Was/Is Morrissey Racist?

OMG MORRISSEY IS SO CLEVER

thats not the point. i mean, it seems that if a hugely influential and intellectually legitimate icon like Morrissey says anything that seems even remotely controversial, the (british) press will have its way with it. thats what the press is there for.

granted, im an American, so i may be missing some of the point here.

You think it's more the job of the press to accentuate the positives of celebrities, rather than point out they're big racists?

I love that Geir can traipse in, drop a ludicrous bomb that everyone is already beyond familiar with, and traipse back out, and ILM will still tie itself into a knot over it. It's like watching Itzhak Perleman play a concerto.

annoying ILM always has value

You think it's more the job of the press to accentuate the positives of celebrities, rather than point out they're big racists?

Is that what you think has happened here?

no, its the job of the press to do both.

Point out the positives of big racist celebrities?

YES

It's the job of the press to sell papers. How are NME's circulation figures?

NME's not about circulation figures, it's about BRANDS.

Point out the positives of big racist celebrities?

-- Matt DC, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 15:52 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

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YES

-- HI DERE, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 15:53 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

popjustice.jpg

xpost

Exactly, and if you don't think the reporter creamed himself when Moz took the bait on those questions...

i have my own interpretation of what Moz is trying to say, but its just that: an interpretation, based partly on his interviews/lyrics and on my own feelings on the matter. if you take any of it too seriously then you are probably the type that thinks Hilary Clinton is a strong woman and an honest leader

Head...hurts...

Or maybe I'm from an immigrant family and fed up with my people being cast as villains by douchebag bourgie fucks pining for the bleached populace of their prole childhood?

xp

I think racist speech shoud be taken seriously, because it can and often does have serious consequences for actual real people.

Racism: can have IRL consequences

OK, before we go down a US posters-style RACE~! thread here, I don't think this is a _race_ issue per se, it's more a straight-up bigotry issue: Morrissey is hating on Polish and Kosovan dudes just as much as he is Ghanians and Bangladeshis here.

My point was, that even if you say "Oh, he's just annoying NME...", that doesn't change the fact that some people reading his statements probably won't see them like that, and instead they might think, "Hell yeah, he's right!".

(x-post)

I've read the exchange in question now and there are several options:

a) Morrissey is racist
b) Morrissey is a paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic prick
c) Morrissey has been away from the UK so long he's failed to notice the conflation of ideas between himself and the paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic pricks
d) Morrissey is actually suffering from a Momusesque fetishisation of other cultures because if you walk down Oxford Street or through the centre of Slough or Bradford or Chipping Sodbury there is no way you could think you were in any other country in the world
e) Morrissey is consciously tapping into a fear of modern black/Asian music and culture that still exists among yer white UK indie fan, even some of those who think they are nice fluffy and liberal
f) Morrissey is an astonishingly naive fuckwit to the power of 500 for thinking for one minute he can get away with saying things like that in NME of all places
g) Morrissey is trolling the NME

None of the above reflect particularly well upon him, really.

Anyway, well done Conor McNicholas, you guarantee this issue will sell a shedload of copies and you're not obliged to give Morrissey's next mediocre release a positive review. 10/10

I think F is the most likely. Morrissey's biggest problem has always been that he's about 1/3 as smart as he actually think's he is, both in terms of "book smarts" and "street smarts".

xpost

ugh. i don't know what to say. if you think anyone is pushed over the line and becomes a Neo-Nazi after reading an interview with an Oscar Wilde fan in NME, um...

i believe in this little thing called "personal responsibility". people don't seem to care about it too much these days, they seem to think that video games and pop stars control the minds of the children from secret lairs

http://www.nndb.com/people/914/000047773/jimmy-the-greek.jpg

club morrissey not seals

Now I'm fully aware I'm giving NME too much credit here but revered and still influential indie icon starts spouting crap that is largely identical to what you'd read in the comments section of the Express and Mail, comments that would be anathema to the editorial team themselves. You can either let it go without comment and look like you're tacitly condoning it OR you can call him out and sell a shedload more copies in the process.

