Was/Is Morrissey Racist?

While it might be easy to accuse a company of racism if it failed to employ people because of their racial origin, and while we might call someone a racist if they expressed the opinion that Chinese were 'inferior', it's difficult to say that a pop song is similar to an employment policy or a personal opinion.

A pop song usually has all the ambiguity of any work of art, and it was this ambiguity that Morrissey had every right to preserve by maintaining his silence in the face of the NME's inquisition.

Mr Morrissey employed characters. Some were Bengali. (This was already more than most songwriters did, and probably laudable). Mr Morrissey employed narrators to tell his stories. His narrators had a position within the song. They were perhaps characters, perhaps proxies for the author. As usual with art, we will never know. The songs contained voices which said things like 'Life is difficult enough when you belong here' or 'Three against one, that can't be fair'. If these were statements made in a fist fight, we would judge them according to context. In a song, we cannot. They are just hanging there: provocative, yes, racist, no.

There's an interesting parallel with an exhibition held in the early 90s by Pruitt and Early called The Black Show. They collected together artifacts of 'blackness'. They made no earnest Adrian Piper-like statements of condemnation, just presented these stereotypes and totems without comment. They were hounded out of the art world in the ensuing controversy. It took Rob Pruitt about eight years to be accepted once again as a serious artist. He now paints pandas.

Keeping our pantomime metaphor, the racism episode was when Morrissey became the pantomime villain and got hissed for reasons as arbitrary as those for which he was applauded when he was the 'famous international playboy' in role as the 'November monster' (one fiction playing another).

The reasons for the press's change in attitude may be many -- sympathy with Marr, a preference for Rough Trade over EMI, a sense of boredom with Morrissey's domination of the music press, an effort to clear the decks for the 90s, the fact that many journalists had been converted by the acid house revolution to the dance music Morrissey so despised, and even, I would suggest, some homophobia, since Morrissey's actual interest in these songs about skinheads and Bengalis may well come from a sexual interest in both (cf Hanif Kureshi's 'My Beautiful Launderette', which I think we can assume kindled M's interest quite a bit, and shows a skin overcoming prejudice by developing a crush on one of his former victims).

Subject: Re: NME disappearing up its own PR [ Previous Message ] Posted By Andrew Collins on Thu Jul 26 15:41:34 BST 2001:

I never said the Morrissey witch-hunt issue was real journalism, Jon. I said it was "real" journalism, ie. closer to journalism than the shit we usually did. I was at Madstock and the crowd were pretty dodgy, some of them - fat, middle-aged skins who looked like they hadn't come out of their North London pub since Madness's heyday. Whether Moz is/was a racist or not was less important than the fact that he was flirting with far right imagery - like a cultural tourist - and not going on record about his reasons, or his real feelings. He could have stopped that cover story with one statement. He chose to remain enigmatic and distant, compounding his error. There was an artificial excitement in the office over those two days (we dropped Kylie from the cover for Moz you know!) At first, as features editor, I refused to get involved, but I was ordered by my boss into the big emergency staff meeting, and once the decision was made, it was up to the senior staff (me, Danny Kelly and Stuart Maconie) to get the copy done, along with an excellent piece by Dele Fadele who is black and could therefore offer a perspective none of us NME white boys could. (Dele was furious about Moz's actions and needed no coercion to write.) All I did was compile Morrissey's faux-racist quotes from every interview he'd ever done, and collate the lyrics. My own personal opinion never appeared, but I was part of the staff and stood by the issue. It asked questions of an increasingly remote but still hugely influential artist who refused to answer them. There are very few issues of NME from that period that anybody remembers let alone still talks about. We did our job.

Then Stuart and I left and "reclaimed" the Union Jack for the Select British issue.

He once WAS that ugly failed adolescent, wasn't he? Perhaps not exactly as described in HSIN, but certainly something similar.

So why not a possibility that the right-wing persona could be *him*.

Actually, now I come to think of it, the song that is most dubious or problematic is 'We'll Let You Know': 'we are the last truly British people you will ever (never want to) know'. It's ambivalent about a kind of rump of Englishness, implying that all that is left are the hateful aspects of English crowd culture. I think it's troublesome nature is kind of interesting, really - much more so than more ideologically clearcut representations.

hmm i don't think i put that very well: i am *so* on deadline and not supposed to be reading ILM

Morrissey, well-known for severing ties with friends over real or imaginary slights, had already decided to cut the NME dead, probably because of editor Danny Kelly's undisguised partisanship for Johnny Marr. Morrissey's failure to speak to them (although, as noted above, he continued speaking volubly to people like Les Inrockuptibles in France) was as big a blow to the NME circa 1990 as it would have been for Oasis to cut them dead in 1997. They could have said lamely 'The biggest star in the music firmament will no longer talk to us.' Instead, they said 'The biggest star in the music firmament is, er, a racist! Down with him! Long live, er, Kingmaker and, er, The Wonder Stuff!'

The most intriguing thing about "We'll Let You Know" for me was the Battle of Hastings / Bayeux Tapestry (what it made *me* think of, anyway, or maybe an old regional TV thing about same) sequence of sounds in the middle of the song: his most self-conscious use of atmospherics rather than lyrics to evoke a certain atmosphere, his equivalent of the Luke Haines / Winchester Cathedral Choir version of "In The Bleak Midwinter". I'm not sure whether I think that bit of "We'll Let You Know" was better and more subtle than the vocal sections of the song, or just pathetically crude attempts to establish certain cultural associations. Put another way, I really can't work out my position on "We'll Let You Know" generally, even after all this time, which you could say is quite possibly what Morrissey intended.

The book "Sounds English" that Mike mentions looks interesting: any details?

