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

[King Leer]

Just because Clapton says he was doing "a bit" doesn't mean he was. I'd believe Michael Richards' n-word rant was part of his act before that.
Oblivious comment is like a "I didn't know it was against the law" plea.
Pretty skilled ass-covering from Clapton, though with the insufferable blandness of his career since then I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

It's just interesting that Morrissey gets so much more stick for far less inflammatory language (though the subspecies comment is arguably in line).
I've always thought it's because the media is both consciously and subconsciously frustrated with Morrissey's refusal to go through the typical offensive comment>apology>reacceptance motions. We've seen the same template with hundreds of other celebrities/public figures. It would be very odd to see Morrissey play along.

Though he did apologize for the Norway blurb, I suppose.

And didn't really mean what he said about Elton John's head...

Read the Wiki entry, there's even more interesting stuff.

Two points of interest about Clapton's comments:

First, he explained his comments by saying he was onstage and the whole thing felt theatrical, like a Python skit. Doesn't excuse his words, but offers context and insight into his frame of mind.

Second, and more importantly in my view, is that he calls himself "deliberately oblivious". He admits he knows nothing.

Truly radical racists-- bad guys-- win the support of "deliberately oblivious" people when the latter feel as if nobody is articulating their concerns and viewpoints. Here in the States, we have a movement, the Tea Party, which is almost entirely the result of politicians ignoring the concerns of working class whites. They feed off the anger of people infuriated by a perceived lack of representation in the public sphere. They see illegal immigrants as job-takers, and they see citizens of foreign countries as terrorists and/or job-takers, and nobody in Washington or in the punditocracy seems to speak up on their behalf. There simply isn't a strong, middle-of-the-road, mainstream politician whom they can trust on these issues, so they throw in with radicals, who of course further radicalize them. Only a tiny minority turn violent, but many vote for "America First!" political candidates and that's how things get so ugly. What passes for the left wing ignores these people and dismisses their concerns as "racist" or "reactionary" instead of opening up a two-way discussion to figure out a path forward that allows for the interests of everyone.

[Oh my god, it's Robby!]

more excellent stuff, keep it coming folks
had no idea what an ass Eric Clapton was
never been into his stuff though, so whatever
The Moz interview had some insights in it too

as for doing stuff about the horror in the world
I think I've been doing my part these last 7 months or so
at loose ends right now, but hey man, sometimes, if you are me
you just gotta be

[Worm]

Just because Clapton says he was doing "a bit" doesn't mean he was. I'd believe Michael Richards' n-word rant was part of his act before that.
Oblivious comment is like a "I didn't know it was against the law" plea.
Pretty skilled ass-covering from Clapton, though with the insufferable blandness of his career since then I'll give him the benefit of the doubt.

It's just interesting that Morrissey gets so much more stick for far less inflammatory language (though the subspecies comment is arguably in line).
I've always thought it's because the media is both consciously and subconsciously frustrated with Morrissey's refusal to go through the typical offensive comment>apology>reacceptance motions. We've seen the same template with hundreds of other celebrities/public figures. It would be very odd to see Morrissey play along.

Though he did apologize for the Norway blurb, I suppose.

And didn't really mean what he said about Elton John's head...

Look, I don't want to defend Eric Clapton here. I hate his music. After reading his comments about Enoch Powell, I hate the man as well.

But I can't really call him a liar with any certainty. He's a performer. He was probably drunk and/or on drugs. There's also the drug-like effect of standing on a stage in front of thousands of people worshipping you like a pagan god. Who's to say he didn't get carried away? That's really what he was trying to say, after all. He wasn't backing off his core sentiment, an opposition to immigration. He was trying to say the theatricality of the moment overwhelmed him and caused him to exaggerate his opinion.

I'm not saying he should be forgiven, just that we should listen to these guys with a sense of what the game is about. I do think it's interesting that Clapton, like Morrissey, went way too far in the heat of performance. They are performers, after all. Performance doesn't excuse anything-- it doesn't give one license to say horrible things-- but we should at least take it into consideration. Who knows what was going through Clapton's mind? Who knows what was going through Michael Richards'? (If you watch the Richards clip, by the way, it's clear he was caught up trying out an "edgy", anti-PC routine; what made this artistic miscalculation unforgiveable was the fact that he was following an instinctive tangent, i.e., revealing what was probably in the depths of his mind.)

Morrissey often exaggerates his statements for effect, whether he's talking about a park bench or Tony Blair. Yet, when pressed, he dampens his shock statements and usually offers up a few sober qualifications (see the Reynolds interview above about "Margaret On The Guillotine"). The important thing is to weigh everything. Is Morrissey a good guy who occasionally says the wrong thing? Or is he a bad guy who occasionally lets his mask slip and exposes his real feelings? If you weigh all of the evidence, it has to be the first, not the second.

[Worm]

doing stuff about the horror in the world

Doing stuff is always better than just talking about doing stuff. Thank you.

[goinghome]

Since I cited Malcolm X's more pugnacious remarks, I'd better add how he evolved some from there.

...The most outstanding aspect of Malcolm’s life is this transformational power that he personified. He realized that no black man would ever be truly free of racial subordination until there was a collective escape from the tyranny of racism.

