vicarinatutugal
can't reMember
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read here
Last month, whilst on an assignment for the New Musical Express, I asked Morrissey if he'd ever consider moving back to Britain. Little did I know then, as such an innocent question left my lips, that I was about to provoke a Morrissey rant about UK immigration policy, a series of ignorant, racially inflamatory statements (based on no factual evidence), and a media storm that has seen this piece debated on forums, newspapers and even Question Time.
The controversy has been further fuelled by Morrissey's manager Merck Mercuriadis posting online an email sent from me, saying that I'd had my name removed from the piece. This was true, I had requested my byline be removed, but not exactly for the reasons the Morrissey camp are spinning (those being that I didn't want to criticise Morrissey and it was a stich-up by the NME).
So before I continue, there's something that needs to be pointed out. Every single quote attributed to Morrissey is 100% correct, there was no provocation at all, and Morrissey was given a chance to apologise or clarify his views with a second telephone interview. At no point did he back down. Although Morrissey as a person was charming, courteous and (until this point) a joy to interview, I found comments such as "England's been thrown away" and "These days you won't hear a British accent in Knightsbridge" woefully ignorant. 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.
However, it's been something of a PR coup for Morrissey's people that they've managed to divert attention from their artist's ill-informed comments by focussing all the attention on the byline debate. The fact that Morrissey's team have dared suggest that the NME have stitched him up is ludicrous. At the end of the second telephone interview, Morrissey said "I gather this is going to be a scathing piece on me" to which I replied along the lines of "It's not going to be too good, no, it will anger a lot of people".
Morrissey and his management knew that I wasn't writing them a soft PR piece. All I promised was that the transcript would be printed as fairly as possible and that I'd print his more "liberal" comments about finding racism "too silly to discuss". This promise was kept, as far as I'm aware.
Were Morrissey's comments ill-informed and likely to provoke anger inside those of us who are tired of hearing the right wing press and the BNP whip up fear with the same factually distorted statements? Undoubtedly. 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, instead of the issue of why a byline was dropped.
What's clear, though, is this: the "I've been stitched up" card is the last bastion of someone who's said something offensive but is too scared to back this up, yet too stubborn to apologise. How can Morrissey possibly claim a stitch up when the interview is printed in Q&A form, his quotes are recorded on tape and he wasn't even asked about immigration in the first place? It's truly cowardly. If Morrissey holds these opinions he should either be sticking to his guns and standing by them or - more honorably - educating himself on race issues, realising why his comments were both offensive and inflamatory, and apologising for them as quickly as is humanly possible.
read here
Last month, whilst on an assignment for the New Musical Express, I asked Morrissey if he'd ever consider moving back to Britain. Little did I know then, as such an innocent question left my lips, that I was about to provoke a Morrissey rant about UK immigration policy, a series of ignorant, racially inflamatory statements (based on no factual evidence), and a media storm that has seen this piece debated on forums, newspapers and even Question Time.
The controversy has been further fuelled by Morrissey's manager Merck Mercuriadis posting online an email sent from me, saying that I'd had my name removed from the piece. This was true, I had requested my byline be removed, but not exactly for the reasons the Morrissey camp are spinning (those being that I didn't want to criticise Morrissey and it was a stich-up by the NME).
So before I continue, there's something that needs to be pointed out. Every single quote attributed to Morrissey is 100% correct, there was no provocation at all, and Morrissey was given a chance to apologise or clarify his views with a second telephone interview. At no point did he back down. Although Morrissey as a person was charming, courteous and (until this point) a joy to interview, I found comments such as "England's been thrown away" and "These days you won't hear a British accent in Knightsbridge" woefully ignorant. 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.
However, it's been something of a PR coup for Morrissey's people that they've managed to divert attention from their artist's ill-informed comments by focussing all the attention on the byline debate. The fact that Morrissey's team have dared suggest that the NME have stitched him up is ludicrous. At the end of the second telephone interview, Morrissey said "I gather this is going to be a scathing piece on me" to which I replied along the lines of "It's not going to be too good, no, it will anger a lot of people".
Morrissey and his management knew that I wasn't writing them a soft PR piece. All I promised was that the transcript would be printed as fairly as possible and that I'd print his more "liberal" comments about finding racism "too silly to discuss". This promise was kept, as far as I'm aware.
Were Morrissey's comments ill-informed and likely to provoke anger inside those of us who are tired of hearing the right wing press and the BNP whip up fear with the same factually distorted statements? Undoubtedly. 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, instead of the issue of why a byline was dropped.
What's clear, though, is this: the "I've been stitched up" card is the last bastion of someone who's said something offensive but is too scared to back this up, yet too stubborn to apologise. How can Morrissey possibly claim a stitch up when the interview is printed in Q&A form, his quotes are recorded on tape and he wasn't even asked about immigration in the first place? It's truly cowardly. If Morrissey holds these opinions he should either be sticking to his guns and standing by them or - more honorably - educating himself on race issues, realising why his comments were both offensive and inflamatory, and apologising for them as quickly as is humanly possible.
