The reaction to O'Connor's action was swift. In the resultant media furor, she was booed off stages and verbally abused by audiences. Her records were destroyed, and radio stations refused to play her songs.
Two weeks after the infamous Saturday Night Live appearance, she was set to perform "I Believe in You" at the Bob Dylan 30th Anniversary tribute concert in Madison Square Garden. She was greeted by a thundering mixture of cheers and jeers. During the booing, Kris Kristofferson told her not to "let the bastards get you down," to which she replied, "I'm not down." The noise eventually became so loud that O'Connor saw no point in starting the scheduled song. She called for the keyboard player to stop and the microphone to be turned up, and then silenced the audience with an improvised, shouted rendition of "War". This time, she sang the song stopping just after the part in which the lyrics talk about child abuse, emphasizing the point of her previous infamous action. She then looked straight to the audience for a second and left the stage. Kristofferson then comforted her, while in tears.[7]
Saturday Night Live had no foreknowledge of O'Connor's plan and has resisted invitations to rebroadcast the incident (however, it is available on volume four of the SNL DVD special Saturday Night Live -- 25 Years of Music, with an introduction by show creator/executive producer Lorne Michaels about the incident). When aired as a 60-minute syndicated episode, the dress rehearsal version where O'Connor holds up a picture of an African child, bows, and leaves the stage is used instead of the controversial footage. This is the rehearsal performance as she originally planned to perform. As part of SNL's apology to the audience, during his opening monologue the following week, host Joe Pesci held up the photo, taped back together. On the Christopher Walken/Arrested Development episode preceding the Joe Pesci episode, former castmember Jan Hooks cameoed as O'Connor and tried to apologize for her actions. On Madonna's next appearance on SNL (on an episode hosted by Harvey Keitel), after singing "Bad Girl", she held up a photo of Joey Buttafuoco and, saying "fight the real enemy," tore it up.
This was not even O'Connor's first go-around with Saturday Night Live; earlier she had refused to appear on a show hosted by "misogynistic" comedian Andrew Dice Clay. Rather, she had agreed to appear on a later episode hosted by Kyle MacLachlan.
On September 22, 1997, O'Connor was interviewed in Vita, an Italian weekly newspaper. In the interview, she asked the Pope to forgive her. She claimed that the tearing of the photo was "a ridiculous act, the gesture of a girl rebel." She claimed she did it "because I was in rebellion against the faith, but I was still within the faith." She went on to quote Saint Augustine, by saying, "Anger is the first step towards courage."[8] However, O'Connor remains unrepentant about the incident. In a 2002 interview with Salon.com, when asked if she would change anything about the October 3, 1992 SNL appearance, she replied, "Hell, no."[9]
Despite popular rumours, neither Sinéad O'Connor nor Saturday Night Live were ever fined $2.5 million for the stunt.