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Worst Opinion of the Week: As a White Man, I'm Great at Spotting Racism!

Two rich white men given centre-stage to lecture people of colour on how they should feel about prejudice? Sure!
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by NEO
Laurence Fox and Piers Morgan
Screengrab from BBC and ITV
Welcome to Worst Hot Take of the Week – a column in which @MULLET_FAN_NEO crowns the wildest hot take of the week.

Story: Piers Morgan and Laurence Fox relentlessly weighing in on the British press vs. Meghan Markle debate.

Reasonable take: I don’t think two rich white men should be given centre-stage to lecture POC on how they should feel about experiencing racism.

Brain rot: Actually, the only racism I see in the UK is me being called a fat, white gammon online – Piers Morgan.

Over the past week Piers Morgan has spent his breakfasts on Good Morning Britain arguing that the British tabloid treatment of Meghan Markle has not been “racially derogatory” and that it is he who is the victim of real ethnic bigotry because he gets called a “fat, white gammon” frequently on social media.

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Whilst ranting on GMB, Morgan said: “I don’t see racism in the coverage and when people say to me the press has been racist and the wider public has been racist, I think it’s grotesquely unfair to smear everyone in that way without producing tangible evidence which says this is racist.”

Yet the British public once again find themselves left at the mercy of his co-host Susanna Reid to debunk his statement: “The trouble is, Piers, that when the women of colour have produced tangible evidence, you dismiss it. You’re not accepting the experience of women of colour who have complained about it.”

We are then pitifully condemned to endure one of Piers’ most insincere proclamations of all-time: “I have campaigned against racism my entire broadcasting life.” Unfortunately, that seemingly has amounted to arguing against its literal existence. Piers is just one in a long list of sanctimonious custard-brained British media cunts whose egos have been inflated to caucasian Nelson Mandela status just because they did an egg and spoon with Pudsey and some black children from Lewisham in 1997.

Piers Morgan’s rhetoric was mirrored by Lewis actor Laurence Fox, who appeared as a guest on Question Time on Thursday night to argue that Meghan Markle’s decision to step back from royal life wasn’t down to racism and that accusations of racial bias in our press were “starting to get boring”.

An audience member questioned Fox on his remarks, saying: "What worries me about your comment is you are a white privileged male who has never experienced…” Fox interjected with “Oh God!” before lowering his head in exasperation and declaring “I can't help what I am. I was born like this. It's an immutable characteristic. So to call me a white privileged male is to be racist. You're being racist."

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After political commentator Dr. Shola Mos-Shogbamimu appeared on Good Morning Britain earlier this week to debate the UK press treatment of the Duchess of Sussex, Piers Morgan was asked again by his co-host Reid if he thinks Mos-Shogbamimu “has more experience of racism than you do as a white man”.

His response incomprehensibly amounted to “well possibly”, before continuing: “Although frankly, on social media, I get called a fat, white, gammon all day long. That is also racist. If you’re called – by a black person on Twitter – a fat, white gammon, they’re being racist too.”

We’ve all unfortunately ended up at a gastros at different points in our lives and encountered a million different incarnations of Piers Morgan and Laurence Fox half-cut on Bombardier, punishing whatever poor cunt has the misfortune to be in their proximity with their knackered views. What’s most perplexing is why media executives think these are exactly the sort of people we simply must give a bigger voice to.

Why the fuck are the patron saints of gobshites constantly given a national soapbox to remonstrate their nonsensical opinions inescapably from dusk till dawn into the living rooms of the British public that it’s the straight, rich, white, middle-class English like themselves that are the victims of societal racism and that the experiences of POC are codswallop?

What’s even more bizarre is that people like Fox and Morgan find the idea of acknowledging racism more emasculating than spending their days appearing on national TV dissecting Royal family tittle-tattle and the private lives of two people they don’t personally know in such a frenzied state that you can’t if they’re going to number three in their kecks or have an aneurysm. I promise you, it’s not “gay” to think racism is real, you weird, fragile freaks.

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It’s even got to the point where InfluencHers, a group of 100 black women from the media, publishing, law, health and education, are demanding a boycott of Good Morning Britain due to Piers Morgan’s consistent “bullying” of guests on the show.

In another “how sad can one man get” turn, Morgan tweeted that there were “happier times” when Meghan Markle “first slid into my DMs” as he posted a screenshot of a friendly message he received off Markle in 2015 that read: “Well hello there – thanks for the follow. Big fan of yours!” Understandably he took this well-meaning, genial interaction from a woman, creepily turned it on its head, and now commits unhinged amounts of time deriding her on national TV and in his newspaper column for daring not to put up with an unrepentant smear campaign against her by British press. Extremely normal!

We’ve only just entered into 2020 and somehow we’ve all found ourselves defending members of the Royal family. I’ve got a feeling this decade is going to give us all an incredible shoeing.

@MULLET_FAN_NEO