Sadly, under the influence of NOI, Malcolm advocated racial segregation, and demonized the white people as essentially evil. He preached a separatist nationalism as a way to restore dignity to black people. Later, he began to sense the injustice in his own ideology. I find Malcolm’s ability for critical introspection – even when one is facing extreme hostility and adversity from outside – inspirational. He apprehended the moral failings of his movement. In 1964, disillusioned with NOI, he left it in search of another path. That year he went on the Hajj, the annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca where, for the first time, he encountered the racial diversity within Islam. He was amazed to see people of light color treating him as an equal. He saw in the behavior of Muslims towards each other a remarkable absence of racial prejudice...

- http://www.patheos.com/blogs/altmusl...kali@gmail.com

We're all on our 'way to somewhere civilised and maybe we'll even arrive, maybe we'll even arri-ive' : )

[Anonymous]

Thoughtful post. Morrissey is playing with fire.

To quote James Baldwin: "artists are here to disturb the peace." Morrissey has always done that magnificently in a pop context. This is what sets him apart from most other singers/songwriters out there - he's genuinely disturbing (in a very good way). He prides himself on taking a stand and not blinking, and his decades-long war on "nice" has been fairly successful.

He's got himself in a pickle with the racism issue though. He's vehemently anti-pc, but he's certainly not coming from the right. His more "ambiguous" cultural/racial lyrics: "National Front Disco," "Bengali in Platforms," etc, succeed by getting people to think a bit more deeply about the emotinal appeal of racism, about how casually such notions of the "other" pervade everyday thinking. Edgy and sophisticated stuff.

Here's the thing, though: in his comments on immigration, Morrissey isn't "disturbing the peace" and he certainly isn't being "edgy". On the contrary, what he's saying isn't in the least bit unusual or threatening to the status quo; his views are profoundly conservative and thoroughly ordinary among large sections of the British population. Despite common grumblings in twenty-first century British society about "political correctness" having "gone mad", immigrants are routinely demonised. The popular press here are constantly banging on about the harm being done to our putatively "Great" nation by foreigners. Take, for example, the Daily Express: they portray them as a drain on UK taxpayers' wealth. The Sun claims that immigrants are stealing British workers' jobs and causing unemployment, while the Daily Mail, tells us that we hard-working British folk are being positively overrun by by incomers. Depressingly, stories and headlines of this type are far from uncommon and these are three of the UK's most popular papers with a combined circulation of over five million per day. These are precisely the kind of papers that Morrissey (rightly) bemoaned on Teenage Dad On His Estate.

There's a lot less ambiguity in a printed interview, however. If a good journalist were to interview Morrissey on the subject with follow-up questions (as Worm so aptly put it, to have a conversation), what would emerge would probably be a fairly complex discussion of nostalgia, national identity, culture and romantic notions of Albion lost. Morrissey seems to be one of those misanthropes who is guided more by disappointment than fear or hate. I do not for a moment believe that he thinks that White is Right: as you observed, he's a man given to bold statements, and he's never said any such thing. No, his views on culture, race and national identity are probably far more subtle, conflicted and, as observed elsewhere, based more on emotional response than anything else.

I don't buy the argument that what Morrissey does and does not say in an interview is the interviewer's fault. As I said in my last post, he can be forthright when he wants to be and doesn't need a spotty adolescent with a microphone to help him express himself. I agree with you when you say that he probably does have interesting things to say about nationality, ethnicity and British identity, but the problem is that he didn't say them. If Morrissey had chosen to expound at length, I doubt that the interviewer would've switched off the tape recorder and pushed him out the door, having already clinched a sensational soundbite.

Most people here seem to want to say that the entire staff of the NME are congenitally stupid, but I don't think their decision to publish this article as it appeared in the magazine was motivated by a desire either to make money or to kill Morrissey professionally. That makes no sense. I don't know how many copies the NME sells each week, but I'm willing to bet that circulation goes up when Morrissey's on the cover. They knew, from experience, that he wouldn't be accepting offers of interviews in the future and knew, therefore, that in the longer term, they would harm the magazine's owners' business interests. Stupid they may be, but I doubt they're that stupid.

I disagree with you on one thing though: you would not shed a tear for the shredding of Morrissey's career and reputation in the cause of upholding liberal values; not much love lost apparently. Personally, like most of his more ardent admirers, I think that his accomplishments are so great, his talent so huge, and his art so profound that he has earned the benefit of the doubt. Lesser celebrities have been sunk by equally thoughtless words and actions, but Morrissey's contributions to the national (and international) discourse have been overwhelmingly positive. He knocked down walls when it came to notions of tolerance and cultural acceptance, and that makes this whole notion of racism on his part such a fraught issue. I don't think we'll ever get much clarification on all this, but I hope that his standing as a singular artist survives the fray.

