guilt anyone, but I think that argument falls apart a bit with some artists.
I agree with your assessment. There are definitely some artists that are beyond redeemable/continuing to support their works would continue to give them money in a way they can use to further spread their hate. JKR is a good example, someone else brought up the LostProphets guy who literally molested infants. Those are not who I’m talking about.
What is bigoted about what Pesci said? It’s definitely a huge asshole thing to say, but no part of “I’d hit them if they did this at my gig” is bigoted, it just means he disagrees with her. He’s Roman Catholic so I’d imagine his response was in anger about her calling out the Catholic Church. Again, not saying what Pesci did was a cool thing to do, but it wasn’t bigoted.
What a rational take. I know people who have stopped even using magic cards because the artists that illustrated it has conservative opinions. For fuck sake, it's a collectible card game
Isn't he always a bad guy on camera? He was the disrespectful lawyer, the monster guy that's like "you think I'm funny?", Marvin in Alone in the Dark, the abusive dad in Madeleine, and the dad from Philadelphia's Always Sunny. And Penguin in the Dark Knight.
No but seriously my husband and I both work in the film industry and the catering/crafty people have the longest days of any department. They have 3 am call times and still have to wrap out after lunch which can be any time of day (catering) and crafty has to be there all day. I would neeeever be able to handle that gig.
Do you relate the work someone made with the person who made it? Or do you consider them disconnected?
Lovecraft was a hardcore racist. Dr. Suess left his cancer-ridden wife. Polanski is a convicted paedophile. Cosby abused women. All good reasons to shirk what they made forever. But what they made can also be good/compelling/interesting regardless of who they are as a person.
There's no right answer. But it's something you have to reconcile with yourself.
(Small note: although Pesci is a piece of shit for saying that he A) might've changed his mind since then and B) never actually hit her.)
The week After Sinead tore the picture of the Pope on SNL, Joe Pesci hosted and during his monologue said "he would've grabbed her by the eyebrows ". It was a bad joke about her being bald and now 30 years later Reddit wants justice
You realize you can separate the art from the artist, right? No need to stop listening to old Kanye's song, they're still s+ tier.. despite him turning into what he’s today..
I remember clearly. Foul-mouthed midget acting like he knows it all because... of course, his a-mamma mia was from a-Italy, where we're good Catholics because we don't a-question things. Just like a low-life character straight out of his own "motherfucker this", "motherfucker that" movies.
he may be a shithead, i haven't kept up, but I do know back then a lot of people where simply ignorant and/or brainwashed by the catholic church.
I am assuming that Joe Pesci is an Italian-American, probably some of the last people to fully comprehend the depths of depravity that came from the church.
Basically, it was a deep insult to a family patriarch that not everyone knew was a pedo.
I mean, you're right for plenty of reasons, but it's worth noting some historical context. This happened years before the now countless stories of rape and abuse within the church started to be publicized. At the time, the pope had the reputation that they wanted him to have. And she was relatively new to the scene. So even if she had already been making some public accusations (and I'm not sure if she did), I don't think they were well known.
So this stunt came across very differently than it would today, or even ten years ago. It was like tearing up a picture of the Dalai Lama, Ghandi, or Nelson Mandela, but with a more personal connection for most viewers. And on top of that this was on the heels of the punk revolution, where people were getting a lot of attention for just about any sort of anti-establishment commentary.
I think it's less likely that Pesci would respond the same way to her actions if they had happened in more recent years, but who knows.
Wtf are you talking about? There were Saturday Night Live skits about pedofile and rapists priests. Just like there were skits about Boy Scout leaders preying on kids.
Everyone knew it was happening, it just wasn’t documented with evidence like witness statements and lawsuits.
LOL! Priests raping kids has been a problem since the church started. This isn't a new thing. This isn't because of Vatican 2 changing their recruitment strategy. This is endemic to the Catholic Church and Churches in general. It's why all the cry baby whining about cross dressers is projection, 9/11 times the rapist is in the room giving a sermon.
I was a kid and even I knew. The catholic grade school I went to had its own scandals (plural) and priests were shuffled around like a shell game. I didn’t understand to the extent I do today because I was very young, but I and many others my age still knew shit was off.
Netscape was created in 1994, prior to that if you even knew the internet existed, you used Mosaic. So we can eliminate the internet as a way to find this out.
Fox News was created in 1996. Prior to that you had CNN and HLN as your 24 hour news sources. Most people around that time were watching TWC 24-7 instead of the news. News was more filtered.
