She never deserved to be shunned.
I can think of dozens of true statements that if spoken on a show like Saturday Night Live would led to a performer being banned.
I'm not a big fan of the whole, "you couldn't do that today", but you sure couldn't do that today. I think you weren't supposed to do it then either which made it subversive comedy.
And the huge amounts of research that shined the light on the Catholic church's culture of preying and assaulting children and then covering it up.
It took quite a heroic effort to bring the Catholic church's crimes to light and she was speaking about something the media wasn't comfortable or willing to report on.
What she did was real bravery to stand in the face of so much opposition and mockery from us at the time.
It seems for some people they are still from that time.
I personally think that things are too "hot" right now, but nobody should pretend this is a modern problem.
Untold Black American artists, authors, and creatives who fled to Europe: Nina Simone, James Baldwin, Josephine Baker, Paul Robeson, Augusta Savage, Romare Bearden, Jessie Fauset, and Richard Wright just off the top of my head.
And arguably, her antics greatly overshadowed the message she was trying to get across. How many people even realized what she was criticizing? So it ended up pissing off a lot of people without actually being effective in drawing attention to the issue she wanted to raise awareness toward.
Elvis was protesting corporate control and homogeneity. Sinead was protesting institutions that enabled evil. Who cares if some suits were made uncomfortable.
Costello, his label and the show’s producers, had agreed prior to the show that they would perform their catchy single ‘Less Than Zero’, a track which was written about disgraced British politician Oswald Mosley who, at the time, was the former leader of the British Union of Fascists. However, as the lights of the famous studio glared down upon him, Costello wouldn’t miss his opportunity. While it certainly was considered the band’s biggest opportunity commercial to date, Costello put a stop to the performance mid-intro, yelling: “Stop! Stop!” in the direction of his band. “I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen,” he said before adding: “But there’s no reason to do this song here”.
Instead, Costello and his band rolled into a performance of the song ‘Radio Radio’ which, controversially, includes lyrics that criticised the commercialisation of the airwaves in both television and radio as well as pointed the finger at corporate-controlled broadcasting. Costello had certainly made his statement clear and in the middle of one of the most hostile environments....
<https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/elvis-costello-banned-snl-video...>