Pussy Riot - worth protesting about?

 Those Pussy Riot women -  what do you think? Two years in jail, all for  singing a two-minute song.  Admittedly it was performed with some leg-kicking in front of the altar of a Moscow church and it was  denouncing the still-hugely-popular  Russian leader, Vladimir Putin. But hey -  what ever happened to free speech?

Mind you, if a group of women named  after female genitalia were to march into my local church and begin a punk-style denunciation of Peter Robinson  or  even Enda Kenny, I  suspect the congregation would be offended too.  Not  because they are necessarily Robinson (or even Kenny)fans, but more because they'd feel a church wasn't  the place to do a political denunciation (yes, yes, I know it's been done before,  more  usually from the pulpit), especially if  it was  delivered  by a band with a very rude name.

But one thing is sure: if I went into my local church and stood in front of the altar and began to sing a song  denouncing  David Osborne, the people in the church would be offended. Not necessarily because they were Osborne supporters but because they'd feel a church wasn't the place to do a denunciation of that kind, especially if I was part of a trio named after  female  genitalia. 

You see what  I did there? I blurred the distinction between  the name of the group and what they did.  So let's go back to the name. Is it offensive?  Well, they're a punk band, so you may be fairly confident that like most punk bands they wanted to shock, maybe be offensive. And when they got kitted out and did the lepping about in front of the altar, telling everyone how much they disliked Vladimir Putin, you may be sure they wanted to shock and probably offend.  If they hadn't , the event wouldn't have been worth reporting. Were the congregation/ cathedral clergy right to be offended?  I should think so.  Now we're getting somewhere:we know that for a lot of people, the band's name  AND  the band's actions were offensive.  And you'd be pretty perverse  (or maybe a member of the Orange  Order) if you thought that offending people was a good thing to do.

Which lead us to the question: was the penalty they paid for their offensiveness fair and just? The prosecution  wanted to give them three years  but the judge - a woman, as it happens- gave them two years in prison. Which sparked the world-wide protests we've all  heard  about.  Too much, I think. But then, why aren’t Sinead O’Connor and Madonna and Paul McCartney speaking up for Marian Price?