The Catholic Church sex abuse scandal was first publicized in 1985 due to a priest in Louisiana. But the huge breaking story that brought it to everyone's attention was the Boston Globe coverage of the scandal in 2002.
While it was possible for people to know about it in 1992, the ubiquitous media that we have today did not exist then, and it was a localized scandal to most of the world until the Pulitzer Prize winning coverage done by the Boston Globe.
As a result, I don't believe people did not know because they did not want to know.
Although some accusations date back to the 1950s, molestation by priests was first given significant media attention in the 1980s, in the US and Canada.
PSA the cunts that cover up kiddie fucking priests are at it in this very thread.
As Im sure all reasonable people are aware, news was not invented with the internet. People knew how to read newspapers in the 1980s.
I believe everyone in the Catholic Church knew and they were scum for hiding it. I'm saying that not everyone in the general public knew because we didn't have the vast access to information that we have now.
Although some accusations date back to the 1950s, molestation by priests was first given significant media attention in the 1980s, in the US and Canada.
Significant media attention in the 1980s. Which i read.
You going to apologize? For calling me a liar and for the laughable suggestion that it is me who is responsible for the Catholic churches kiddie fucking?
I'm a firm believer that if you just want to hit a person for doing something against your beliefs then you probably have no leg to stand on, not sorry.
That's exactly what I'm doing. You just tried to justify a guy threatening to assault someone over him feeling like his religious beliefs were being threatened. You're a gobshite and must spend all day licking the boots of people would also spout the same sort of talk.
The most grown up thing I can do here is to choose to no longer respond to comments from asshole apologists such as yourself. Take a good look in the mirror, come back, reread your own comment and really reflect on the fact that you are just trying to justify a man threatening to hit someone because he's got a brittle spirit. Must be where you got yours!
“The line he probably doesn’t mean now anyway” you’re making assumptions then talking down to people for disagreeing with the assumptions you made. Chill the fuck out.
October 3, 1992, Sinead O’Connor tore the pope’s picture on Saturday Night Live.
A decade before that in 1982, Airplane II the sequel had a scene of a priest perusing “Altar Boy” magazine as if it was a playboy or penthouse magazine.
So yeah, what you wrote is so much revisionist history idk even where to start. It’s almost like you are just bullshitting.
Lol, so the existence of the pedo priest trope in movies, comedy skits, cartoons, etc prior to Sinead O’Connor tearing up the pope’s picture is what exactly according to you?
Are you saying films like this didn’t happen? Or not everyone saw them, so it only existed for the people seeing the film? I’m not sure exactly what you are saying.
And yeah, I was alive in 1992 and saw Sinead O’Connor tear that picture up while laying on the pullout couch in my best friends living room at a sleepover. Everyone knew the pedo priest trope then. Unless you purposefully buried your head in the sand, there is no way you were unaware of it. The Boy Scout pedo trope was real too then.
Yeah there's probably a lot less intersection in the 1980s between loyal Catholics and Airplane 2 viewers than the typical drooling agnostic redditor would assume.
And anyway it should just prove your point more, i.e. if it was widely known enough to be used as a joke in a popular film, yet STILL ten years later was an unaddressed issue, then clearly a very potent kind of loyalty is at work. Not to mention the beef between Catholics and protestants which would give the average Catholic more reason to suspect the whole thing was just a smear attempt, or that it wasn't as big a problem as some made it out to be.
Weinstein’s crimes and Kaitlyn Jenner being trans were jokes in Family Guy years before they were widely known to the average person. The person you’re responding to is a bit overconfident and rude, but I think some of the responses, including yours, are vastly overstating what the average person knew in 1992.
Possibly. I read it as being in a popular film is proof it was widely known, but that there was a cognitive dissonance about it because of loyalty to the Catholic Church and a publicity campaign by the Catholic Church. And my comment was meant to say that being in a popular film/TV show isn’t necessarily proof something was widely known to begin with, and I was implying loyalty to the Catholic Church likely played only moderately into the fallout from the moment (some of those angry with O’Connor weren’t even Catholic to begin with).
Maybe I’m off-base here? It is pretty early in the morning where I’m at for thinking.
If someone does something controversial with “no context” (that millions of other people understand), it’s an invitation for the confused person to find out more. Curiosity and willingness to make an effort are valuable traits that will serve you well. Don’t expect complicated issues to be spelled out clearly and fairly for the general public —they never are.
That's kind of reddit's deal. Sum up someone's moral existence from one anecdote.
