Sometimes, it pays to be childish.
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| Wholly unedited. |
Like a fool, I
today committed the double heresy of clicking on an article by Piers Morgan on
the Daily Mail website, in which he bemoaned the terrible inconvenience of
having to listen to people showing solidarity for whistle-blowing campaigns
such as #MeToo, #TimesUp and #NeverAgain at the Oscars. True to form,
Morgan seems to completely miss the point: for him, hearing - as he puts it -
“actress after actress playing the victim card on Sunday night” is far too
tiresome, as if somehow, years of patriarchy and gun crime have all been solved
by being raised by figures in the media once or twice.
(But would
you expect anything less from a man who proudly displays a picture of himself
standing shoulder to shoulder with alleged serial-committer of sexual
misconduct, Donald Trump, as his Twitter profile picture?)
Don’t get me
wrong; I know the game people like Piers Morgan (and fellow Mail columnist of
equal odiousness Richard Littlejohn) play: they court this kind of
controversy. But just because their childish “boohoo” opinions bring them
attention, it doesn’t make their behavior acceptable; okay, celebrities may
court attention too, but if they raise the profile of those who've been
forced to suffer repeatedly at the hands of culprits who have been protected by a
corrupt and sexist industry - or have lost their lives due to the United States' gun laws - that’s a good thing in my book; anyone would
think Piers Morgan has previously ignored other people’s rights as a matter of
course (*cough* phone hacking scandal *cough*).