Let's Go Crazy!

On the Knicks, electroshock therapy and Sinéad O’Connor.

Good morning, my fellow maniacs,

What a time to be alive in NYC! The sun is out, the mayor is fun, and we have a winning sports team. Go Knicks! I don’t know or care anything about sports, but even I can attest that this is a summer vibe. It’s like a passionate fever has overtaken the city, transforming us into panting, crazed, berserkers running into the streets screaming in ecstasy (or agony) depending on the score.

It’s like the city has gone mad (in a fun way)!

This is a very weird transition, but I can’t help but compare this to another story I read this week, of Jacqueline Onassis Kennedy running naked into the street, screaming, because she had just found out that her husband was cheating on her (again). But unlike when passions run hot for sports, she was subsequently committed to a mental hospital and had electroshock therapy to calm her the fuck down.

For centuries, women’s anger was not considered a valid emotion. Instead, it was a symptom to be cured. A woman who raised her voice, who named an injustice, who refused to be quiet about what she knew to be true was “hysterical,” “unstable,” or “crazy.” And the consequences of that were not just societal. Women were institutionalized, sedated, strapped to tables, and had electricity run through their brains until those inconvenient feelings were gone.

From a new book about sanity and creativity to the activism of Sinéad O’Connor, there’s much to discuss. Lest you think that those days are over, and that we wouldn’t dismiss angry women today, especially not ones screaming about a pedophile ring involving powerful men, think again.

Let’s get into it!

You can purchase your Sinéad Was Right T-shirt from the Rude Astronauts store for $25.

Sinéad O’Connor

Over Margaritas with my friend, @ rudeastronauts, we ended up talking at length about Sinéad O’Connor and what happened after she tore up the photo of the pope on SNL on live television in 1992, exposing the child abuse that happened under his watch. The world came down on her, and she was booed, mocked, blacklisted, and declared unhinged. And then a decade later, when The Boston Globe’s Spotlight reporters uncovered the full extent of the Catholic Church’s child abuse scandal, it turned out that O’Connor had been right. But she never received an apology from SNL or anyone. Because @ rudeastronauts is a creative genius, she woke the next morning and made a t-shirt. Purchase yours here.

Sinéad Youth

If you need somewhere to wear your t-shirt, get yourself to Sinéad Youth, the Sinéad O’Connor cover band, performing on June 18th at Mama Tried. Our friend, Peter Kerlin, plays bass for the band, and I have been wanting to check it out since I heard about it. There is something profound about a room full of people celebrating O’Connor’s music, remembering that she should be remembered for so much more than one (badass) moment in time. Thursday, June 18, 2026, 6:00 PM 10:00 PM, Mama Tried 787 3rd Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11232

You’re Wrong About… Sinéad O’Connor

Anytime I need more information about a reckoning with something that happened with a woman in the past, I turn to the podcast, You’re Wrong About. The whole premise of the podcast is the corrective history we should have been taught, going back to the corrective moments when culture got it catastrophically wrong, and asking “why” and “who benefited from the story we were told instead?” The Sinéad episode does exactly that with an interview with Allyson McCabe, author of Why Sinéad O’Connor Matters. McCabe discusses why women were not (still aren’t?) allowed to be angry, why the world didn’t show compassion for this singer/ activist, and why the media was more invested in O’Connor’s destruction than in the truth she was trying to tell.

The Danger to Be Sane- Rosa Montero

My friend, and friend of the newsletter, Eva Munz (who writes an inspiring Substack, The Center for Promiscuous Thinking), gifted me this wonderful new book, The Danger to Be Sane, by Rosa Montero. I’ve torn through it this week, reading about the relationship between creativity and extreme emotional experience, and the capacity to feel deeply is the creative impulse. Female artists’ passions have historically been the reasons they’ve been locked up, quieted, and shocked into compliance. The artist’s deep interior life can be seen as a gift, but for women, it has often been seen as a danger. Montero’s book asks us, among other things, to reconsider who, exactly, was in danger.

See ya next week!