Morrissey's mistake was that his flirtation with the far right seemed largely a matter of aesthetics, and a matter of fashion. One could accuse of him "racism" not insofar as there's much evidence that he actually holds such beliefs, but insofar his willingness to flirt with them the way 90s bands flirted with trip-hop -- as if he were completely oblivious to how very important such issues were, and how his actions could very well make it that much more likely for thousands of Asian kids to get beaten bloody -- well, this is not a fine thing to do and not a fine thing to be glib or silent about, because it matters. The artist's God complex is that he is free to pick and choose signifiers from the air and invest them only with whatever meaning he thinks they have to him -- but then it ceases to be art, which is about communication, and becomes either impenetrable solipsism or drunken raving. Momus, you should not give artists a free pass on this any more than you should give it to bank managers or cab drivers: this "don't draw real-world conclusions from anything" is a route to making art either meaningless or completely dull.

anyway, if moz didn't want to play MassKult headgamez with stardom and slebrity, why sign to emi at all? it's a waste of global corporate outreach and he = a ToTaL LaYMuR as a result (cf dave q's only-too exact crit of the actual nme editorial gameplan: this shd have been a manipulative symbol-war of titans, using every field of media; instead SPM went uber-indie on everyone and (implicitly) made it just abt the music maaan... basically nme offered him the chance to be bowie and he fucked out)

"At the heat of the racist debate, the former NME editor Steve Sutherland wondered if Morrissey's alleged racism "might be a gay thing". "

I wonder if that quote is true?

Every single person I knew growing up who was a Smiths fan was Asian (mostly of Chinese descent, over here). I haven't heard any of the Smith's songs in question, but from their titles I'm guessing they portray the same beautiful losers as all the other Smiths' songs I have heard. Anyway, it is impossible for me to fathom that some paki-bashing yob could have been inspired by Morrissey (of all people!) Or was England in the 80's really like this?

Kris, I think you're entirely right -- particularly w/r/t fans and what Smiths fandom actually "meant" in the public sphere. I, anyway, was at no point bothered in any deep sense by listening to the Smiths / Morrissey, and never imagined that Morrissey's flirtations with near-racist symbols actually reflected near-racist ideology on his own part. It did, however, make me like him a lot less as time went on: it is one thing to traffic in such symbols in the process of making a relevant artistic statement, but to toy mutely with them for no massive purpose strikes me as dumb and glib and something of a mockery of how very real and threatening and Actually Quite Serious such symbols are. It made Morrissey look like a decent artist who really needed to stick with his own neuroses and keep his nose out of cultural politics for fear of hugely embarrassing himself.

I wrote in something a while ago that "conservatism" can be a very lovely thing in pop music, when it is only aesthetic and the actual workings of the world are not at stake -- thus Morrissey's paens to vanishing Anglicisms never struck me as actually reactionary. But as he toed lines between aesthetics and cold hard reality he raised the possibility that those paens weren't purely aesthetic or personal/emotional, and I think it made him look both silly and stupid, or in any case completely unaware that Symbols Mean Something beyond what they mean in the very scenic midscape of Stephen Patrick Morrissey.

I do agree that looking at lyrics is unhelpful. "National Front Disco" is loaded with sarcasm from the very title, and anyway assigns plenty of threat to the idea: where has our dear boy gone -- oh dear, he has gone bad, and by that time in the man's career you could tell that he recognized the badness but just had an idiosyncratic attraction to it. "Asian Rut" eulogizes the Asian boy, if patronizingly. "Bengali in Platforms" is basically the height of condescension and exhibits really iffy word choice with the "belong," but it seems less virulent than just sort of solipsistic and dumb, i.e. Morrissey is so blindly English that he never considers that life can be way harder elsewhere even if you do "belong" there, and basically just demonstrates his inability to think properly about anything that doesn't slot nicely into his very English little world.

I'm almost positive that is true, because I recall reading something very similar to this in the NME at the time....iirc Sutherland was editing the letters page and was speculating about it.

You may or may not have noticed that there is a diversity of thought and opinion on this thread.

although i had, until recently at least, been under the misapprehension that pseudo-intellectual meant someone who talked about 'intellectual' ideas which you didn't like, and the political- correctness was a label in use by right wingers to criticise language or actions they didn't like! but then, i'm daft like that!

Tell me about the new Rush album, justine (or anyone). Any good? Do the lyrics reflect any of Neil's recent tragic experiences?

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha. I'm sorry. I'll stop crying in a second. Hold on. One more second. Hehe. Okay.

You're right. WE ARE ALL POORER. Do you think Morrissey might have been censoring himself ALL along and that he has some GOOD songs somewhere he's been HIDING from everyone?

"[Morrissey's] an intelligent person who will not allow his thoughts to be policed by pseudo-intellectual politically correct sheep and bullies."

"Morrissey is probably sub conciously censoring his own lyrics now."

?

Pseudo-intellectual: something people call others when they're unwilling or unable to form a proper rejoinder to a well-developed and perfectly coherent argument that they happen to disagree with.

Politically correct: term people use when invoking ridiculous belief that they're allowed to say anything they want and others aren't allowed to point out that what they've said may well be idiotic or despicable.

I mean, that's what, four posts on this thread, and you haven't actually addressed the question, which is what we can glean about Morrissey's actual beliefs on these issues. Your only argument thus far has been that people should have zippers over their mouths and brains and not be allowed to have opinions about anything anyone else has said.

a.) Moz talks about this stuff. b.) ILM: "That stuff seemed sort of racist. Do you think maybe Moz is sort of racist?" c.) ILM talks about this stuff. d.) Jack: "I have nothing to say about this stuff apart from noting that it's wrong of you to talk about this stuff."