I saw The Smiths play live in 1986 when I was 14 years old, before The Queen Is Dead came out, and I've attended concerts on nearly every subsequent tour so my criticism doesn't stem from my not being a fan. Maybe, on the other hand, people's willingness to give Morrissey the benefit of the doubt arises from their possibly being a little too much in love with him? Sorry, I don't mean that to sound as patronising as it probably does, but, in truth, I find it hard to believe that people would, in the cases of celebrities about whom they care little, be demanding that we all conduct penetrating, all-encompassing character-studies before thinking, or speaking, ill of them. He has made an important contribution to popular culture, helping, for example, to challenge traditional gender stereotypes - particularly masculinity - but that, for me, is what makes his attitude to immigration and immigrants all the more regrettable and dangerous. If Nick Griffin says, "[t]he gates of England are flooded. The country's been thrown away," (and it's not to hard to imagine him saying it) his opinion would be dismissed as the kind of ignorant, paranoid crap from which racism grows. If Morrissey says it - bookish, animal-loving, bespectacled Morrissey - it's more likely to be seen as an intelligent and reasonable belief to hold.

[Anonymous]

I respectfully disagree. I recall an interview in which he admitted to wearing a leather belt and shoes. Just recently a user posted a link to a video in which, at the end, Morrissey said on BBC radio, in 1986, that leather was fine. He has publicly forgiven Oscar Wilde for eating meat. His hatred of royalty is somewhat mitigated by his deeper love of England ("The Queen Is Dead" is not a simple anti-royalist rant). He likes plenty of contemporary pop singers and always has. He was photographed wearing a Barack Obama t-shirt in 2008. On and on.

Whether you disagree respectfully or otherwise, I doubt that you think Morrissey is sitting around at home, still wearing his Barack Obama t-shirt and listening to Radiodead and Oldplay any more than I do. Even so, the point I was trying to make wasn't that he is consistent in the views he expresses. What I was saying was that when he wants to, and whether he's being sincere or not, he can, and frequently does articulate his opinions without ambiguity.

My claim is based on the fact that Morrissey's statements were not framed properly by the magazine. There was no attempt made to contextualize them.

As I've said previously, Morrissey claims to have a recording of the interview. If context were necessary to an understanding of what he meant, and if the (supposedly deliberate) lack of context has been as injurious to Morrissey's position as you suggest, then he could (and arguably should) have the interview transcribed and published on True-to-you. It's his choice, not the NME's. Alternatively, he could present his considered opinion on immigration, in all its nuanced majesty, to a journalist from another magazine or newspaper. I'm sure The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph or The Independent would be delighted to talk it through with him, at length.

You have to understand, Tim Jonze has said-- and I believe him-- that he doesn't think Morrissey is a racist, per se. He believes Morrissey is a middle-aged man in love with an England that probably never existed outside his mind. He thinks Morrissey says things which have ramifications in the real world that he can't see or understand. His view, like the NME's in 1992, is that Morrissey isn't racist but his language is frequently inflammatory and therefore a matter of public concern. That isn't a horrible view of the situation at all. It's probably very sane and smart. But that isn't the way the NME presented Morrissey's remarks in 1997, and this is the basis for my claim.

For what it's worth, I'm not claiming that Morrissey is a racist or a xenophobe. I actually think I might be beyond caring, now, whether he is or he isn't. If he came out tomorrow and said he hates Poles or black people or Asians, I'd still have my albums, their content would still mean a lot to me and I'd still enjoy listening to them. My claim is - and the thing that annoys me is - that he was irresponsible in what he said (and possibly for what he failed to say).

If you want to correct me and say these were the doings of Conor McNicholas, not Tim Jonze, fine. I just have Jonze in my sights because his role in the affair is pretty shady all around, and ultimately I believe it was his choice not to pursue a conversation with Morrissey that would have defused this entire issue and made McNicholas' editorial decisions much easier. He was there. He had Morrissey in front of him. Morrissey may have brought up the topic of immigration, but Jonze could have pursued the subject.

I don't know or really care which of them, at the NME, took responsibility for how the article was to be presented. Morrissey was responsible for what he said to Jonze and he continues to be equally responsible for the fact that the unedited interview, context and all, has never seen the light of day. As I've said in my reply to Anaesthesine, above, Morrissey isn't absolutely dependent on the interviewer to determine what gets discussed and what doesn't. Indeed, if Jonze is to be believed, Morrissey didn't need anybody to lead him into a conversation about immigration in the first place. He spontaneously went there of his own volition when asked about whether he might return to live in the UK and chose not to elaborate or offer a detailed, "nuanced" explanation of his thoughts.

[Anonymous]

I don't have an objection to most of the broader points you've made.

The fundamental problem which never seems to be addressed in the media, to which I alluded above, is this: can one love one's country and not be a racist? Can one love one's national identity and not be a xenophobe?

Globalization has forced this question on Britons and on everyone, everywhere. There are incredible problems in the acceptable, establishment-left attitude toward globalization, and they're obvious. For example, we all know that English or Americans trying to "open" an indigenous population in, say, Africa, for financial gain is frowned up on as imperialism. But in England and the United States, immigration (according to left orthodoxy) is completely fine; if immigration changes the "indigenous" population of a given nation, that's all for the good. Crudely: it's not okay for an indigenous tribe to be swallowed by an invading Western population, but it's okay for an indigenous tribe to migrate to the West and change the population there.

