April 26, 2022 - 8:00am
Piers Morgan began his new primetime show on talkTV last night by comparing himself to Donald Trump and Nelson Mandela. A television first, of sorts. “It’s been a long walk to freedom of speech,” said Morgan. He then quoted the late Winston Churchill, the later George Washington, and the relatively recently late Christopher Hitchens. Flatteringly, the dead men agreed with the television LIVE Morgan: never hold your tongue, say what you want, and if you don’t like it, kiss my ass.
Piers Morgan: Uncensored was never going to be a night with the Bloomsbury Group. It was instead a night with Donald Trump. The interview went on for fifty minutes — only broken by the occasional advert for gold bullion (buy gold VAT free). It was not a squib. But nor was it the epochal Ragnarök promised by the talkTV promotional materials that have been pasted across newspapers, billboards, buses, the internet, and random dogs in the street in recent days.
Morgan introduced Trump as “the most controversial figure in human history”, which rather lets off Adolf Hitler lightly. They yakked and hemmed, with Morgan moving from could-trap-a-passing-seabird oily, to prickly inquisitor, and back to loyal retainer in minutes. Not a whisper of a scoop.
Unless Trump mordantly predicting the world will “soon be blown to pieces” counts? But the purpose was to generate noise and attention, not new information. This is the game. Morgan, like Trump, has known this from the start. Play it, or you will never be significant enough to get clocked in the face by Jeremy Clarkson at the British Press Awards.
At the very least Piers Morgan: Uncensored appeared beautiful, sharp, fretted over. But Trump is no longer good copy. He looks bloated and serene, like an emperor enjoying a golden afternoon on Capri. His attention drifted away from Morgan, and he kept glancing towards the cameras. When can I play golf again, I imagined him thinking.
Piers had red-red eyes, as if he he’d endured a heaving pre-game weep in the lavatories. The heavily trailed bust-up — did Trump ‘storm out’ of the interview? — remained censored. We will see it tomorrow, once we have learned what the 45th President thinks about the Duchess of Sussex.
Otherwise it was a tabloid version of anti-wokeness. It’s funny to watch anti-wokeness turn into a white van movement. Morgan’s opening monologue, was —if you can imagine it — like an even camper version of Tucker Carlson. I enjoyed watching him go off, but I also enjoy watching drunks fight outside pubs sometimes. Guilty pleasures!
Morgan ragged on: vegans, snowflakes, cancel crusaders, internet excavators, trans trojans, and hypocrite celebrities. Here were the ideas of Chuck Palahniuk, Camille Paglia, Germaine Greer, Andrew Sullivan, Francis Fukuyama, Jonathan Haidt, Angela Nagle, and all the others, stripped for their simplest parts, put through a graphics machine, and yelled at an expensive camera.
In America, the ‘woke’ have most of the publishing industry, the universities, the HR departments, the legal system, the major television networks, the film and television studios, and that terrible Sex and The City spin-off.
The ‘anti-woke’ have Florida, Substack, and now, Piers Morgan. Who’s going to win?
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SubscribeLittle hard on Tucker, don’t you think? I mean, when Carlson swings the haymaker, it’s because he believes it needs swinging. Morgan just goes around looking for things to be controversial about.
Morgan always seems to be sulking and resenting. Tucker on the other Hand has always a twinkle in his eyes. Piers is no Tucker…
“Anti-wokeness turned into a white van movement”. That’s nice.
Though hard to disagree with much of the introductory rant, it feels like Morgan is actually a poorer TV performer unbound than when tethered. No accident that his shouty husband/sensible wife act with Susannah Reid on GMB was such a ratings success. I imagine she allowed herself a modest smirk of satisfaction last night.
Tucker Carlson is actually an intelligent, witty guy who genuinely appears to be well respected. Morgan is a dishonest grifter who’ll say anything that garners attention or makes him money. Awful comparison.
We live in a world of clichés and I am sick of it. The bluster of activist movements and their cliché arguments that grossly simplify everything and reduce it to black and white are just boring. The fact that the media and social media fall for it is just a sign of how shallow the consumers of these products or services are. However, I think there are enough of us who don’t subscribe to this ideology or “low-resolution thinking”. And so many people just sit on the fence, too scared to fight back and end up complicit in the further spread of this nonsense. Typical and unfortunately also a bit clichéd.
We’ll, I’ve got Florida and Substack, but I’ll give Morgan a good leaving alone.
“He looks bloated and serene, like an emperor enjoying a golden afternoon on Capri.”
Two thumbs up for that simile alone.
“In America, the ‘woke’ have most of the publishing industry, the universities, the HR departments, the legal system, the major television networks, the film and television studios, and that terrible Sex and The City spin-off.
“The ‘anti-woke’ have Florida, Substack, and now, Piers Morgan. Who’s going to win?”
Sad but true. Oh, you’re a sharp-witted devil, Will Lloyd.
Sad but not quite true. They also have most of the people. It’s just that the publishing industry, the universities, the HR departments, the legal system, the major television networks, the film and television studios do everything in their considerable power to make us believe otherwise.
It is worth noting that over half of the states have adopted some or all of Florida’s positions the past couple years. DeSantis, like Trump, understands how media controversy can help him get out his message. I say that as a compliment to him. Other States avoided lockdowns, but because DeSantis enjoyed being the media’s bad guy, we got to see the success Florida had while avoiding policies that All The Best People assured us were necessary. Other governors adopted similar policies quietly, and while it was still good for their states, it failed to highlight just how flawed the “scientific” guidance was. I used scare quotes only plenty of doctors and researchers were silenced for not following the official line which is the opposite of the scientific method. But DeSantis did a great service, and the task message here is to remember that media controversy is not necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes it is just the proper platform to show the media’s own flaws
Whilst I’m completely with the anti-woke sentiment, I find Mr Morgan to be an obnoxious bloviator. I’ve recorded the first two episodes because I want to hear what Trump has to say but that’s it for me. Back to GB News for the vastly superior interviewers/ commentators like Mark Steyn, Farage and the increasingly interesting Tom Harwood and Arlene Foster.
When will politicians realise that the Piers Morgan- Jeremy Clarkson view is actually that of the vast majority of the UK voter base, an irony as the two loath each other. Clarkson in The House of Lords, and Morgan in a ‘Mandleson’ role would give any party a landslide majority…. the mainstream woke meeja are the only opposition, and would be minced by these two…
Tucker Carlson is far and away the most intelligent man on television.
Morgan’s previous interviewing style (from the limited exposure I’ve had) was of the ‘psychological’, prurient “Tell me how much you’ve suffered.” kind. This probably won’t work well with Trump, I’d have thought.