No-brainer really. Although chances are they wouldn't do the same thing to, say, the lead singer of the Klaxons in similar circumstances.

You can either let it go without comment and look like you're tacitly condoning it OR you can call him out and sell a shedload more copies in the process.

Rumour is, they tried to do both.

ie, shat themselves when they saw what Morrissey had said for fear of what it would do to their relationship with Polydor and tried to get him to retract it.

a) Morrissey is racist No.
b) Morrissey is a paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic prick Unlikely
c) Morrissey has been away from the UK so long he's failed to notice the conflation of ideas between himself and the paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic pricks Well, leaving the Daily Mail out of it (covered by option 2), it's too easy to get the 'impression' that the UK is being taken over by the people who are getting news coverage. Muslim terrorists and Jade Goody. Also, Kensington is awash with foreign people who are spending a ton of money in Harrods and/or HarvNix then going home, wherever that might be. That's not the whole of london, or anywhere else.
d) Morrissey is actually suffering from a Momusesque fetishisation of other cultures because if you walk down Oxford Street or through the centre of Slough or Bradford or Chipping Sodbury there is no way you could think you were in any other country in the world Oh yeah, I just said this sort of.
e) Morrissey is consciously tapping into a fear of modern black/Asian music and culture that still exists among yer white UK indie fan, even some of those who think they are nice fluffy and liberal Moz has never tapped into anything, he unwittingly got tapped into by those white UK indie fuxxors who saw something of themselves in him, but actually were nothing like him at all.
f) Morrissey is an astonishingly naive fuckwit to the power of 500 for thinking for one minute he can get away with saying things like that in NME of all places I don't think he cares either way, but naive he isnt.
g) Morrissey is trolling the NME like he cares, or wants to feel hated by the NME. As he says, he can't go back to Manchester anymore, so he'll go back to whichever bit of the world he fancies, and not get bothered by the madding crowd he's far from now.

Fans of hip-hop/R&B have been hunting Morrissey ever since his oh-so-entirely-correct "Hang The DJ" statement with The Smiths back in 1986.

Wasn't 'Panic' about noted hip-hop DJ Steve Wright?

I love it when Dom plays the race card.

-- blueski, Friday, July 13, 2007 12:03 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

Quitney, get ready for the Facebook message I'm about to send ya. It's A++++

ok

Okay then Mark,

h) Morrissey is great and does and says nothing wrong at all ever

And by "about", I mean "in an hour".
xp

All English people are racist. Fins too.

h) Dunno, don't care about him much.

i believe in this little thing called "personal responsibility". people don't seem to care about it too much these days, they seem to think that video games and pop stars control the minds of the children from secret lairs

-- swinburningforyou, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 16:12 (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Absolutely.

maybe el moz should take some "personal responsiblity" toward his audience of vulnerable young white guys?

Look, all he's saying is that foreigners are destroying British culture. If some of his fans are foolish enough to believe that and to join or vote for a political party with the same views, that's hardly Morrissey's fault.

Maybe they should have him on at the Oxford Union.

Morrissey just sounds like any unthinking middle-aged expat anywhere. Pining for the childhood home that no longer exists. The racism, if it's there, is tangential rather than fundamental.

Zelda is OTM but that kind of doesn't have anything to do with the paternalistic nightmarishness of "Bengali in Platforms", a song that is 20 years old now.

Morrissey the Martin Amis of Indieland

Gotta love the 'there's too many immigrants here and it's damaging the national identity, so I'm emigrating' rationale. He'd rather live in another country where the national identity remains strong (for better or worse and depending on where you are in relation to that) than live in a country where it's constantly in question. Not actually the behaviour of a typical racist/xenophobe/bigot/whatever. It's too bad that despite inviting scrutiny he doesn't seem able to articulate well the cons of a progressive society that is culturally diverse but not particularly well integrated).

because LA is so racially and culturally homogenous.

Come on, s1ocki; we all watch "The Hills".

Hahahah

Besides, doesn't the interview say he lives in Italy now?

yeah I was talking about Italy

isn't that near LA?

speaking of italy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH4lWMulZ34

"Oh you live in Venice now?"