Before you tear that paragraph to shreds, let me just say that I already know that imperialism-immigration is a false equivalency, and I'm aware of other problems in what I've written. My only point is to illustrate that the problem is a messy, complicated one. It has many different sides and many different arguments. We are seeing this unfold in the United States with immigration from Mexico. Good citizens from both countries have to understand that while immigration is fine, for both nations, it has to be controlled, rational, and responsible. But it must be seen, first, that the issue is not an unambiguous one. We have to come to the problem with good sense and more than a little courage, because we have to address difficult questions in a way that allows for nuance. If we don't, we abandon the field to radical, polarizing, dangerous influences, such as the crazies in the States who wander around the Mexican border with rifles trying to enforce their own brand of "American justice", as well as their "respectable" counterparts in suits who sit on the boards of corporations, run PACs, and sometimes even hold seats in state and national legislatures.

All of which is to say that while it's fine and dandy to stand tall and proclaim an unambiguous, "no tolerance" policy toward these difficult problems plaguing our societies (e.g. hate crimes, violence against minorities, etc), it's actually counterproductive to the greater cause. The conversation has to start with the recognition that every one of us is flawed, to some degree, and comes to the table with biases and blind spots. The conversation has to be more complicated, not less. If we can't do that, our dialogues devolve into useless shouting matches-- or worse, the real villains step in and seize control. We actually need to talk to each other, not slap labels on people. While I find Morrissey's statements worrisome and certainly inflammatory to some degree, I also think he raises an important point, which I'll repeat: is it possible to love England and disapprove of the way immigration is changing the country, and yet not be a racist? Is there really nothing we can learn from that point of view?

I don't know if Morrissey really is the paradoxical figure I'm painting him to be. I don't know if he's a soft-hearted guy who genuinely loves England, genuinely gets along with people of other races, and yet has indefensible, troublesome views about immigration which echo those of extreme right-wingers. Maybe Morrissey really is a nationalist asshole and I'm totally wrong to give him the benefit of the doubt. The thing is, I don't know. And neither does the NME, because at every turn they've cut off any useful conversation about race and immigration and instead sensationalized the matter to sell papers. Circling back, this is frequently the problem with political correctness: it is a policing action, often mindlessly punitive, which stops conversations before they start. No decent person disagrees with the causes political correctness seeks to champion. The issue is with how it's done.

I actually agree with a lot of what you've said here. Still, I can't help but think that for a man with so much on his mind, it's amazing that he kept quite so much of it to himself. Giggly, fidgety Tim Jonze (who, incidentally, has the appearance of a 17-year-old boy) must've been on particularly domineering form that day for a hack with shockingly little knowledge of music. Okay sorry, I'm being flippant. If Morrissey had wanted to make a reasoned contribution to a debate about migration he could have. He could, indeed, have explored with Jonze the causes of such migration, exploring the ways in which it is induced by, among other things, the needs of international capital in a globalised economic environment. If that's what he wanted to do, though, that's what he ought to have done. If he had, you probably wouldn't find yourself, several years later, having to suggest what he might have wanted to say, if only he'd been asked. As things stand, we know only that he thinks that British culture is being corrupted by foreign intruders and - because he fails to discuss migration in the context in which it takes place - the impression given is that immigrants, themselves, are blameworthy.

I'm not claiming that anybody who believes that there should be restrictions on immigration is either racist or xenophobic. Restricting the net in-flow of people into the country is perfectly pragmatic. More than that, though, both of the UK's main political parties, Conservative and New Labour, have recognised this too and have been limiting immigration for a very long time. (As far back as the 1960s, when Labour was still a democratic socialist party and going some way toward taking the means of production, distribution and exchange into public (well, state) ownership, they were, at the same time, enacting the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 which denied prospective immigrants the right to enter and remain in the UK unless they fulfilled certain criteria relating to the needs of the economy.) Mainstream politicians have, however, for the most part at least, managed all of this without deliberately spreading the lie that the country is being overrun by people from abroad whose presence here threatens the stability of the entire nation's way of life. Remember - so that we can keep this all in perspective - only 6.6% of the UK’s population is foreign.

[Anonymous]

Can we get back to the main question of this thread...
is the case to go ahead in the court or not?

the court schedules office STILL have it down as HAPPENING. ????

we are all just believing the NME statement, and yet Mozs camp have remianed silent? surely hedve wanted a statement out by now?
anyone know who his lawyer is etc, maybe a call to their offices could give us the answer we need?

[Worm]

Whether you disagree respectfully or otherwise, I doubt that you think Morrissey is sitting around at home, still wearing his Barack Obama t-shirt and listening to Radiodead and Oldplay any more than I do. Even so, the point I was trying to make wasn't that he is consistent in the views he expresses. What I was saying was that when he wants to, and whether he's being sincere or not, he can, and frequently does articulate his opinions without ambiguity.

No. The statements, gestures, or props may be unambiguous in themselves. But there are multiple statements, gestures, or props. If he wears an Obama t-shirt at one point, and calls Obama "a set of teeth" at another, then his opinion about Obama isn't clear. Based on these two facts (the garment and the statement), we might conclude he had high hopes for Obama in 2008 and (like many of us) was sorely disappointed by his track record once he got into the White House. If that's the case, then calling Obama "a set of teeth" takes on a different meaning and forces us to interpret it differently. Morrissey might loathe Obama, but as we know there are very different kinds of loathing for Obama. We don't know exactly why he loathes him now. Why he does is beside the point, which is simply that you cannot take unambiguous statements at face value because, in many instances, Morrissey has made unambiguous statements taking the opposite position.

