Rock's vegan fundamentalist: why Morrissey was ahead of his time - The Telegraph

Rock's vegan fundamentalist: why Morrissey was ahead of his time.
The Telegraph - by Adam White, 10th Jan., 2019.

The following article is behind a registration wall.
So, as opposed to an excerpt, the whole thing is reproduced for your convenience:

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"In 1985, a year after releasing the album Meat Is Murder as part of The Smiths, Morrissey was performing at a gig in Stoke on Trent when he was pelted with objects from the audience: it was a string of sausages, each one carefully inscribed with the title of his album.

“They hit me in the face and part of them got in my mouth,” he later recalled. “I had to just run off the stage and heave! I really vomited. Eating meat is the most disgusting thing I can think of. It’s like biting into your grandmother.” This was the last time animal flesh has even come close to Morrissey's mouth.

Back then, Morrissey was fighting on behalf of a mainstream vegetarian ideology very much in its infancy, and inciting much controversy in the process. With veggie food almost exclusively found in hippie cafes and the idea of vegetarian sausages in your local Tesco barely a glimmer of an idea on Linda McCartney’s vision board, Morrissey and The Smiths were notable for being very public early proponents of a meat-free diet.

Fast forward 30 years, and Morrissey has become a maddening pop culture troll, lecturing the world on the evils of eating meat while expressing a number of inflammatory socio-political stances that have inadvertently encouraged most of us, whatever our political beliefs, to swear we'll never listen to his music again. But even as his politics have changed, his commit to the vegetarian - now vegan - cause has never wavered.

With veganism already declared to be the hottest cultural trend of 2019, assisted by the social media fervor surrounding the Gregg’s Vegan Sausage Roll and news that Beyoncé and Jay-Z have authored the forward to a vegan guide that essentially reads like a cult manifesto, perhaps it's time to give Morrisey some credit: he was ahead of the curve all along.

And that’s despite there having always been a thread of unhelpful lunacy to Morrissey’s animals-first mantra, with nary a Morrissey profile going by without a brief dip into all kinds of manic hysteria. From admonishing anyone who doesn’t feel the same level of horror over the terrorism of Anders Breivik as they do at the burger dispensaries at your average branch of KFC, to his declaration that there is “no difference” between the eating of animals and literal paedophilia (“They are both rape, violence, murder,” he said in 2014), Morrissey has often come to resemble a cartoon pastiche of a militant vegan.

Such hyperbolic, giggle-inducing metaphors for meat-eating have been a permanent fixture in Morrissey's press since the beginning of his career, while his public support for the kind of vegan activist most often seen dunking cans of paint over supermodels has spawned a legion of unflattering stereotypes. But buried beneath the histrionics have often been slivers of truth, now served up in more palatable and less casually racist forms by today’s A-list.

Morrissey’s sheer conviction in his beliefs, coupled with his unmistakable power within industry circles, has had an enormous effect. Although he failed in his campaign to get General Motors to switch all their car seats to vegan leather, he has repeatedly threatened to pull out of festivals and concerts if meat is sold on the premises (shows in Iceland were cancelled when the venues wouldn't bend to his will). He successfully convinced LA’s Staples Center to shut down its McDonalds ahead of one of his concerts in 2013, along with any food outlet selling meat on the floor level of the venue - Paul McCartney was flatly refused when he made the same request.

He has even claimed that the organisers of Coachella offered to become an entirely meat-free event for a year if he was able to get The Smiths back together.

His riders are known to state that his hotel rooms on tour cannot be situated downwind of any nearby barbecues, while he insists all of his bandmates and roadies must follow a vegan or vegetarian diet while touring. (Though fans have debated how successful he has been in that regard, gossiping about band members pining for roast dinners and devouring Haribos backstage.)

Attendees aren’t so lucky either. In 2011 it was reported that Morrissey fans were being frisked for meat products at his gigs, their bags searched for anything resembling parts of an animal, potentially to curb any incidents like the infamous 1985 sausage attack. And although the rumour th
(This incomplete sentence is actually in the article - FWD).

A vegetarian since the age of 11 and a vegan since the turn of the decade, Morrissey first began speaking openly about his beliefs via Meat Is Murder, a track he and The Smiths would play against a projected slideshow of slaughterhouses, animal testing labs and factory farming. In the process, he exposed a generation of music fans to the ghoulish realities of animal products. Such provocative staging remains intact during Morrissey gigs today, a reminder that while much of his overall worldview has changed in the years since, his deliberately antagonistic approach to animal rights hasn’t.