Thus the only one I see "policing" discourse (as opposed to engaging in it) = Jack, no?

In this sense you're doing precisely what I noted about Moz, above (as Nitsuh): buying into this notion that because someone is an artist their discourse is mystic and above the comprehension, criticism, or discussion of the listeners. But signifiers signify actual things, and none of us is above being responsible for what we choose to signify. This is my complaint with Moz: not that he is a racist (I don't necessarily believe that he is) but that he's naive or solipsistic enough to toy with meaningful, significant words and imagery as if they mean nothing, as if they're meaningless aesthetic costumes to be donned and removed without responsibility. In this sense he's no better than those people who think it's funny to put swastikas on things to "stir people us" -- racist, maybe not, but ignorant and ahistorical enough to miss the fact that speech and symbols have meanings and effects, and that people get stirred up because they recognize those meanings and care about them. Even when it's just an innocent stumble -- I honestly don't think Rush, for example, had much of an idea of the intellectual baggage that comes with Rand -- it's there: whether you realize it or not, you're saying something that a lot of people disagree with, and I think it's not only valid but admirable for them to argue against it. If you're going to say things, you have to be prepared for people to say that you're saying stupid things: freedom of speech does not imply freedom from criticism.

i.) My reference to swastikas was not meant as a reference to that "controversial" art exhibit in New York: knowing little about the actual pieces included, I'm in no position to say whether they used the Nazi imagery in a meaningful or in a destructive manner. (It sounded from the press like it was used reasonably topically, but some of the artists overstretched their statements in the way one would expect: i.e., they cheapened the reality of Nazism in roughly the same way that calling anyone you don't like a Nazi cheapens the reality of Nazism.)

ii.) That argument wasn't intended to lay waste to postmodernism so much as a really awful bastardized thinking that might stem from complete misunderstandings of postmodernism. It's always possible to recontextualize reprehensible signifiers in ways that are aware of their original weight, ways that comment on that original weight, and ways that use that weight to noble purpose. What irks me is when artists think their mere appropriation of such symbols completely strips them of that weight, thereby relieving the artist of any duty to deal with it. Such people are like those kids who wave guns in their friends' faces and say "don't worry, it's unloaded" right before the shot fires.

If you don't like 'glib', Jack, you might be better to stay away from terms like 'politically correct', and maybe engage with the discussion?

If I were to speculate on ways in which critical feedback may have been damaging to Morrissey's art I would probably say that vast quantities of unjustified fawning have wrought far more havoc than these discussions.

Actually not anyone on this thread has been demonizing: I don't see a single post arguing that Morrissey is a bona- fide "racist" as we typically use the term.

The talk of "taboos" is both pointless and contradictory: we now have two whole posters simultaneously arguing that (a) it's acceptable for an artist to attempt to challenge taboo X but then (b) we should avoid actually being challenged by taboo X. This gets particularly nasty with regard to racism, insofar as Sue's argument ("it's worth asking whether racism is really bad") is always followed by whining about demonization ("but it's unfair of you ask if maybe I'm a racist!") The latter fear of actually being seen as racist answers the original question: evidently you do think it's bad, if you're so appalled at being called one.

The idea that it's inherently noble to challenge any bit of conventional wisdom is probably the biggest strain of stupidity among young music listeners of the latter 20th century.

Did you actually see the exhibit?

When I write my screenplay, this is going into the dialogue.

Irish blood, English heart
This I'm made of
There is no one on earth I'm afraid of
And no regime can buy or sell me

I've been dreaming of a time when
to be English is not to be baneful
to be standing by the flag, not feeling shameful
racist or racial

Irish blood, English heart
this I'm made of
There is no one on earth I'm afraid of
And I will die with both of my hands untied

I've been dreaming of a time when
the English are sick to death
of Labour, and Tories
and spit upon the name Oliver Cromwell
and denounce this royal line that still salute him
and will salute him
FOREVER...

And I'm thinking... hey! what's Oliver Cromwell doing in there?! Shouldn't he be hero to a punka like the Moz? Or is he spitting on Cromwell as one of the instigators of the English Imperial military presence in Ireland? A-a-and, why does he think the 'Royal line' still salute OC?? Or is he using OC as a symbol of what Auden calls "the whole offence / From Luther until now /That has driven a culture mad" (ie the Reformation)??

Or whut?

Now if you excuse me, I have to piss on the grave of Ezra Pound.

I put it to you that this is not the only reason.

I'm betting a pound to a penny you actually meant Enoch Powell....
Sorry you are a fule.

Me too!

Billy Bragg wan's England to reclainm it's own flag
I'd agree except 'the union' actually seems less 'bullying', more benificent

But there you see, I can't even handle the concept in my own psyche, grr! It's a mad disease we have.

"I put it to you that this is not the only reason."

I'll go one further than Ned and put it to you that this is absolute total complete and utter bollocks!

The Smiths formed and started gigging in '82 and released both Hand In Glove and This Charming Man during '83....

• MORRISSEY - Breaks his 12-year silence to speak to the NME. The interview everyone wants to read
• KAYNE (sic) WEST - Is he really the only reason anybody should give a shit about hip-hop?

You can kind of see why he feels a bit more comfortable talking to them these days, don't you?

Having read every post on this thread I can now say that I am thoroughly bored of the controversy about Morrissey (so why am I posting? I dunno. Boredom?)that if someone told me Morrissey was rounding up jews I would find it hard to raise enough energy to be appalled. Which is kind of the problem with the debate. We stop understanding what we're discussing. Racism is a very serious charge to level at someone, especially based on a couple of ambiguous lines in a pop song. The NME should have thought about the fact that this is someone's career and reputation they were playing with.

