So Piers Morgan steals the show, once again it's all about him. That's the thing with the so-called free speech crowd. They have a brand to build. Particularly in an age where there is a ready market for this crap. Lots of dark money swilling around, ready to support this agenda. New TV stations are being planned, ready to broadcast a steady diet of confected outrage to both comfort and confound the privileged. These are victims of a narrative that at once tells them they are entitled, and then berates their opponents for thinking they too are the same. Aren't they? Careful, your privilege is being checked, and that's all it is. Society evolves, attitudes grow with acceptance, becoming tolerance. But for some that is a change too far. Like bendy bananas and metric measurements. All problems created by powerful elites (Farage) to con you (Brexit).
I've no idea if Morgan staged his walkout, pending a better offer with Murdoch's new broadcast venture, but I've no doubt that's where he'll end up. Given a comfy chair and a platform few others will enjoy, least of all those representing a minority, he'll spin the aforementioned narrative to an audience far removed from that privilege. All of whom will lap up the barely credible stories of hypocrisy and liberal entitlement, delivered with a straight face. That's all he does. It'll probably strive to be an interview show because he's made a name as a 'tough journalist', especially during the pandemic, having confronted the paper tigers of government.
It's easy to see that as substantive. It isn't; it's merely performative. He asks questions that are obvious, any journalist with a brain could do the same. This is easy when your targets are so obviously and transparently corrupt. But the reality is that it's just shouting and bluster. He isn't interested in answers nor learning or exposing anything. Anyone subject to his asinine belligerence will be more likely to retreat and polarise, rather than open up and admit any wrong doing. Especially when they are already as shameless as the Tories.
Of course he doesn't care. It might seem easy to believe given that he appears to be standing for the common person. Yet we can see where his true allegiance lies; like all these people they are fiercely centrist neoliberals who rail against any change to the status quo as a step too far. How dare a black woman speak out. Despite being implausible, given how our society views mental health, it is more likely, to him, that she's lying. I find it rather telling that he drags Prince Philip into the conversation, as if to say she was saying these things to hurt a sick old man. By the way, he's 100 years old and has lived a life of untold unearned privilege. Most people that age aren't in the best of health. Most will never know the kind of health care he will get, and most aren't virulent upholders of a vastly racist institution, nor as racist as he is. I have little sympathy for him nor Piers' argument that one cannot criticise institutions because,.,rich old man is old. That's disgusting, but that's what he does.
The worst part is that he's trying to make this into a free speech argument. Which it isn't. he chose to walk off set. Freely. He only did so when a person of colour, a colleague, called him out. When confronted with the truth of what he represents, as a privileged wealthy white man, he threw his toys out of the pram. That scene is instructive, it should be to many who sadly won't see it for what it is. That's a shame. Instead they'll likely see a black guy speaking too far. Poor Piers, a victim of bullying. Nothing of the sort, despite how he'd like to frame it. He cancelled himself. It is heartening to see just how many complaints ITV received in response to Piers' tone deaf reading of the Harry/Meghan situation.
I have no dog in that race. The monarchy is a horrendous anachronism and the sooner it's gone, the better. But the discussion isn't about them specifically, it's about the relationship with power. If even a successful mixed race woman is treated badly by a powerful institution then what other evidence that institutional racism exists in Britain. It comes from the top, the royals are seen as exemplars (not by me ffs). That's how they are marketed; representative of the character of our community. It's time that character, and its apologists, changed.
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