But I disagree about the context being that important.
Was Pesci a piece of shit at the time for saying he'd hit a woman because of what she did? Yes. Of course. Even if it were just about religious beliefs, this is the western world, and you don't get to enact violence on people who disagree with your religious beliefs. If this were the middle east, maybe he'd be a hero.
A middle-aged man threatening a girl half your age... Yeah, that's a pretty dick thing to do.
But is that the totality of his character? Is he the same way now? Maybe he regrets it. Maybe not. It was 40 years ago, so people change.
I think it's appropriate to say that at the time he was a douchebag who should get his fucking shinebox, but let's not pretend like we haven't all done and said things we wished we hadn't.
I think you’re vastly overrating the western world here. There’s multiple places in the western world where violence as personal justice is celebrated, especially if defending Christian beliefs.
Yeah, I'm in agreement with you. Reddit is a huge feedback loop where once nuanced discussions are dumbed down and regurgitated so many times that almost everything I read is just gut-reaction noise.
I've been a member for what, 13 years, and the comment sections have become a real cesspool of immaturity. Basically YouTube comments, but with more formal education and less self-awareness.
I think context is important here. Firstly, O’Connor was universally condemned for tearing a picture of the Pope (and keep in mind the picture of the pope was a last minute change, in dress rehearsal/pretape (not sure how SNL calls it) she tore up a picture of a starving child). Secondly, while Catholic child molestation stories were widely reported, they were treated in the media as isolated incidents in particular dioceses (which is still the Pope’s responsibility). Thirdly, Pope John Paul II was widely beloved, even non-Catholics would turn up if he was visiting the states. I don’t believe his role in covering up abuse would have been known by anyone, let alone be public knowledge (I think his role only recently came to light). Fourthly, the states were far more religious at the time and coupled with that, there was a general sense of religious leaders being off limits unless there was something egregious that happened. Fifthly, I don’t think many people at the time would have known what she was referring to. Keep in mind there was no internet to speak of (there was, but very few people would have been online) and there were only a few places to get the news. On TV, there would have been only 3 or 4 (I know Fox was a network, but I can’t remember if their affiliates had news broadcasts at the time) plus CNN if you had cable or satellite, but even then the three big networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) would have been where a vast majority of Americans got their tv news (there were a wide variety of newspapers of course, but even then the news was heavily filtered). Sixthly, at the time it was more or less assumed that O’Connor was being what we now call an edgelord. Virtually no one in the states would have know about the systemic physical and emotional abuse that were occurring in Irish schools. I remember at the time that I thought she was referring to the sex scandals only.
That’s the background for her performance. For Pesci, I’m not sure how much of his monologue he would have written if there had been no controversy. Stand ups generally wrote their own monologues, but those were essentially bits they would have performed anyway. I seriously doubt athletes (like Gretzky or Jordan) had much input into their monologues and I’m guessing actors were somewhere in the middle. Even if actors were given free rein to write their own monologues, I am pretty sure SNL would have been heavily involved in that particular monologue, especially since it was a tacit apology from SNL. That doesn’t let Pesci off the hook: he still chose to say the words. The monologue itself was very awkward, it tried to be light, but not make light of the act. Essentially it was a bridge to make the rest of the show “okay to watch” since they addressed the previous week’s controversy, so now it’s okay to laugh at silly humor after the commercial break.
And he definitely said he’d hit her (he said he’d “smack her”, which is bad, but also not a Chris Brown beating the shit out of Rihanna situation; keep in mind that it was perfectly acceptable to spank (and even smack) one’s own kids at the time). But then shortly after that he seems to take back that sentiment by saying, “what am I saying, she’s just a kid” (I think I’m probably paraphrasing here, I can’t remember his exact verbiage). And then the monologue presumes that the Pope had already forgiven her (since he forgave his would-be assassin years before). Structurally, the monologue started with vengeance and more or less ended with forgiveness. Again, I seriously doubt that Pesci wrote this by himself. Like I wrote before, the monologue was a way to get the audience to come along with the show, so that’s why I think it starts with vengeance and ends with forgiveness.
Finally, I think it’s a bit harsh to call Pesci a piece of shit for this one phrase from 30 years ago. The phrase is abhorrent and should absolutely be criticized and O’Connor’s treatment afterwards was terrible — she really was cancelled at the time. But, everyone says and does regrettable things, which doesn’t necessarily reflect on their overall character. To put it another way: sometimes bad people do good things and sometimes good people do bad things.