Also, I don't see why people think an artist is responsible for the way in which people interpret or use their art. Should the Beatles take responsibility for Charles Manson? That would seem odd. Ok, it's more predictable that certain uses of the union flag will appeal to certain groups, but I really don't think that an artist is responsible for that either. Anything you put out could be used as an anthem for a nefarious movement, or taken as support. I don't see how an artist could take responsibility for that - once art is in the public sphere people will make whatever use they wish of it. If I think morrissey speaks to me bacause I'm gay, hispanic, disabled or fascist is really not of his concern. He's responsible for the art as he makes it, and people who buy his albums are responsible for the way they use it.

I dunno, I guess none of that makes sense. I'm sure there's a rational (though probably mistaken) thought in there somewhere...

as per this weeks cover of the NME this story is back : http://true-to-you.net/morrissey_news_071127_01

Interview - Tim Jonze
Words - NME

lololol

tim jonze lololololol

nme lololololol

morrissey lololololol

"Not for publication", eh?

very liberal world of rock'n'roll

lol

besides all the Bowie covering and all, he also was doing "My Insatiable One" by Suhr-uede. Wasn't it you, Momus, who talked about seeing an early show by them and doing nothing but videotaping Justine at chest level?

Fans of hip-hop/R&B have been hunting Morrissey ever since his oh-so-entirely-correct "Hang The DJ" statement with The Smiths back in 1986. Some people have very misguided idea that any dislike of rhythm/dance oriented music is racist.

Burn Geir

But this is a fact. The World would have been a much better place had there never been disco, DJs, or dancing at all for that matter. Morrissey knows this, and that is hard to accept for die-hard-dance-no-brainers.

the World

Q you live in italy now. would you ever consider moving back to Britain ?

A Britain's a terribly negative. And it hammers people down and it pulls you back and it prevents you. Also, with the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England, the more the Britich identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to england and you have no idea where you are !

Q Why does this bother you ?

A It matters because the British identity is very attractive. I grew up into it , and I find it quaint and amusing. But England is a memory now. Other countries have held on to their basic identity, yet it seems to me that England was thrown away

Q isn't immigration enriching the British identity rather than diluting it ?

A It does in a way, and it's nice in its way. But you have to say goodbye to the Britain you once knew.

Q that's just the world changing

A But the change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country. If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.

Geir's right, nobody reps for R&B and rap music as hard as the NME.

Interesting stuff J0hn, didn't know anyone had interviewed Geir

Geir is desperate for a big dust-up, he's graduated to condemning dancing in general - I suspect Mozart wouldn't share his distaste for it but that's neither here nor there

xpost lol

Q you live in Italy, would you ever consider moving back to Norway?
A melody is the the primary element in all great music.

The parts quoted by NME shows some signs of Morrissey being racist, although he needs to visit his old hometown some more, I guess. A land's capital is always more cosmopolitical than the rest of the country, and I am sure Manchester and Liverpool are just as English as most of Germany outside Berlin is still very German.

no dancing? you sound like some sort of puritan. reminds me of the old joke. bible-belt girl goes to parents and tells them about new boyfriend. "what have you done with him?" "nothing, ma, nothing, pa!" "have you danced with him?" "i haven't ma, i haven't pa!" "have you had sex?" "no ma, no pa!" "well, when you do, do it lying down." "why ma, why pa?" "because if you do it standing up, it might lead to dancing!"

http://www.truthmagazine.com/archives/volume9/TM009094.html

"The answer to these questions will show every sincere person that the Christian must not dance."

Geir Qubt

Geir is Sayyid Qutb.

xpost

you put it better

I was about to say that.

shall we dance?

The parts quoted by NME shows some signs of Morrissey being racist, although he needs to visit his old hometown some more, I guess. A land's capital is always more cosmopolitical than the rest of the country, and I am sure Manchester and Liverpool are just as English as most of Germany outside Berlin is still very German.

-- Geir Hongro, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 13:41 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Current percentage of the population of Manchester who are immigrants: 15%.

Or, y'know, 5 times the UK average. Good work Geir.

2. "Dancing its good exercise." Is that really why you dance? Boys may dance with other boys and get the same exercise. Plan a "boys with boys" dance for "exercise," and see what response you get. You will see the "basic spell" of the dance to be the sex impulse and its "unchaste handling of males and females."

3. "I just enjoy the rhythm of the music; I've got rhythm in my bones." I do not object to persons enjoying good music. But girls could dance with girls and enjoy the music just as much.

Morrissey's just old and nostalgic. It would be a half-hearted racist who described immigration as 'nice in its way'. I'm annoyed at Morrissey for thinking Knightsbridge is typical England, when his best work stands up for the provinces that everyone else ignores. Manchester's still pretty obviously Mancunian, anyway.

I think Ismael's OTM - "immigration" here is just another version of "they're tearing down the buildings I loved," although the latter is something you can actually have a legitimate gripe about because the new building are so fuckin ugly

also, a writer/character like Morrissey should actually thank anything that gives him the opportunity to feel wistful

Is there a transcript of this piece anywhere? Don't make me have to pick up the NME in the shop and not buy it in order to find out.

The World would have been a much better place had there never been disco, DJs, or dancing at all for that matter.

:(

A land's capital is always more cosmopolitical than the rest of the country, and I am sure Manchester and Liverpool are just as English as most of Germany outside Berlin is still very German.

-- Geir Hongro, Wednesday, November 28, 2007 1:41 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

morrissey's parents were immigrants.

Interview - Tim Jonze
Words - NME

This is a classy move.

i'm just gonna throw this out there.

jonze is not his real surname.

he has stolen a fake surname from spike jonze.

is that's what happened here?

Good back story to this regarding NME weaseling.

Some of it here.

http://true-to-you.net/morrissey_news_071127_01

Wow, where did you find that link?