The album said track stems from, also titled Meat Is Murder, is still the toughest of the four Smiths records to revisit, full of evocative anger and political imagery, but lacking in hooks or many true, four-carat Smiths classics (How Soon Is Now? was only added to the US release of the album). And its failings are neatly encapsulated in the title track itself – a droning bit of melodrama that sounds particularly off-key in the wake of songs revolving around child abuse, poverty and class warfare. When Morrissey sings that eating meat is “death for no reason, and death for no reason is murder,” it’s difficult not to pick holes in his logic.

But while the track is no typical fan favourite, it did have an effect on a significant proportion of Smiths fans at the time. Speaking to journalist Neil Taylor in 2010 (via NME), guitarist Johnny Marr, today a vegan himself, called the song one of the things he is most proud of. “20 years on people tell me they became a vegetarian as a result of Meat Is Murder, and I think that is quite literally rock music changing someone’s life,” he said. “It’s certainly changing the life of animals.”

Like much of the rest of Morrissey’s public image throughout the Eighties and Nineties, his vegetarianism would become material for jokes made at his expense, presented as just another mockable characteristic of a man who was proudly soft, emotionally vulnerable and ambiguous in his sexuality – all qualities that made him a beloved figure for a generation of sad Eighties teens, as well as an easy target for the baffled old guard. It's easy to roll your eyes at his endless pontificating, but this was a man waving the flag for animal rights at a time when it decidedly wasn’t cool to do so.,

“Morrissey helped put PETA on the map,” PETA’s vice president of campaigns Dan Mathews told Spin Magazine in 2004. “Meat Is Murder was a benchmark in defining animal rights as an edgy youth movement and has created legions of vegetarians.”

An interesting aspect to Morrissey’s vegetarianism, however, has been how often it has shifted in its specifics. His unusual equating of various forms of human tragedy with the slaughter of animals has resulted in an alienating coldness at times, be it his shrug of a response to Band Aid, or his empathy with the violent tactics of the Animal Rights Militia.

And considering his devotion to the vegan cause, Morrissey’s revelatory interview earlier this year with author Fiona Dodwell came as a surprise. “I’ve always found food to be very difficult because I only eat bread, potatoes, pasta and nuts… all stodge,” he said. “I can’t eat anything that has any flavour. I’ve never had a curry, or coffee, or garlic.” In contrast with Marr, who discussed with Vegan Magazine in 2011 a diet rich in tofu, pastas, stuffed vine leaves and vegan cookies, it was curiously uninformed for such a public proponent of non-meat diets.

But Morrissey's awareness of the way wealth and class intersect with the availability and affordability of good quality vegan produce, as indicated during a rare TV sit-down with Larry King in 2015, showcased a more knowledgeable appreciation of veganism’s failings – even if it did make him an enemy in the eyes of some of the more hardcore figures of the vegan blogosphere.

In 2015, abolitionist vegan Gary L Francione slammed Morrissey’s comments on the difficulties of transitioning from vegetarianism to veganism. “There is no morally coherent distinction between meat and any other animal product,” Francione wrote. “It’s bad enough that high-visibility people like Morrissey and Paul McCartney pose as ‘animal people’ when they are not vegan.”

It has become as tricky to get a handle on Morrissey’s veganism as it is his politics, both dominated as they are with extremist, almost deliberately outrage-producing stances – something he has done in the press, to varying levels of legacy-ruining, since the peak of his Eighties fame. But despite how easy it has been to roll our collective eyes at his endless pontificating, this was a man waving the flag for animal rights at a time when it decidedly wasn’t cool to do so.

Animal rights awareness in the 1990s largely consisted of supermodels stripping down in adverts for PETA; more often than not, they were wearing fur on the runway a second later). At least Morrissey's hardcore veggie activism was genuinely productive.

It is a shame, then, that he has become such a droning oddball of late. On the list of outrageous comments Morrissey has made in the past decade, from slamming many of the men and women who have come forward with #MeToo stories to publicly supporting a political figure deemed part of a contingent of “Nazis and racists” within UKIP by none other than Nigel Farage, his hyperbolic statements on meat and paedophilia hardly register in the truly dangerous stakes. But it does do an unfortunate disservice to the good he has done in the past."


(Some of the hyperlinks above take you to more gated articles).