As I've said previously, Morrissey claims to have a recording of the interview. If context were necessary to an understanding of what he meant, and if the (supposedly deliberate) lack of context has been as injurious to Morrissey's position as you suggest, then he could (and arguably should) have the interview transcribed and published on True-to-you. It's his choice, not the NME's. Alternatively, he could present his considered opinion on immigration, in all its nuanced majesty, to a journalist from another magazine or newspaper. I'm sure The Guardian, the Daily Telegraph or The Independent would be delighted to talk it through with him, at length.

Yes, you're right. There's silence from his side. But we've seen that he feels he can't get a fair hearing in the press. So for him to remain silent is completely understandable. Why must I assume that there are dark things he's keeping secret? Why should I not make the more obvious inference, which is that immigration and race are third-rail topics which he's keen to avoid discussing out of a fear he'll be badly misconstrued?

For what it's worth, I'm not claiming that Morrissey is a racist or a xenophobe. I actually think I might be beyond caring, now, whether he is or he isn't. If he came out tomorrow and said he hates Poles or black people or Asians, I'd still have my albums, their content would still mean a lot to me and I'd still enjoy listening to them. My claim is - and the thing that annoys me is - that he was irresponsible in what he said (and possibly for what he failed to say).

Again, your sentiments are understandable and fair, but what I don't understand is the implication that he's been speaking responsibly all these years and for whatever reason blundered in a few interviews. He has never spoken "responsibly" about any topic whatsoever. I can't recall reading any interviews, going back to 1983, when he wasn't making statements which were either intelligent sentiments dressed up in a needlessly histrionic manner or just plain throwaway absurdities which didn't stand up to any kind of serious scrutiny at all. We've all read numerous interviews with the man. We understand he overstates things and often speaks off the cuff, without thinking things through. We've given him a free pass on every other subject under the sun. Why do we not treat his comments about race and immigration the same way? Because we take it more seriously? Because we were raised in a cultural climate in which racism is the one subject about which no irony, humor, or nuance is allowed? Fine, but isn't that our problem, not his?

I just want to say something in response to your comment about keeping his records if he were actually a raving racist. I would certainly toss my Morrissey and Smiths albums if he suddenly declared a hatred for blacks or Poles or Asians. I'm amazed at how many fans secretly believe he's a racist and are already rationalizing the situation ahead of some future "slip" on his part. I don't listen to him with a guilty conscience. I don't have this sneaking suspicion that he's a closet nutjob racist. I'm kind of amazed that others apparently suspect this and still listen to his music. Racism goes against everything The Smiths and Morrissey have always stood for. It's not just a minor blemish, it uproots the whole thing.

He spontaneously went there of his own volition when asked about whether he might return to live in the UK and chose not to elaborate or offer a detailed, "nuanced" explanation of his thoughts.

I believe Jonze when he said Morrissey brought up the subject. There's no excuse for not taking the wheel and steering the conversation into a deeper discussion of what Morrissey really meant by his words. Check out Morrissey's back-and-forth with Simon Reynolds, which I posted above. That's how it's done. It wouldn't have been that hard. Jonze didn't do it, for whatever reason, and for that he deserves blame. Remember something: as Jonze was listening to Morrissey's mini-rant, he apparently did not think to himself "Uh-oh, Morrissey is revealing his racism". He thought to himself, "Morrissey is making an incredibly bad choice of words". It's more like the reaction you or I might have listening to an older uncle, from a different generation, making remarks we find tragically inappropriate. He probably thought, "This is going to look awful in print". And it's at that moment when what he knew to be true about Morrissey (he's not a racist) clashed with what it was going to look like in print (he's a racist). He saw the disconnect and didn't do anything to rectify it. Again, this is Jonze's "truth", not mine; I can't fault Jonze for taking a different opinion than mine, but Jonze himself has said he doesn't think Morrissey is a racist. So why did he not shape the interview to reflect the truth?

[Worm]

the impression given is that immigrants, themselves, are blameworthy.

That might be a fair intepretation of the 2007 NME interview. But as Morrissey fans we know different. We know that Morrissey is open and welcoming to people with different skin color. We know he likes other countries (travel he hates, but he loves the places when he gets there). We know he despises the influence of America as an imperial power ("America Is Not The World") and its treatment of Mexican immigrants ("Mexico"). We know from "Irish Blood, English Heart" that his own sense of national identity is split and his relationship to England is very much a love/hate affair. We know he is fully aware of and proud of his family's status as Irish immigrants in Manchester. There are many other things supporting the notion that Morrissey is not a racist, not a nationalist, and may, in fact, have a problem with globalization rather than a particular hatred of brown-skinned people invading London. It might be a bigger, more complicated mosaic to piece together. The final picture is clear, though.

I'm not claiming that anybody who believes that there should be restrictions on immigration is either racist or xenophobic. Restricting the net in-flow of people into the country is perfectly pragmatic. More than that, though, both of the UK's main political parties, Conservative and New Labour, have recognised this too and have been limiting immigration for a very long time. (As far back as the 1960s, when Labour was still a democratic socialist party and going some way toward taking the means of production, distribution and exchange into public (well, state) ownership, they were, at the same time, enacting the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1962 which denied prospective immigrants the right to enter and remain in the UK unless they fulfilled certain criteria relating to the needs of the economy.) Mainstream politicians have, however, for the most part at least, managed all of this without deliberately spreading the lie that the country is being overrun by people from abroad whose presence here threatens the stability of the entire nation's way of life. Remember - so that we can keep this all in perspective - only 6.6% of the UK’s population is foreign.

