Tuesday, October 25, 2005

Piers Morgan, Defender of Honesty and Truth

I have just been to see Piers Morgan at the Oxford Union. I am not a happy man. In fact, I would go so far as to say that I am a very angry man. I have watched this repulsive little creature speak for at least an hour, and I am left feeling physically sick from being in his presence. I don't mean to be hyperbolic: his putting on of an avuncular man-of-the-world act while placating an initially hostile audience with "juicy titbits" (his words, not mine), of "celebrity gossip", and affecting disgust for the horrible, naughty, lying Labour Government, whilst having been employed by Rupert Murdoch and having used his position as editor of the Daily Mirror to boost his share prices is genuinely unsettling. I'm left with the strong impression that this is a man who places no value on anything other than public acclaim: at one point he delivered a fairly standard denunciation of the Iraq war (complete with Blairesque hand gestures and made far more valid because "my own brother was in Basra, you know"), and seemed genuinely shaken when there was no rapturous applause. The rest of the time he seemed to be unable 10to decide whether he was a Brave Crusader For Moral Rectitude or a Hard-Headed Man of the World Practical Businessman. In fact, his anecdotage reminded me of nothing more than the episode of Alan Partridge where he attempts to dictate his autobiography, but every story contains someone more famous than him and ends with the phrase "of course, I had the last laugh". In fact, to be fair to good old Piers, he does in fact have two sorts of story: one in which he gets one over someone more famous than him, and another in which he is the innocent, honest victim of eeevil government machinations that put him at a terrible disadvantage. For one thing, he claims that the fake photos of abuse of Iraqis by British troops were genuine, and then said to be fake by the government as a cover-up. Yes. You read that right. Apparently, the testimony of various independent experts that the photos were, in fact, faked, has nothing to do with the private world of Mr Morgan. Other desperate attempts to be loved included calling Ian Hislop an "irritating little nerd", and asserting that he has the "weakest handhake I've ever felt". Basically, my point here is that this horrible little man, who only seems to respect Max Clifford and Mister (Definitely not "Rupert") Murdoch is everything that's wrong with journalism at the moment: his idea of a "good story" is not something that people need to hear, but rather something that people will think they want to hear. I won't grant the cretinous little fucker the honour of claiming that he's responsible for "the cult of celebrity" as he would like to think, but he is a symptom of a serious problem in news-delivery systems. Another of his wonderfully well-thought-out viewpoints was that he despises "celebrities"* because they are "pointless". He eruditely points out that we used to revere the talented (like Frank Sinatra), and today we revere people who had sex with famous people. After. Spending. Twelve. Minutes. Going. On. About. How. Fantastic. Princess. Diana. Was.
Ultimately, the question is, considering he's so hot on assigning values to other people, now he's not actually doing anything worth talking of, What's The Point Of You, Piers Morgan?

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