A Solo link is cited too: 'Fans have debated...'
Regards,
FWD.
 
you continuously dream about the BIG D so....
and IVE COME ACROSS A STUNNING SOVERYGAY OLD.COM::lbf:




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What’s funny is you actually have those saved somewhere wether it be on your phone or computer so who knows what other gay stuff you have saved, it’s ok vegan cro you can jump out of the closet it’s 2019 they accept your type of people now a days. You and whatever male partner you have can proudly walk down the streets safely or you can both take a trip on a cruise line ship wearing matching sailor outfits they have that kind of stuff for you girls I mean guys, whoops.
 
Actually Morrissey only became vegan when people started to notice he still ate cheese and wore leather shoes. He's still got further to go since he shared a PETA posts about the cruelty of wool but still wears it.

I ask this in all seriousness, what is wrong with wool? I understand the idea of not killing animals for food but what is the problem with shearing sheep for the woolen fleece?
 
I ask this in all seriousness, what is wrong with wool? I understand the idea of not killing animals for food but what is the problem with shearing sheep for the woolen fleece?

Because said sheep is ultimately slaughtered for food anyway. Plus the process of shearing can be fairly violent with the animal being wrestled, kicked and hit to make it comply. Tendons are cut and arteries are nicked, which means goodnight Vienna for said animal.
 
What’s funny is you actually have those saved somewhere wether it be on your phone or computer so who knows what other gay stuff you have saved, it’s ok vegan cro you can jump out of the closet it’s 2019 they accept your type of people now a days. You and whatever male partner you have can proudly walk down the streets safely or you can both take a trip on a cruise line ship wearing matching sailor outfits they have that kind of stuff for you girls I mean guys, whoops.

:rolleyes:

You need to worry about all the D activity in your mind.
Carrot top is straighter than you:lbf:

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Modern veganism seems to mean it's ok to put money in the hands of organisations synonymous with mass execution of animals because... well "at least it's a start". Since when did making an "ethical" choice about not eating animals make it ok to walk past isles of death to get your fake sausage roll? Shopping ethically and without handing those swines any cash is completely possible if you aren't lazy and can make an actual effort. The old punks knew best. They'd be too ashamed and feel too hypocritical to go give Mr Sainsbury their cash to try their latest vegan cash grab just a few isles down from the meat counters. This new lifestyle and dietary "choice" veganism stuff is nonsense. Don't give mainstream shops your money as they will continue to find new and more efficient ways to kill whilst happily taking your cash as they've found a way to exploit you and new sales markets.Greggs won't really kill any less animals to sell fake sausage rolls to lazy vegans with no integrity or moral strength of convictions. You make a mockery of the cause if you support any single one of these animal killing institutions because a tiny part of their store accommodates you. Try harder and if you don't, live with your disgraceful hypocrisy.

You make some good points but this really comes down to how far do you want to take the argument? I had this discussion with a friend the other day who read an interview with a farmer who grows beans and plants to make tofu and who pointed out that he kills so many animals to ensure the integrity of his crops (foxes, rabbits etc) that tofu is not really animal friendly at all. But how far do you take that argument? Pests and bugs are killed to ensure fruit and veg can grow to full harvest. So is a lettuce truly animal friendly if the farmer had to set up snares to stop rabbits getting at it? If a fruit-picker eats meat, is it really animal friendly to eat the fruit they've picked? After all, you wouldn't have it if they weren't picking it, and they've probably got a bacon butty in their lunchbox.

Unless we all just grow our own food in a protected environment, the production/supply chain will always involve animal deaths in some way or another. However, I do think that it's a case of doing what you can and hope that, little by little, change occurs eg if Greggs (and supermarkets) end up selling ten times more vegan products than animal ones it's inevitable they would reduce the amount of animal products that they stock. The idea is that ultimately the meat industry will be wiped out altogether by market forces.
 
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:rolleyes:

You need to worry about all the D activity in your mind.
Carrot top is straighter than you:lbf:

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Yeah you certainly get the D by swallowing it. That way you get all your Vitamin D. I make carrot top look straight? Have you looked at yourself lately you make Andy Dick look like he’s a ladies man. You dumb mother f***er. Last time you saw a vagina was day you were born sliding down your mommas ass crack.
 
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Yeah you certainly get the D by swallowing it. That way you get all your Vitamin D. I make carrot top look straight? Have you looked at yourself lately you make Andy Dick look like he’s a ladies man. You dumb mother f***er. Last time you saw a vagina was day you were born sliding down your mommas ass crack.


WTF??? you make vag gay FFS. I never seen anything like it.:tears:
your mind is all about the D!!!!:mask:

(most dudes that are seen to like the D always bring up vag but subconsciously always veer it back into gay territory):confounded:
 
I ask this in all seriousness, what is wrong with wool? I understand the idea of not killing animals for food but what is the problem with shearing sheep for the woolen fleece?