I appreciate the insight. I'm not English. I have to assume you're right about everything you've written. But as I keep saying, I think the major problem with Morrissey's statement was that it was an exaggeration and not indicative of his final, all-things-considered view of the situation. I'd like to have read Tim Jonze say, "Only 6.6% of the UK's population is foreign, Morrissey, I don't see how you can believe the country's been thrown away". I truly believe Morrissey would have said some intelligent remarks to make, or at any rate remarks which would have clarified his original position. He may also have pointed out that Morrissey lived in LA for many years and probably just felt the shock of returning to a much-changed London (as a side note, Martin Amis said London seemed vastly changed after his time living in South America). I don't know, just anything to extend the conversation and get to the heart of what Morrissey was on about, because I cannot and do not believe the infamous Knightsbridge/"gates" comments represented his final, considered opinion on immigration. More to the point, if their public comments are to be believed, the various writers and editors at the NME don't either.

[Anaesthesine]

Here's the thing, though: in his comments on immigration, Morrissey isn't "disturbing the peace" and he certainly isn't being "edgy". On the contrary, what he's saying isn't in the least bit unusual or threatening to the status quo; his views are profoundly conservative and thoroughly ordinary among large sections of the British population. Despite common grumblings in twenty-first century British society about "political correctness" having "gone mad", immigrants are routinely demonised. The popular press here are constantly banging on about the harm being done to our putatively "Great" nation by foreigners. Take, for example, the Daily Express: they portray them as a drain on UK taxpayers' wealth. The Sun claims that immigrants are stealing British workers' jobs and causing unemployment, while the Daily Mail, tells us that we hard-working British folk are being positively overrun by by incomers. Depressingly, stories and headlines of this type are far from uncommon and these are three of the UK's most popular papers with a combined circulation of over five million per day. These are precisely the kind of papers that Morrissey (rightly) bemoaned on Teenage Dad On His Estate.

I agree: What I said was that Morrissey has thus far been a particularly effective disturber of the peace, but his statements on immigration are far off the mark. This is part of what is so disappointing about the whole flap; his comments (as reported) are neither edgy nor constructive and do, in fact, run counter to everything he seemed to stand for. Anyone who has been paying close attention over the years, however, knows that Morrissey often contradicts himself, is given to flippant and contrary statements, and is not the most reliable interview subject.

I don't buy the argument that what Morrissey does and does not say in an interview is the interviewer's fault. As I said in my last post, he can be forthright when he wants to be and doesn't need a spotty adolescent with a microphone to help him express himself. I agree with you when you say that he probably does have interesting things to say about nationality, ethnicity and British identity, but the problem is that he didn't say them. If Morrissey had chosen to expound at length, I doubt that the interviewer would've switched off the tape recorder and pushed him out the door, having already clinched a sensational soundbite.

Most people here seem to want to say that the entire staff of the NME are congenitally stupid, but I don't think their decision to publish this article as it appeared in the magazine was motivated by a desire either to make money or to kill Morrissey professionally. That makes no sense. I don't know how many copies the NME sells each week, but I'm willing to bet that circulation goes up when Morrissey's on the cover. They knew, from experience, that he wouldn't be accepting offers of interviews in the future and knew, therefore, that in the longer term, they would harm the magazine's owners' business interests. Stupid they may be, but I doubt they're that stupid.

No one is saying that Morrissey's regrettable statements are the interviewer's fault. Tim Jonze did, however, fail in his duty as a journalist: he interviewed an elusive, sought-after celebrity who made inflammatory statements and (for whatever reason) he didn't follow up. Morrissey may have wedged his foot in his mouth, but in the hands of a seasoned journalist this might have been a much more enlightening encounter.

The history of Morrissey and the NME is so fraught that I'm not at all sure what any of the parties were thinking in this instance. The whole thing really is a bit of a head-scratcher.

I saw The Smiths play live in 1986 when I was 14 years old, before The Queen Is Dead came out, and I've attended concerts on nearly every subsequent tour so my criticism doesn't stem from my not being a fan. Maybe, on the other hand, people's willingness to give Morrissey the benefit of the doubt arises from their possibly being a little too much in love with him? Sorry, I don't mean that to sound as patronising as it probably does, but, in truth, I find it hard to believe that people would, in the cases of celebrities about whom they care little, be demanding that we all conduct penetrating, all-encompassing character-studies before thinking, or speaking, ill of them. He has made an important contribution to popular culture, helping, for example, to challenge traditional gender stereotypes - particularly masculinity - but that, for me, is what makes his attitude to immigration and immigrants all the more regrettable and dangerous. If Nick Griffin says, "[t]he gates of England are flooded. The country's been thrown away," (and it's not to hard to imagine him saying it) his opinion would be dismissed as the kind of ignorant, paranoid crap from which racism grows. If Morrissey says it - bookish, animal-loving, bespectacled Morrissey - it's more likely to be seen as an intelligent and reasonable belief to hold.