442

That "interview tim jonze/words nme" thing is doing my head in a bit.

I think Britain is a negative place, and it does pull you down and prevent you from getting ahead. It seems weird to conflate this with immigration though, I don't see a connection. If this part of the british identity were to disappear, it would be good, maybe.

Morrissey's words in that excerpt read like the words of a much older guy, it's the way some of my dad's friends (in their early 70's, mainly) talk. It reads like he grew up in the early 1950's or something. He is a v v weird guy, and not in a good way, I think.

This is from the "MOZ FAQ" at http://www.oz.net/~moz/faq/faqlyric.htm
"At the heat of the racist debate, the former NME editor Steve Sutherland wondered if Morrissey's alleged racism "might be a gay thing". "

I wonder if that quote is true?

-- Dickon Edwards, Monday, 4 February 2002 01:00 (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

lol "dick"-on

Also, with the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England, the more the Britich identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to england and you have no idea where you are !

I'm not sure if it's even worth debating statements like this, but according to the official statistics both Germany and Sweden have a bigger percentage of immigrants than the UK, so maybe "national identity" (whatever that means) has little to do with immigrant influx. Unless that identity is built on xenophobic ideas of us against them.

Also, I'm sorta ashamed how low my country places on that list.

lol no-one wants to live in finnland

XXXX(xwhatever)post

I heard the joke like this!

Groom goes to his Rabbi and says: At our wedding we want to have mixed seating, can we have mixed seating?
Rabbi: Absolutely not.
Groom: Well, can we have mixed dancing?
Rabbi: No, no, no.
Groom: Well, my wife really wants to have a special dance. Can me and her dance, and everyone else no mixed dancing?
Rabbi: No.
Groom: Ok. Well, how about sex. We can have sex, right?
Rabbi: Sex? Sex is great. Of course you can have sex.
Groom: How about anal?
Rabbi: Anal? Sure. Anal is great.
Groom: How about doggystyle?
Rabbi: Doggystyle? Sure, sure. Definitely.
Groom: How about up against the wall?
Rabbi: Absolutely not. Might lead to dancing.

<i>Q that's just the world changing

A But the change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country. If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent. You'll hear every accent under the sun apart from the British accent.</i>

^^^^ Rick Brookes fan!

Fuck bbcode.

when people who aren't German or Swedish talk about the ongoing preservation of German or Swedish cultural identity, what they tend to actually mean is "I have no idea what the fuck I am talking about and when I go to Germany my eyes are so glazed over with romance that I don't notice all the McDonaldses littering the hillsides"

good old germany with its centuries-old territorial and political continuity.

never a problem with immigants in Germania

Also, these sort of "I have nothing against people from different countries, but cultures shouldn't mix" statements are exactly the same rhetoric as with most racist European politicians and parties. The idea of biologically inferior "races" has become generally passe, but often the seemingly more neutral word "culture" has simply replaced the word "race", even though the basic discourse hasn't changed that much.

Yeah, it's like saying "It's not you, it's your kind."

I love that Geir can traipse in, drop a ludicrous bomb that everyone is already beyond familiar with, and traipse back out, and ILM will still tie itself into a knot over it. It's like watching Itzhak Perleman play a concerto.

I have nothing against people who start their sentences with "I have nothing against..." only to follow with a "but" + complete contradiction, but I hate them.

I once said, "Reggae is vile", did I? Well, several tongue-in-cheek things were said in those days, which, when placed in the cold print, lost their humorous quality. 'Swan Lake', by the Cats, along with 'Double Barrel' and 'Young, Gifted and Black', were staple teenage necessities to me.

Anyway, annoying the NME always has value

Morrissey interview in Word, 2003

OMG MORRISSEY IS SO CLEVER

thats not the point. i mean, it seems that if a hugely influential and intellectually legitimate icon like Morrissey says anything that seems even remotely controversial, the (british) press will have its way with it. thats what the press is there for.

granted, im an American, so i may be missing some of the point here.

You think it's more the job of the press to accentuate the positives of celebrities, rather than point out they're big racists?

I love that Geir can traipse in, drop a ludicrous bomb that everyone is already beyond familiar with, and traipse back out, and ILM will still tie itself into a knot over it. It's like watching Itzhak Perleman play a concerto.

annoying ILM always has value

You think it's more the job of the press to accentuate the positives of celebrities, rather than point out they're big racists?

Is that what you think has happened here?

no, its the job of the press to do both.

Point out the positives of big racist celebrities?

YES

It's the job of the press to sell papers. How are NME's circulation figures?

NME's not about circulation figures, it's about BRANDS.

Point out the positives of big racist celebrities?

-- Matt DC, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 15:52 (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

YES

-- HI DERE, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 15:53 (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

popjustice.jpg

xpost

Exactly, and if you don't think the reporter creamed himself when Moz took the bait on those questions...

i have my own interpretation of what Moz is trying to say, but its just that: an interpretation, based partly on his interviews/lyrics and on my own feelings on the matter. if you take any of it too seriously then you are probably the type that thinks Hilary Clinton is a strong woman and an honest leader

Head...hurts...

Or maybe I'm from an immigrant family and fed up with my people being cast as villains by douchebag bourgie fucks pining for the bleached populace of their prole childhood?

xp

I think racist speech shoud be taken seriously, because it can and often does have serious consequences for actual real people.

Racism: can have IRL consequences

OK, before we go down a US posters-style RACE~! thread here, I don't think this is a _race_ issue per se, it's more a straight-up bigotry issue: Morrissey is hating on Polish and Kosovan dudes just as much as he is Ghanians and Bangladeshis here.

