"NME says sorry to Morrissey for the misunderstanding over 2007 article" - NME.com; libel case closed

Originally Posted by goinghome

Truly disappointed?!
'Yes you made yourself plain, yes you made yourself very plain.'

Sounds like you'd have been a great help to Tom Jonze & co. in writing the article to stick the knife in even deeper, drawing conclusions from opinions voiced in discussion such as you may hear every second day in Parliaments and pubs around the world, including in darker-skinned nations. If it's any comfort, the airing of this conflict again in its settling can encourage everyone to speak more carefully, eh?

I think you misunderstand me. I was using pure hyperbole for the sake of the argument. Even I don't believe a word I say. I'll buy you a coffee and a bun next time we meet and we can make sure I'm actually a nice person.

P.

Originally Posted by Uncleskinny

I think you misunderstand me. I was using pure hyperbole for the sake of the argument. Even I don't believe a word I say. I'll buy you a coffee and a bun next time we meet and we can make sure I'm actually a nice person.

P.

i like buns......

Originally Posted by goinghome

Truly disappointed?!
'Yes you made yourself plain, yes you made yourself very plain.'

Sounds like you'd have been a great help to Tom Jonze & co. in writing the article to stick the knife in even deeper, drawing conclusions from opinions voiced in discussion such as you may hear every second day in Parliaments and pubs around the world, including in darker-skinned nations. If it's any comfort, the airing of this conflict again in its settling can encourage everyone to speak more carefully, eh?

Tim Jonze...not Tom Jonze. Tom Jones is a national treasure.

Originally Posted by smiler

i like buns......

Buns > Morrissey??????? Surely not! You love Morrissey!

Originally Posted by nothappynotsad

Tim Jonze...not Tom Jonze. Tom Jones is a national treasure.

Given how well he exposed Morrissey's xenophobia, I think Tim has a lot in common with Tom.

Originally Posted by Anonymous

Buns > Morrissey??????? Surely not! You love Morrissey!

Do i like buns more than i like Morrisey?...... good question. No *nods head. What kind of buns?

Originally Posted by smiler

Do i like buns more than i like Morrisey?...... good question. No *nods head. What kind of buns?

Chocolate eclairs?

I don't know why there is all this pussyfooting around the issue of whether or not he is a racist.
When he was a young man in The Smiths he said "black people and white people will never really get on or like each other".
That is as clear a statement as it's possible to make.

'Now I ain't sayin' you a [dirt] digger, you got needs...', little anonymous, but sorrowful opinions such as Morrissey was said to have voiced doubting easy relationships between people came from other quarters too and are not in themselves the sort of acts, laws and oppressions that caused the chronic damage -

The White Man...

"If I have a cup of coffee that is too strong for me because it is too black, I weaken it by pouring cream into it. I integrate it with cream. If I keep pouring enough cream in the coffee, pretty soon the entire flavor of the coffee is changed; the very nature of the coffee is changed. If enough cream is poured in, eventually you don't even know that I had coffee in this cup. This is what happened with the March on Washington. The whites didn't integrate it; they infiltrated it. Whites joined it; they engulfed it; they became so much a part of it, it lost its original flavor. It ceased to be a black march; it ceased to be militant; it ceased to be angry; it ceased to be impatient. In fact, it ceased to be a march."


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"But it does make the black people in this country who are jobless and unemployed and standing in the welfare line very much discouraged to see a government that can't solve our problem, can't provide job opportunities for us, and at the some time not only Cubans but Hungarians and every other type of white refugee imaginable can come to this country and get everything this government has to offer."

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"I've never seen a sincere white man, not when it comes to helping black people. Usually things like this are done by white people to benefit themselves. The white man's primary interest is not to elevate the thinking of black people, or to waken black people, or white people either. The white man is interested in the black man only to the extent that the black man is of use to him. The white man's interest is to make money, to exploit."

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"The common enemy is the white man."

- Malcolm X

I'm a little confused now. Are you saying that Morrissey is sort of like Malcolm X, but for white people?

Originally Posted by Cornflakes

I'm a little confused now. Are you saying that Morrissey is sort of like Malcolm X, but for white people?

Morrissey X! - Its funny because that big Malcom X movie was out in 1992 (March) just before this interview. Morrissey wrote to me once in 1997 (a short reply to fan mail with no return address) and his letter came air mail from LA covered in malcom X stamps - made me laugh at the time.

Originally Posted by Cornflakes

I'm a little confused now. Are you saying that Morrissey is sort of like Malcolm X, but for white people?

I think what s/he wanted to say was, "some black people have held opinions that seem racist, just like Morrissey's. Therefore, Morrissey's opinions cannot be racist because black people cannot be racist." S/he dressed up this nonsense in a multi-paragraph post, quoting the words of somebody famous and an unnecessarily wordy preamble.

Originally Posted by smiler

Morrissey X! - Its funny because that big Malcom X movie was out in 1992 (March) just before this interview. Morrissey wrote to me once in 1997 (a short reply to fan mail with no return address) and his letter came air mail from LA covered in malcom X stamps - made me laugh at the time.

I love you.

Great stuff guys.

I confronted Tim Jonze on Twitter. Answers all rather predictable.

Originally Posted by Harryrag

I confronted Tim Jonze on Twitter. Perhaps this deserves to make the home page?

I dunno whether he's being honest in his answer about whether the questions that he asked Morrissey, but his first two answers are spot on.

does that mean the hearing in july (i think it spanned over 3-4 days) is off/cancelled?
prob i read it wrong?