You make a good point: Morrissey's cult of personality is second to none. I also remember The Smiths in their heyday, and I know more than one person who succumbed to the Morrissey vortex. Yes, we were all "seduced" by a slender, bookish, animal-loving, bespectacled, introverted, Wildean wit who fought the good fight on behalf of sensitive outsiders everywhere, struck a forceful blow against gender stereotypes and created great, great music in the process. This is why so many give him the benefit of the doubt: his strong track record of great words and even greater accomplishments. I'm not "in love" with Morrissey (as a matter of fact I used to find him quite irritating), but he did earn my respect years ago - this is why I'm willing to cut him more slack. As for celebrities I don't care about (which is just about all of them), I don't really get involved in such nonsense, and if similar inflammatory statements were publicized I would simply shake my head and move on, which is probably what most people are doing with Morrissey, which is a great shame.

[Worm]

Maybe, on the other hand, people's willingness to give Morrissey the benefit of the doubt

Sorry to jump in, but as this seems to be addressed to anyone, I'd like to answer.

In a very limited sense, I'm giving Morrissey the benefit of the doubt. I'm assuming that on the subject of immigration his views are more intelligent and sophisticated than he let on in the 2007 interview. I don't presume to know what he really, really thinks about the subject. For me, as I've written, my doubt turns on the source of his anger: I believe immigration disturbs him, but why, exactly, isn't clear. So, yes, there's some "faith" on my part.

However, in a larger sense-- and this is what stood out for me, in your post describing 25-plus years of being fan-- I don't think any of us need to give him the benefit of the doubt. What doubt would that be, exactly? As Anaesthesine said, there is an enormous amount of evidence supporting the idea that Morrissey is not a racist. I don't see how any fan of his music could possibly say, "Well, I really don't know...it's a blank spot there..." His entire career is a living monument to his courageous stand against cruelty, ignorance, and injustice. I'm perplexed at the way his previous work is almost totally forgotten or assumed to be a facade concealing unsavory opinions.

I believe this is the case because for those of us raised in societies grappling with the disease of racism, we come to know that racism only seldom appears on the surface and usually festers in the dark, a secret sin of which we are all, on some level, guilty. For that reason we approach racism with deathly seriousness. The people who most hate racism are extremely sensitive to any sign of it in another person. When anything smacking of racism comes to the fore, it's assumed that this is evidence of genuine, deeply-rooted racism. But I don't think this always matches up with reality. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn't. I'm not a sexist, but I've said sexist things. I'm not a hateful person, but I've said some hateful things. I'm not a racist, but I've said racist things. I'm not a fan of shitty pop music, but I have Cyndi Lauper on my iPod. The mind is inconsistent, a fact we all know-- and a fact we all seem to forget when it comes to racism, precisely because we all care so much about fighting it.

[Anonymous]

About rock journalism and the responsibility of the author, two points.
First we have to acknowledge that traditionally entertainment journalism was written as a secondary product, used both to promote records, movies, and television shows featuring popular stars but also to function as entertainment apart from what it promotes. It was used to build images and all the Hollywood stars and pop idols had some hook that was reinforced by sometimes carefully scripted interviews. Rock journalism comes from this and being written for teenagers may be even sillier than the stuff written for housewives.
Still some rock journalism is a lot more than that and it's written by people that take it as seriously as Edward R Murrow took his work. Most product hovers somewhere in between. It's not really information as much as it is entertainment.

So where does the responsibility of the rock journalist lie? I'd say he is doing his job if he reports what occurred without trying to influence or affect it. I do see Worm's point that if he were bent on getting the truth he might have pursued the issue further. I'm not sure that is his job. I consider the possibility that, confronted with the nature of the remarks Morrissey made, if not the actual content, it might have been difficult to understand that there was a further clarification to be driven towards. Contrast this with the serious journalist that may interview someone like Mitt Romney. If Mitt Romney tells a New York Times journalist that the American character is being lost because we have opened the floodgates of immigration, would that writer be obliged to continue talking until the quote can be explained?

The difference is that we know Morrissey and Mitt Romney have different views on things. But a reporter using this supposed knowledge of what the interview subject "really" means is not engaging in news reporting, but is more of an Op-Ed type writer, in my opinion. A good rock journalist is both. Opinion is allowed and maybe you could say in reporting the piece cold the writer failed Morrissey and the editorial team really made the most of it. It still comes down to some quotes that really do need further explanation.

I still think Morrissey is enough of a pro that to blame some kid in short pants for tricking him into saying these things is ridiculous. If you or I said such things we would not need someone to ask us to explain because the thought would be complete when it was spoken with care taken to distinguish what we are saying from what it might sound like. Besides that I can't really think of a context where saying that I was on the street and didn't hear one American accent, and that this is because my country is being lost... I can't really think of a context where that would not perk up the ears of a reporter.

Again, at the time it was assumed Morrissey did this on purpose. I think he's old-fashioned and out of touch and that's why lots of us like him, but he seems to long for some past time that never existed, and certainly did not if you were one of the marginalized. It was much worse then.

In the end I think this was sort of a draw and hopefully Morrissey will develop some sort of filter and spare himself another round of this.

