Today blogger Guido Fawkes tweeted his excitement about the news of Piers Morgan’s demise from his primetime slot on CNN.
Lots of people are evidently elated about this, and Guido took to his MediaGuido Twitter account to recall a personal memory about his last conversation with the late founder of this very parish, Andrew Breitbart.
Last time I spoke to Andrew Breibart we were plotting @PiersMorgan‘s downfall. I like to think that in heaven he is smiling today.
— Media Guido (@MediaGuido) February 24, 2014
Here are twelve reasons why the shade of Andrew Breitbart isn’t the only one on cloud nine on this, the happiest of days.
1. The man’s an arse.
‘One day you’re cock of the walk, the next a feather duster,’ it says at the top of his Twitter profile.
This piece of rueful, worldly wisdom would be quite charming – moving, even, given what has just happened – if it weren’t printed on top of a background boast-o-graph showing Nelson Mandela apparently laughing uncontrollably at one of Morgan’s jokes.
2. The man’s a traitor.
Possibly the lowest of the many lows in his career as a tabloid editor was his 2004 Daily Mirror cover photograph purporting to show British soldiers in Iraq abusing hooded detainees.
Despite widespread criticism that he was putting the lives of British servicemen at risk and acting as a recruiting sergeant for Al Qaeda, Morgan stood by his great scoop, insisting that his revelations were in the public interest.
It subsequently emerged that the photos were a hoax. But even after this had been proved beyond reasonable doubt, Morgan refused to apologise.
“All I want to say is we published the truth,” he told the ITV NewsChannel. “We have revealed a can of worms. If the government chooses toignore that, it is entirely a matter for them.”
3. But though he’s happy to sell soldiers down the river in the name of free speech, he doesn’t actually believe in free speech.
For example, when a sanctimonious footballer called Stan Collymore started trying to have people arrested for sending him racially offensive insults on Twitter, Morgan was quick to support him. “I agree with @StanCollymore,” Morgan tweeted obsequiously from the US. “You can’tspew racist abuse or make death threats on TV or radio, why shouldTwitter be any different?”
This a) missed the point that racist abuse is not a death threat and b) free speech, by definition, includes the right to say things people find offensive – a concept you’d have thought any journalist, especially an ex-tabloid editor, would support.
4. He’s an historical illiterate who nonetheless insists on pontificating on subjects about which he knows nothing.
Shortly arriving in the US he announced that the Constitution was “well intentioned” but “inherently flawed,” which you can imagine sounding plausible – if still wrong – coming from the mouth of a Summa Cum Laude Ivy League graduate who’d majored in Constitutional Law. But from Piers bloody Morgan?
I appreciate that an English accent will carry you an awful long way in the US, but for the benefit of any Americans reading this, I’d just like to point out a basic fact about Piers Morgan. The man, as we used to say at school, is thick as pigshit. Animal cunning he may have in abundance. But intellectual credibility? Zilch. Nada. Niente.
5. He has all the principle of a syphilitic whore.
All right, so maybe in journalism that’s an advantage. But do we really believe for one second that, say, Morgan’s passionate belief in gun control was anything other than a cynical bid to curry easy favour with liberal America and brown-nose his way into the affections of the “guns are bad, m’kay” showbiz set?
6. He’s an ill-mannered brute.
For a taste of his arrogance, bias and total lack of basic human courtesy, check out the must-vomit interview he conducted with Jonah Goldberg.
In an irony apparently lost on Morgan, though not on the author, Goldberg had just written a book about how the left really isn’t interested in honest debate, only in passive-aggressive rhetorical tricks designed to make their opponents look evil.
Goldberg said afterwards: “The funny part is that the interview begins with me saying that liberalshide their ideological biases with false claims of moderation andcentrism. He then proceeded to prove my point, over and over again.”
7. He is an immodest man with much to be modest about – and the reverse Midas touch.
Investigated as part of an insider dealing scandal at the Daily Mirror he was found by the Press Complaints Commission to have breached the Code of Conduct on financial journalism.
In 2004, he was finally sacked by the Mirror for the fake Iraq photos story.
In 2005 an attempt to revive the UK Press Gazette in a £1 million partnership with Matthew Freud ended a year later with the publication going into administrative receivership.
In 2007 he was filmed falling off a Segway and breaking three ribs: four years earlier he had commented in the Mail when George W Bush had had a similar accident: “You’d have to be an idiot to fall off, wouldn’t you, Mr President?”.
At CNN he took over Larry King’s primetime slot and saw audiences nosedive: last week only 207,000 viewers proved capable of enduring his characteristic mix of bluster, prurience and confected moral grandstanding.
8. He’s a bore.
Especially his frequent tweets on Arsenal football club, so boring – sample tweet: “I stand 100% behind @MesutOzil1088 – he’s a world class player and will prove it. #afc” like we care Piers, like even MesutOzil whoever he is cares – they make you long for the wit, insight and adrenalin buzz of a wall of drying paint.
9. He’s a liar.
“I have never hacked a phone, told anyone to hack a phone, or published any stories based on the hacking of a phone,” he once told then MP Louise Mensch. But investigations by Guido Fawkes found numerous incidents in which the Mirror, under Morgan’s editorship, had illegally hacked and blagged private data “on an industrial scale.”
Morgan also boasted about his familiarity with hacking techniques in his published diaries and newspaper articles. And here he is, caught on camera, discussing exactly how to do it. When he testified under oath during the Leveson Inquiry, his slippery manner failed to impress the presiding judge who commented:
“Utterly unpersuasive. This was not, in any sense at all, a convincing answer.”
10. He’s untrustworthy.
In 2012, Frasier’s Kelsey Grammer agreed to appear on Morgan’s show – and talk about his ex-wife Camille, just so long as Morgan didn’t show any images of her.
So how was Grammer greeted as soon as he got into the hot seat? Why with a photograph of his ex-wife – at which point Grammer did a runner. Morgan rather redundantly announced that Grammer was now banned from his show.
11. He’s a nauseating braggart.
Here he is gloating about hanging at the GQ awards with his showbiz chums Justin Timberlake, Samuel L Jackson and Pharell Williams to the (infinitely more popular and successful) Jeremy Clarkson.
“Evening, Clarkson,’ I chuckled.
‘Evening, Morgan,’ he replied, slightly chastened, as Justin, Samuel and Pharell wondered who this rude, pot-bellied oaf was. I made an eye movement suggesting he move on before my A-list friends had their bodyguards remove him. He did.”‘
The ensuing Twitter feud is well worth a read.
12. He has done more than anyone to set back the cause of Anglo-American relations since Britain’s Major General Robert Ross led the burning of the White House in 1814.
Thanks to Morgan, it is now entirely possible that the careers of every single Brit hoping to make it big in the US will have been killed stone dead. This is why we at Breitbart London would like to send out an urgent message to the people of America: “Don’t blame us! We have nothing to do with this man whatsoever.”
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