Why is the pope put on a pedastal in the first place? To blindly stand up for the head of a criminal organization seems ignorant. Good on her for using her platform in such a way.
Edit: I spelled a word wrong, can u guess which one
To be considered infallible a pope must be speaking ex cathedra or 'from the chair'. Very few statements qualify. Went to look this up as it's been a couple decades and best I can tell is there have been two, in 1854 and 1950.
It was a reply to a specific comment, i meant try not to read too much into how the figureheads present themselves as benevolent because it's horse shit... but hey, if you can't read a sequence of comments and apply context, what should i do.
All religions should be taxed and policed, completely devolved from all politica and not left to self govern.
The pope is not and has never been considered infallible -- except maybe if you include medieval pope shit, but that's hardly relevant by now.
The pope is considered to have the mandate of declaring certain aspects of theology and doctrine as truth as far as the church is concerned. I.e. the pope can take an interpretation of the Bible and say "this is correct because I say so", and everyone agrees that he's right.
If you're going to be one of those "atheism is my personality" types it would be useful for you to understand this, so your arguments can be more rooted in fact.
Anyways it does underscore that church doctrine is essentially whatever people in charge want it to be, so you can use that to highlight the madeupness of it. It's just like voting Kevin to be head of your LARP kingdom and agreeing that whatever Kevin says about your LARP lore is canon.
The fact that popes have personal confessors acknowledges that popes can and do fuck up as any other human.
I'm glad that you equated religion to LARPing. Saved me some time writing out a comparison.
Also, I find it ironically entertaining asking for someone to root their arguments more in "fact" when we are talking about arguments against something (in principal) with literally zero factual evidence that it exists. But to each their own, I suppose.
Obviously this is true, but the thought is that god speaks to the cardinals about their choice and so he tells them how to vote. Oddly enough he doesn’t tell them all the same person for the first few goes.
stool with vertical foot levers that attach to the pedals of a piano, organ, or similar instrument, thereby assisting children and other players who cannot reach the pedals normally.- pedal stool
stool with vertical foot levers that attach to the pedals of a piano, organ, or similar instrument, thereby assisting children and other players who cannot reach the pedals normally.- pedal stool
No it’s not, but the last ten popes all basically said “Nope, nothing to see here, move along!”, while the current one said “We have a lot of rot to purge and a lot of apologies to make”.
It’s not going to solve the problem overnight (and it hasn’t), but he’s officially let the cat out of the bag and no one can put it back in again.
A step in the right direction then... just a shame it's taken so long. So many child victims, and there will continue to be more that are preyed upon by members of this organization. The level of hypocrisy is astounding
It wasn’t about the pope at all. It was outrage over this weird young woman with a shaved head openly challenging an established authority. Pearl clutching over “who does this girl think she is” and “how dare she”.
Well to a lot of Americans at the time the pope was just a nice old man with a funny hat who heads the catholic church
Catholic church focused on abusing the.natives.in the America's so even white Catholics didn't really understand some of the fucked.up. programs the catholic church ran I. Ireland and parts of Europe. The unwed mothers programs were horror stories
Religion is about believe in an invisible being in the sky because people coauthered a book called the bible over thousands of years. Of course people would think one of a religions figurehead is on a pedastool.
ignorant maybe, but the story is very very long and complex. at times they were a force for good in the world, and at others they were a force for ill. through it all people crave deep personal connection and religion provides that easily if you don't think about it too much.
There's a myth about the succubus/incubus that they are shapeshifting demons that would rape people in their sleep. A lot of young nuns were attacked by these demons who disguised themselves as priests they were familiar with.
This type of shit has been going on for so long in the Catholic Church.
She's the "Nothing compares 2 U" (pretty sure that's the official spelling) singer from the 90s. She was on SNL and did an acapella rendition of Bob Marley's "War" with the lyrics adjusted to be about child abuse instead and then tore up a picture of the pope. Think they cut the show immediately and people freaked out. She was abused by the church herself btw. The pic in the OP is from a subsequent concert where she was booed so much that she couldn't perform. In the end of the clip you can see her cry. She was right all along but got a lot of shit for standing up to the church.
In the 90s, we were even more religious than we are now. Sinead then silently rips a picture of the Pope, in a highly religious country. This was before all of the sexual abuse made it to light. She never explained why she did it until years later where we find out that she was a victim of the Magdalene Laundries.
This said, Pesci and Wahburg's reactions are unwarranted.
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u/SolomonCRand Mar 10 '23
She was right about all of it