I don't have a problem with it. Or leather. If you're going to kill an animal to eat it, you may as well do it the courtesy of using as much of it as possible. In my opinion.

The problem for Morrissey is that he's previously shared PETA missives regarding the cruelty of both wool and leather, and yet he continued to use both. Which makes him a hypocrite.

Of course, he could just ditch the patronage of the uneducated, unscientific, lying PETA, and his life would become immediately more livable.
 
You make some good points but this really comes down to how far do you want to take the argument? I had this discussion with a friend the other day who read an interview with a farmer who grows beans and plants to make tofu and who pointed out that he kills so many animals to ensure the integrity of his crops (foxes, rabbits etc) that tofu is not really animal friendly at all. But how far do you take that argument? Pests and bugs are killed to ensure fruit and veg can grow to full harvest. So is a lettuce truly animal friendly if the farmer had to set up snares to stop rabbits getting at it? If a fruit-picker eats meat, is it really animal friendly to eat the fruit they've picked? After all, you wouldn't have it if they weren't picking it, and they've probably got a bacon butty in their lunchbox.

The Vegan Society definition of veganism is:
Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.

Note the "as far as is possible and practicable." It is impossible to avoid harm to animals in any kind of agricultural, let alone modern agriculture. To imagine that there is some solution where no creature of any kind is harmed ever is simply appealing to the Nirvana fallacy. Veganism aims to reduce and minimise harm to animals by directly eschewing their use in food and other products - it cannot eliminate harm to animals. I can't take any responsibility for the diets of people who pick fruit and to suggest otherwise is nonsensical. All a vegan can do is take responsibility for their own actions.
 
:rolleyes:

does the Vegan Society have anything to say about trolling?:crazy:
 
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The Vegan Society definition of veganism is:
Veganism is a way of living which seeks to exclude, as far as is possible and practicable, all forms of exploitation of, and cruelty to, animals for food, clothing or any other purpose.

Note the "as far as is possible and practicable." It is impossible to avoid harm to animals in any kind of agricultural, let alone modern agriculture. To imagine that there is some solution where no creature of any kind is harmed ever is simply appealing to the Nirvana fallacy. Veganism aims to reduce and minimise harm to animals by directly eschewing their use in food and other products - it cannot eliminate harm to animals. I can't take any responsibility for the diets of people who pick fruit and to suggest otherwise is nonsensical. All a vegan can do is take responsibility for their own actions.
 
Nah, very poor, you lose. Seriously, if you can't write your own material and have to rely on shit you've found on Google then you are even more inadequate than I originally thought.

Honestly I don’t care if it’s poor or not. Your really not on my radar so I took the minimalist reaction to you, but since your obviously dying and seeking my attention because you want some sort of recognition of some kind from me because I know you want some sort of approval from me, but I got 99 problems but a bitch like you ain’t one. Peace Hoe.
 
Honestly I don’t care if it’s poor or not. Your really not on my radar so I took the minimalist reaction to you, but since your obviously dying and seeking my attention because you want some sort of recognition of some kind from me because I know you want some sort of approval from me, but I got 99 problems but a bitch like you ain’t one. Peace Hoe.
could you please give Halloway a really wide berth by staying of this site completely?
 
Sure. The important matter is that Morrissey was/is ahead of his time in other topics besides "meat is murder". That's why this article seems like an attempt at damage control. They want to avoid people acknowledge his whole ideology. They are circumscribing his "appropriate" thoughts to animal rights and at the same time they are dismissing the other topics he has referred to as crazy, inadequate and unpopular, when in fact his opinions always had a wider scoop and as someone has said previously here they are widely shared by a huge part of European working class.
It's very obvious Morrissey is being censored by his opinions, and he doesn't feel free to say what he thinks (Free Morrissey). It doesn't care if he is right or not because no one owns the truth. The thing is that he can't express what he thinks because he is immediately condemned by the media when his opinions don't fit in their agenda.
There you have another musicians playing the outcasts but living as bourgeois, juggling as clowns during interviews trying to hide their true opinions for the sake of not saying something politically incorrect and thus damage their career, because they need the media or at least they think they need it. Brave new world.

I probably link the idea of "ahead of his times" with the notion of an avant-garde artist... and i do not think that Morrissey has ever been one.
On the other hand, I think he was and still is one of the most amazing singers that ever existed, but also an extraordinarily clever person with a perfect sense of what he is doing artistically.
 

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