My point was, that even if you say "Oh, he's just annoying NME...", that doesn't change the fact that some people reading his statements probably won't see them like that, and instead they might think, "Hell yeah, he's right!".

(x-post)

I've read the exchange in question now and there are several options:

a) Morrissey is racist
b) Morrissey is a paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic prick
c) Morrissey has been away from the UK so long he's failed to notice the conflation of ideas between himself and the paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic pricks
d) Morrissey is actually suffering from a Momusesque fetishisation of other cultures because if you walk down Oxford Street or through the centre of Slough or Bradford or Chipping Sodbury there is no way you could think you were in any other country in the world
e) Morrissey is consciously tapping into a fear of modern black/Asian music and culture that still exists among yer white UK indie fan, even some of those who think they are nice fluffy and liberal
f) Morrissey is an astonishingly naive fuckwit to the power of 500 for thinking for one minute he can get away with saying things like that in NME of all places
g) Morrissey is trolling the NME

None of the above reflect particularly well upon him, really.

Anyway, well done Conor McNicholas, you guarantee this issue will sell a shedload of copies and you're not obliged to give Morrissey's next mediocre release a positive review. 10/10

I think F is the most likely. Morrissey's biggest problem has always been that he's about 1/3 as smart as he actually think's he is, both in terms of "book smarts" and "street smarts".

xpost

ugh. i don't know what to say. if you think anyone is pushed over the line and becomes a Neo-Nazi after reading an interview with an Oscar Wilde fan in NME, um...

i believe in this little thing called "personal responsibility". people don't seem to care about it too much these days, they seem to think that video games and pop stars control the minds of the children from secret lairs

http://www.nndb.com/people/914/000047773/jimmy-the-greek.jpg

club morrissey not seals

Now I'm fully aware I'm giving NME too much credit here but revered and still influential indie icon starts spouting crap that is largely identical to what you'd read in the comments section of the Express and Mail, comments that would be anathema to the editorial team themselves. You can either let it go without comment and look like you're tacitly condoning it OR you can call him out and sell a shedload more copies in the process.

No-brainer really. Although chances are they wouldn't do the same thing to, say, the lead singer of the Klaxons in similar circumstances.

You can either let it go without comment and look like you're tacitly condoning it OR you can call him out and sell a shedload more copies in the process.

Rumour is, they tried to do both.

ie, shat themselves when they saw what Morrissey had said for fear of what it would do to their relationship with Polydor and tried to get him to retract it.

a) Morrissey is racist No.
b) Morrissey is a paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic prick Unlikely
c) Morrissey has been away from the UK so long he's failed to notice the conflation of ideas between himself and the paranoid Daily Mail reading xenophobic pricks Well, leaving the Daily Mail out of it (covered by option 2), it's too easy to get the 'impression' that the UK is being taken over by the people who are getting news coverage. Muslim terrorists and Jade Goody. Also, Kensington is awash with foreign people who are spending a ton of money in Harrods and/or HarvNix then going home, wherever that might be. That's not the whole of london, or anywhere else.
d) Morrissey is actually suffering from a Momusesque fetishisation of other cultures because if you walk down Oxford Street or through the centre of Slough or Bradford or Chipping Sodbury there is no way you could think you were in any other country in the world Oh yeah, I just said this sort of.
e) Morrissey is consciously tapping into a fear of modern black/Asian music and culture that still exists among yer white UK indie fan, even some of those who think they are nice fluffy and liberal Moz has never tapped into anything, he unwittingly got tapped into by those white UK indie fuxxors who saw something of themselves in him, but actually were nothing like him at all.
f) Morrissey is an astonishingly naive fuckwit to the power of 500 for thinking for one minute he can get away with saying things like that in NME of all places I don't think he cares either way, but naive he isnt.
g) Morrissey is trolling the NME like he cares, or wants to feel hated by the NME. As he says, he can't go back to Manchester anymore, so he'll go back to whichever bit of the world he fancies, and not get bothered by the madding crowd he's far from now.

Fans of hip-hop/R&B have been hunting Morrissey ever since his oh-so-entirely-correct "Hang The DJ" statement with The Smiths back in 1986.

Wasn't 'Panic' about noted hip-hop DJ Steve Wright?

I love it when Dom plays the race card.

-- blueski, Friday, July 13, 2007 12:03 PM (4 months ago) Bookmark Link

Quitney, get ready for the Facebook message I'm about to send ya. It's A++++

ok

Okay then Mark,

h) Morrissey is great and does and says nothing wrong at all ever

And by "about", I mean "in an hour".
xp

All English people are racist. Fins too.

h) Dunno, don't care about him much.

i believe in this little thing called "personal responsibility". people don't seem to care about it too much these days, they seem to think that video games and pop stars control the minds of the children from secret lairs

-- swinburningforyou, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 16:12 (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Absolutely.

maybe el moz should take some "personal responsiblity" toward his audience of vulnerable young white guys?

Look, all he's saying is that foreigners are destroying British culture. If some of his fans are foolish enough to believe that and to join or vote for a political party with the same views, that's hardly Morrissey's fault.

Maybe they should have him on at the Oxford Union.

Morrissey just sounds like any unthinking middle-aged expat anywhere. Pining for the childhood home that no longer exists. The racism, if it's there, is tangential rather than fundamental.

Zelda is OTM but that kind of doesn't have anything to do with the paternalistic nightmarishness of "Bengali in Platforms", a song that is 20 years old now.

Morrissey the Martin Amis of Indieland

Gotta love the 'there's too many immigrants here and it's damaging the national identity, so I'm emigrating' rationale. He'd rather live in another country where the national identity remains strong (for better or worse and depending on where you are in relation to that) than live in a country where it's constantly in question. Not actually the behaviour of a typical racist/xenophobe/bigot/whatever. It's too bad that despite inviting scrutiny he doesn't seem able to articulate well the cons of a progressive society that is culturally diverse but not particularly well integrated).

because LA is so racially and culturally homogenous.

