never too old for two horns behind the head 💚

Muse, live at Rock am Ring (2018).

Morrissey’s Views

Oh, Morrissey. Song-writing, strong-jawed, wrong. “That’s racist” is not the absence of an argument, but the establishment of an individual’s moral boundaries. If you wish to redefine a word, to stress that your definition of racism is so very different from the “loony left”, you have to acknowledge that other people have different interpretations. A basic yet not inaccurate interpretation of racism is the perjured preconception of a person or people, based solely upon the evidence of their ethnicity. The fact that your definition allows you to sink so much further into the abyss of intolerance and hypocrisy doesn’t make the rest of us devoid of reason. We are simply having what is known as a strong disagreement. You disagree, of course. We aren’t at opposing political spectrums; no, you are right, everyone else is wrong. Let’s trace exactly where our opinions stray from one another. Acid attacks are awful. Agreed. Sadiq Khan has a cockney accent. Agreed. Theresa May needs an autocue to remember her own name. That one’s nearly witty, and again, agreed upon. Only ethnic minorities throw acid. That one grates a little: Arthur Collins’ attack in April 2017, to be used as a high-profile example, would be my reasoning for disagreeing. Because he was Caucasian, and political correctness won’t change that. Carrying on, Hitler was left-wing. His party had the word ‘Socialist’ in it but his politics were rather aggressively anti-immigration, militant, and Machiavellian. If we want to use evil individuals from the past to discredit current movements, Hitler was also apparently a vegetarian, Morrissey. Your cat would have loved him.

You are only validated when you’re hated, and you are currently feeling a validation like no other. I’ll give you that as a free lyric. Unless you’re polarising society, what have you got to offer? A 58-year-old singer lost within a creative lull whose last decent record came in 2009, and last great one was in 1994. There’s none of that suave sex-appeal, Thatcher has gone and Johnny Marr has done alright for himself elsewhere. If politics is a horseshoe, it has proven an unlucky one to have picked up. You appear so intent on alienating yourself from your fan base, for seeming aloof and flighty and lonesome, that you’ve come across as a bit of a meandering fool. You’re homeless, politically and musically. Stop braying on about your politics if you cannot accept an opposing view. Stop supporting paedophilia and blaming the 14-year-old child for seducing an adult before feeling disappointed that he was abused, but not the way he wanted, then claiming the audio evidence is misquoting you. Stop spicing up your banal personality with barbs and shots that stretch and chase each other further across the line of acceptability, and then retracting your curling, hateful tentacles when the guillotine of public opinion slams down. We’ve finished forgiving you, Morrissey. You’ve overextended your privilege as a darling of Manchester music, allowing you to crawl back under your rock when you take things too far. You’re out in the open, exposed and alone. You’ve found yourself in a circumstance you’ve romanced for years now; we do dislike you. we do all think you’re wrong, and it would be much better for us all if you could go to sleep, for a fair old while, and when you wake up hopefully shake off some of the cantankerous bluster and waffle that seems to have clogged your mind in recent years.

I’m not calling you a racist, because it is becoming a word that has lost its meaning to you. Racism is becoming a badge of honour to a certain type of person. “Racist apparently, lol”, read the Twitter accounts of  keyboard-smashing hate merchants who take Barry Stanton as a fundamental religion. Those who aren’t racist would reel from the very suggestion, the loathsome implication of the embrace of division and hatred in society. You see it as a necessity, a challenge to the establishment. Challenge the establishment over their willingness to bomb Syria but failures in keeping their own people off the streets. Challenge the hypocrisy of the expense system and mutual benefits cuts. Challenge the idea of a second referendum if you really must. Acceptance and tolerance are easy targets and they are the wrong ones: one cannot be so against Trump purely because he holds a position of power, when you are so happy to sit and ride the ripples of fear he has spanned across the globe. If I were to call you a racist, you would crow, spring to your pen and come up with a witty rhyme for how unfair I am to judge you without truly knowing. You would never acknowledge yourself as racist, but would happily redefine the boundaries and concepts of what racism entails, accepting the unacceptable, to allow yourself to avoid the label. At what point do you acknowledge that you have stepped beyond the bounds of non-racist behaviour, what I would call civilised behaviour, and say that it is not everyone else’s definition that is incorrect, but your viewpoint is at such a disagreement that you must be what we oppose? If you cared so little for what us “loony left” think, then acknowledge yourself, publically. Don’t stretch our snowflake semantics to suit your character, stand up and define yourself honestly, beyond the faux-outrage and near witticisms, and place yourself at odds with a multicultural society. I won’t insult you with what I see as a horrific label, but I will suggest you adopt it yourself. Perhaps I have offered an argument beyond the name-calling that so infuriates you.

July 31, 2021: Chris by Christine and the Queens

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