Jonze isn't telling the whole story. Obviously, answering a question about a 2007 interview on Twitter probably wouldn't inspire him to write a short history book. Nevertheless, it's fair to call his Twitter responses disingenuous.

As Jonze wrote in the Guardian in November, 2007, he had written a much stronger piece condemning Morrissey's views:

"I wrote a piece saying that Morrissey - although liberal in many of his views - was using the language of the BNP and Enoch Powell when it came to immigration. In the piece I mentioned that his comments likening the UK to that of "going to Zagreb and hearing nothing but Irish accents" were offensive as they compared British ethnic minorities to tourists. I also said he was being overly nostalgic for a Britain built partly on empire and imperialism and that someone as well travelled as Morrissey had no excuses for such comments.

The piece was very critical and NME decided to tone it down, something I didn't agree with. They showed me several rewritten versions, some of which were very soft on Morrissey, one that was quite critical. None had any of my points or arguments in them and none of them were written in my voice. Furthermore, I hadn't even seen the finished version before it went to print (I still haven't seen it, as I'm currently writing this from the surreal surroundings of a beach internet cafe in Thailand). For these reasons, the byline was removed."

In other words, Jonze's answers are basically correct, except what he's not saying is that he wanted the NME article to go further in denouncing Morrissey's comments. He was pushed aside and couldn't say what he wanted to say then. You can see how 'apologetic' he really is. Clearly neither he nor the NME regard their own actions as problematic. If anything, they probably believe they let Morrissey off lightly.

Now, Jonze didn't call Morrissey a racist. Not exactly. "Is Morrissey, the son of immigrants who's written anti-racist songs, actually a "racist"? It's a murky area that should be being debated now". But this is, as I said, disingenuous. As a writer you are sending a very clear message if you state, "No, we're pretty sure X isn't a racist. X just happens to talk exactly like proven racists".

He's right in the sense that the story blew up and became a non-conversation about a very important subject. That's a shame. But he and the NME are just as much to blame, and ultimately their editorial decisions were made to sell papers, not to shed light on a very difficult matter. I feel like Jonze has made several decent arguments but the whole attitude from his side is so smarmy and spineless I can't take it seriously. Ultimately he and the NME got what they wanted, which was to smear Morrissey's reputation. They knew an accusation of racism, fuzzed up with enough superficial qualifications, would be enough to get their message across. And it worked.

Originally Posted by Harryrag

I confronted Tim Jonze on Twitter. Answers all rather predictable.

The winning words of Mandy Rice-Davies spring to mind...

Originally Posted by Worm

Jonze isn't telling the whole story. Obviously, answering a question about a 2007 interview on Twitter probably wouldn't inspire him to write a short history book. Nevertheless, it's fair to call his Twitter responses disingenuous.

As Jonze wrote in the Guardian in November, 2007, he had written a much stronger piece condemning Morrissey's views:

"I wrote a piece saying that Morrissey - although liberal in many of his views - was using the language of the BNP and Enoch Powell when it came to immigration. In the piece I mentioned that his comments likening the UK to that of "going to Zagreb and hearing nothing but Irish accents" were offensive as they compared British ethnic minorities to tourists. I also said he was being overly nostalgic for a Britain built partly on empire and imperialism and that someone as well travelled as Morrissey had no excuses for such comments.

The piece was very critical and NME decided to tone it down, something I didn't agree with. They showed me several rewritten versions, some of which were very soft on Morrissey, one that was quite critical. None had any of my points or arguments in them and none of them were written in my voice. Furthermore, I hadn't even seen the finished version before it went to print (I still haven't seen it, as I'm currently writing this from the surreal surroundings of a beach internet cafe in Thailand). For these reasons, the byline was removed."

In other words, Jonze's answers are basically correct, except what he's not saying is that he wanted the NME article to go further in denouncing Morrissey's comments. He was pushed aside and couldn't say what he wanted to say then. You can see how 'apologetic' he really is. Clearly neither he nor the NME regard their own actions as problematic. If anything, they probably believe they let Morrissey off lightly.

Now, Jonze didn't call Morrissey a racist. Not exactly. "Is Morrissey, the son of immigrants who's written anti-racist songs, actually a "racist"? It's a murky area that should be being debated now". But this is, as I said, disingenuous. As a writer you are sending a very clear message if you state, "No, we're pretty sure X isn't a racist. X just happens to talk exactly like proven racists".

He's right in the sense that the story blew up and became a non-conversation about a very important subject. That's a shame. But he and the NME are just as much to blame, and ultimately their editorial decisions were made to sell papers, not to shed light on a very difficult matter. I feel like Jonze has made several decent arguments but the whole attitude from his side is so smarmy and spineless I can't take it seriously. Ultimately he and the NME got what they wanted, which was to smear Morrissey's reputation. They knew an accusation of racism, fuzzed up with enough superficial qualifications, would be enough to get their message across. And it worked.

And yet...the exchanges with Merck earlier that November, as detailed here ~ http://true-to-you.net/morrissey_news_071127_01 ~ seem to paint a slightly skewed version, with McNicholas saying they were going for "a much stronger piece" than previously discussed, with Jonze washing his hands of that version.

I don't mean to regurgitate all this guff, cos you can debate the details of it endlessly, and I honestly could not care less, I have front row Usher Hall circle seats and am laughing like a loon on the moon. But I did think it was rather cheeky of the NME spokesperson to say, in a supplementary press statement to 'Music Week' that was presumably not vetted by both legal teams, that "NME is pleased that it has buried the hatchet with Morrissey". Burying the evidence of a hatchet job then, obviously.