[Worm]

About rock journalism and the responsibility of the author, two points.
First we have to acknowledge that traditionally entertainment journalism was written as a secondary product, used both to promote records, movies, and television shows featuring popular stars but also to function as entertainment apart from what it promotes. It was used to build images and all the Hollywood stars and pop idols had some hook that was reinforced by sometimes carefully scripted interviews. Rock journalism comes from this and being written for teenagers may be even sillier than the stuff written for housewives.
Still some rock journalism is a lot more than that and it's written by people that take it as seriously as Edward R Murrow took his work. Most product hovers somewhere in between. It's not really information as much as it is entertainment.

So where does the responsibility of the rock journalist lie? I'd say he is doing his job if he reports what occurred without trying to influence or affect it. I do see Worm's point that if he were bent on getting the truth he might have pursued the issue further. I'm not sure that is his job. I consider the possibility that, confronted with the nature of the remarks Morrissey made, if not the actual content, it might have been difficult to understand that there was a further clarification to be driven towards. Contrast this with the serious journalist that may interview someone like Mitt Romney. If Mitt Romney tells a New York Times journalist that the American character is being lost because we have opened the floodgates of immigration, would that writer be obliged to continue talking until the quote can be explained?

The difference is that we know Morrissey and Mitt Romney have different views on things. But a reporter using this supposed knowledge of what the interview subject "really" means is not engaging in news reporting, but is more of an Op-Ed type writer, in my opinion. A good rock journalist is both. Opinion is allowed and maybe you could say in reporting the piece cold the writer failed Morrissey and the editorial team really made the most of it. It still comes down to some quotes that really do need further explanation.

I still think Morrissey is enough of a pro that to blame some kid in short pants for tricking him into saying these things is ridiculous. If you or I said such things we would not need someone to ask us to explain because the thought would be complete when it was spoken with care taken to distinguish what we are saying from what it might sound like. Besides that I can't really think of a context where saying that I was on the street and didn't hear one American accent, and that this is because my country is being lost... I can't really think of a context where that would not perk up the ears of a reporter.

Again, at the time it was assumed Morrissey did this on purpose. I think he's old-fashioned and out of touch and that's why lots of us like him, but he seems to long for some past time that never existed, and certainly did not if you were one of the marginalized. It was much worse then.

In the end I think this was sort of a draw and hopefully Morrissey will develop some sort of filter and spare himself another round of this.

Good post.

Regarding your point about the journalist's responsibility, I would be prepared to let a rock writer and his editors off the hook if they had no intention of presenting themselves as morally serious people. You are right not to expect intelligent follow-up questions in, say, Smash Hits or the equivalent. But Jonze, McNicholas, and the rest asked to be taken seriously when they chastised Morrissey for his remarks. They wanted to offer serious, intelligent commentary on what they thought were inappropriate and potentially harmful statements made in the interview. That makes them fair game.

[goinghome]

Yikes! How to make good news sound bad - http://griffinwatch-nwn.blogspot.ie/...y-nemesis.html

A pretty exhaustive trawl ending with the conclusion that, "The sad fact of the matter is, the mainstream music world has been castrated. Once a landscape echoing with the sound of rebellious, dissenting and articulate voices but now drowned out by trivia. Isn’t it rather shameful that it is left to a man hurtling towards his mid-fifties to express a level of frustration that should be heard coming from musical contemporaries over half his age? This is why ‘Conspiro Media’ thanks it’s lucky stars that Morrissey is still as opinionated as ever and showing no signs of keeping his ‘Big Mouth’ shut – however extreme or painful some of his comments might be to accept." - http://conspiromedia.wordpress.com/2...0-year-career/

[Worm]

Yikes! How to make good news sound bad - http://griffinwatch-nwn.blogspot.ie/...y-nemesis.html

A pretty exhaustive trawl ending with the conclusion that, "The sad fact of the matter is, the mainstream music world has been castrated. Once a landscape echoing with the sound of rebellious, dissenting and articulate voices but now drowned out by trivia. Isn’t it rather shameful that it is left to a man hurtling towards his mid-fifties to express a level of frustration that should be heard coming from musical contemporaries over half his age? This is why ‘Conspiro Media’ thanks it’s lucky stars that Morrissey is still as opinionated as ever and showing no signs of keeping his ‘Big Mouth’ shut – however extreme or painful some of his comments might be to accept." - http://conspiromedia.wordpress.com/2...0-year-career/

That was a by-the-numbers rant against the "fascist left wing" rather than a post in support of Morrissey.

[Anaesthesine]

"The NME was inflammatory and an attempt to ignite controversy by victimising an artist whose views that they found abhorrent. Such character assassination was poor, unjustified and typical of the arrogant, out-of-touch liberal metropolitan elite who inhabit the Ivory Towers of the publishing industry and the world of advertising and marketing."

Yes, everyone knows that advertising and marketing are traditional bastions of liberal ideology.

"In 1994 Morrissey wrote the song ’I am Hated for Loving’ (from the ‘Vauxhall and I’ album). As an Englishman who loves his country and its traditional culture and people, Morrissey is indeed seemingly hated by the far left fascists who believe that they have some form of automatic right to control what we think and believe, and who delight in character assassinations and smear tactics against those who step out of line."



Not the best defense one could hope for in this situation.