is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
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Already too many words about this.
So, Miley Cyrus twerked on TV, then rode a wrecking ball and said her video was in part inspired by Sinead O�Connor�s �Nothing Compares 2 U� video, so journalists started asking O�Connor what she thought, so O�Connor, instead of letting [male] journalists mediate it, wrote an open letter to Cyrus cautioning her about some perils of the music industry.
Then Cyrus tweeted a bunch of vicious references to O�Connor�s history of mental instability, and included a mention of O�Connor�s famous use of an appearance on SNL to rip up a picture of the pope.
Strangely, when the original hubbub about the twerkfest on MTV arose, my first response was to say, �well, whatever, but if Miley Cyrus needs to rebel she could have ripped up a photo of the pope on SNL or something.� What I meant was: she could have rebelled against something that matters to a world larger than her own career or pleasures.
For the record, I have no problem with people pursuing their own pleasures, or careers.
Amanda Palmer wrote a response to O�Connor that basically said �let women do whatever they want,� which it may or may have not been Palmer�s way of telling O�Connor what to do (kind of like the liar�s paradox). Palmer�s letter was interesting but seemed to assume that anyone in the situations being described here can exercise agency in some sort of simplified Kantian vein. I�m not sure that agency is all that helpful in figuring out what right and wrong mean in this mess.
And today would have been my father�s 68th birthday, and that actually fits in this post because, back in the day when O�Connor literally ripped into the pope, my dad, who knew that O�Connor was important to me, said something like, �well, I get it, but what did she think doing that would get her?� We had a conversation about fame and responsibility and also about acting like an asshole on TV, and I ended up saying something like, �well, if you or I had everything we did age 18-25 made public, we wouldn�t look so good either.� My dad said, �that is a very good point.� And we laughed.
I suspect it is a point that holds for all of us lucky enough to have made it through and past that age bracket.
I have no conclusions here other than that 1) I understand and respect what O�Connor did. She went out of her way to address directly rather than through Rolling Stone or Huffington Post someone whose career choices seem to be playing into a hot mess of cultural misogyny at the present moment. She pointed out that similarities Cyrus cited between herself and O�Connor are actually important differences (O�Connor shaved her head to protest being used as a sex symbol, etc.). And she offered motherly advice. But 2) she probably should have known (and perhaps she did) what kind of response she would get to that. I mean, having once been an 18-25 year old human being who ripped up a representation of the pope on American television, she can probably remember how she would have responded to motherly advice from a 40-something person at the time, even if that 40-something person had the kind of experience you�d be wise to listen to. I feel sorry for anyone who tried to tell me what to do at that age, oy! And 3) Miley Cyrus is such a dick. Her response to O�Connor is a paradigm example of someone who acts without thinking. Fuck that. And yet also: it just shows that she is not yet quite an adult, and that O�Connor is right to worry about her.
(PS: O�Connor�s responses to Cyrus' provocations so far have been fairly measured. I hope they stay that way.)
1:02 p.m. - October 04, 2013
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