Come on, s1ocki; we all watch "The Hills".

Hahahah

Besides, doesn't the interview say he lives in Italy now?

yeah I was talking about Italy

isn't that near LA?

speaking of italy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dH4lWMulZ34

"Oh you live in Venice now?"

x-post: UH

the other point here is that we aren't talking about a Morrissey given editorial to NME regarding his views on race. I repeat, the interviewer asked the questions, and Moz took the bait.

And I'm not saying that Moz is some sort of patsy either. Its just that all of these issues are so charged that the minute they come up people stop listening and start getting out their soap boxes.

You can either let it go without comment and look like you're tacitly condoning it OR you can call him out and sell a shedload more copies in the process.

ugh, its not like it was some resolution on the senate floor. Not having strong feelings about a pop singer's interview does not equal political apathy or facist sympathy.

and Moz isn't a racist. lock thread.

moz IS a racist -- keep thread open.

in your FACE.

Moz IS gay.
Another option!

maybe el moz should take some "personal responsiblity" toward his audience of vulnerable young white guys?

I'm not sure if there is anything resembling a thought here. I could get mad, but then I realize its the internet, where we take being "irreverent" to mean you are intelligent, as long as you don't offend anyone.

Come on, racists don't make music swinburningforyou likes, that'd be stupid.

please don't put me in some absurd situation where I have to list off musicians/writers whose work I enjoy that are racist. thats not what this is about and you know it.

lol u like skrewdriver

Enoch Powell's Funk Allstars

i'd like to hear a morrissey oi record

First of the Hitler Youth to Die

Stormtroopers of the World, Unite and Take Over

how about "The world is full of crashing bores"

As the years pass, "Bengali in Platforms" makes Morrissey sound increasingly pathetic, and the title character seem increasingly cool. "Life is hard enough when you belong here" for poor dear Morrissey, maybe, but it's probably safe to assume the Bengali in question is not a shut-in who lives with his mother* and is scared of sex and gets depressed and nightclubs and whatnot ("LOL indie," etc.) -- he's got nice shoes and has immigrated and is probably pretty happy with how things are going for him.

* Actually okay he might well live with his mother, but not JUST his mother

I.e. he is a bad target for Morrissey to project his own mopiness onto

Also, these sort of "I have nothing against people from different countries, but cultures shouldn't mix" statements are exactly the same rhetoric as with most racist European politicians and parties. The idea of biologically inferior "races" has become generally passe, but often the seemingly more neutral word "culture" has simply replaced the word "race", even though the basic discourse hasn't changed that much.

Would you agree then that people who criticize "Zionists" are really just the new antisemites? They're making it a cultural thing, and not a racial issue now, I guess (those tricksters!).

Same thing with Marxist complaints against Jews/usurers/capitalists. They change the lingo, but the message remains the same! I knew all socialist rhetoric was really a vestige of Dark Ages anti-Antisemitism!

Do you see where your original dismissive attitude leads when applied elsewhere?

he's just jealous

x-post

Morrissey is an old man overromanticising the hovels of his youth and the days where "British Culture" was less fractured and there was a vague sense of "national identity".

If you pick up the NME and read the whole article, rather than take the middle chunk out of context, Morrissey makes several point clear...essentially admitting it's the shock of the relative influx that is intially startling, but that immigration itself is not a bad thing. He is bemoaning the loss of his childhood and his glory days, essentially. The Britain that The Smiths characterised and put on their sleeves, that they claimed sovereignty, no longer exists in Moz's mind.

He's scared of growing old, basically.

Although the guy could've blamed globalisation and capitalism generally to a greater degree. Which was his mistake. But I guess he's some dumb pop singer, not a politician.

You can practically see Conor McFartknocker's semen on the pages.

Apologies for the atrocious grammar of that post, I'm tired and ill and my wee tastes funny.

As the years pass, "Bengali in Platforms" makes Morrissey sound increasingly pathetic, and the title character seem increasingly cool. "Life is hard enough when you belong here" for poor dear Morrissey, maybe, but it's probably safe to assume the Bengali in question is not a shut-in who lives with his mother* and is scared of sex and gets depressed and nightclubs and whatnot ("LOL indie," etc.) -- he's got nice shoes and has immigrated and is probably pretty happy with how things are going for him.

I couldn't agree more.

The Britain that The Smiths characterised and put on their sleeves, that they claimed sovereignty, no longer exists in Moz's mind.

Since I'm not English, I have to claim some ignorance on the subject, but hasn't a big issue in Britan been its "Americanization" over the past few decades? I seem to remember the guy from Massive Attack complaining about it in the Live Forever movie. The point being, is The Smiths' England really still there? (honest question)

it was never there. national identities are figments.

but hasn't a big issue in Britan been its "Americanization" over the past few decades?

No it hasn't. Good work on switching between the terms "England" and "Britain" as well, because they're actually interchangable phrases.

Ugh. I know they aren't. I'm sure you've never made a mistake Dom.

No it hasn't. Good work on switching between the terms "England" and "Britain" as well, because they're actually interchangable phrases.

It hasn't? Americanisation/globalisation had been a big issue in the UK until it won.

Cunga, that Zionism metaphor doesn't make sense at all: most any way you define it, Zionism is itself an ideology that believes in (a) the unmixed maintenance of a certain cultural/ethnic group, and (b) the idea that such a group might "belong" in a particular place or "homeland"

Dom Passantino has literally never made a mistake, and everyone should know that.

I didn't get the zionism thing either, that was a real non-sequitur.

(says the anti-zionist Jew)

Dom Passantino has literally never made a mistake, and everyone should know that.

To be fair the English/British thing has history, and is frequently done as a casual error by people who do know better. It used to be acceptable use too, back in the day.

Dom Passantino is infallible.

Dom Popentino

A useful mix of Morrissey quotes/paraphrases from the NME interview:

"I find racism very silly..it's beyond reason"

"England is not what it was...we've lost so much"

"It's not true that the reason I wouldn't wish to live in England is the immigration explosion"

"The British identity (is/was) very attractive...I grew up into it, and I find it quaint and amusing. But (that) is a memory now"

To the question 'Isn't immigration enriching rather than diluting the British identity?'

"It does in a way, and it's nice in its way. But you have to say goodbye to the Britain that you once knew"

"The change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country"

"I'm not saying it's a terrible thing, i'm saying it's a reality and to many people it's shocking".

"But there's a beauty in the passing
In the passage of time..."

O RLY

The change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country

this is ridiculous

but other than that I have to agree with Dom, these are the words of a virulent racist who must be silenced...

Current percentage of the population of Manchester who are immigrants: 15%.

This is about more than just immigration, really. A country's capital will always attract a lot of multinational company executives, more tourists than most of the rest of the country, lots of diplomats etc etc.

I see the same thing in Oslo too, which to me is a nice thing because I have never been much of a fan of typical Norwegian culture anyway.

too much rhythm, huh

Cunga, that Zionism metaphor doesn't make sense at all: most any way you define it, Zionism is itself an ideology that believes in (a) the unmixed maintenance of a certain cultural/ethnic group, and (b) the idea that such a group might "belong" in a particular place or "homeland"

In the same way people on the Left typically target anti-immigration people for being racists (e.g. using "cultural differences" as an excuse to push over a race), so I've seen countless people on the Right dismiss critics of Zionism and Israel as closet antisemites who are using culture/ideology as an excuse to criticize a race.

"I've got nothing against brown people, I just don't think the current Mexicans coming to America are bringing the same American values that have made this country great, this country is a melting pot, not a cultural salad with different toppings, etc etc."

(The Roald Dahl line) "I've got nothing against the Jews as a people, just the damned Zionists! Aggressive Israel!, etc." (And we all know where his line of thinking eventually went)

In both cases we refuse to look at the individual arguments for whatever the policy issue is, and instead play pseudopsychologist looking for closet "isms."

The change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country

this is ridiculous

-- swinburningforyou, Wednesday, 28 November 2007 22:42 (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Talk us through changes in demographic structure in England over the past couple of generations, you seem to be pretty well versed in English social breakdown.

Obviously, Morrissey is ill-advised in those cases, and I don't think he is factually right either. I've been to both London and Berlin recently, and Berlin is probably even more culturally shaped by Turkish and Croatian immigrants than London is by Pakistani and Indian ones. But there is still a lot of English culture left in London, like there is German culture left in Berlin (and Norwegian culture left in Oslo). And it will always stay that way.

Surely, you may not get that impression in Brixton or on Edgware Road, but there is a lot more to London than that.

(The Roald Dahl line) "I've got nothing against the Jews as a people, just the damned Zionists! Aggressive Israel!, etc." (And we all know where his line of thinking eventually went)

"Pederasts with candy factories! Gigantic produce! BABY-EATING BITCHES!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

immigration and zionism are not interchangeable concepts wtf

But, if he isn't speaking about immigration, isn't it possible that it is Americanization Morrissey is speaking out against?
In which case, the entire hip-hop-thing may also be seen as sort of an Americanization, mind you.

Am I the only one who suspects Geir accidentally left himself logged in on a public computer?

xpost NEVER MIND

hahahahahahahahahaha

And it will always stay that way.

history says otherwise

xpost to Dom

I'm not saying things haven't changed in England, but I just doubt that the change is as radical as it has been in places like Singapore or China, where things seem to be exploding.

And you don't have to be a dick just because you were wrong.

Americanisation/globalisation had been a big issue in the UK until it won.

Americanisation is a big issue everywhere. In fact, Americanisation is probably one of the two main reasons why Al Qaida exists (the other one being Israel).

Geir on a roll

Ok, this is one of those two lots of people shouting at each other threads I guess. They're dull. Enjoy yourselves.

Morrissey is an old man overromanticising the hovels of his youth and the days where "British Culture" was less fractured and there was a vague sense of "national identity".

morrissey was in his youth in the 60s and 70s, i think -- so before all the immigration.

no, sorry, i mean 'during and after' all the immigration.

Enjoy yourselves.

Thanks, don't mind if we do!

Morrissey is an old man overromanticising the hovels of his youth and the days where "British Culture" was less fractured and there was a vague sense of "national identity".

if that knightsbridge comment is anything to go by, he probably doesnt like living here anymore is cos he thinks all the non-white faces in england are ruining ye olde britishness. fair enough, i see nothing wrong with people wanting to preserve traditional britishness, but to him, anyone from somewhere else living here is an immediate threat to that which is the same bollocks argument all the right wingers use. so he can fuck right off. im quite a big morrisey/smiths fan and ive always wondered about the ambiguous tone of bengali in platforms - hes clever nott o come out and say what he means blatantly but it is basically the nice sympathetic face of your casual nationalism.

based on the video clips he plays before his live shows I'm pretty sure Morrissey believes that culture should have remained stagnant after 1965 (except for the New York Dolls)

Morrissey is an old man overromanticising the hovels of his youth and the days where "British Culture" was less fractured and there was a vague sense of "national identity".

well, yeah, and the same goes for most of the bands the nme likes (essentially), but there's a bit of a difference between objecting to what happened in pop music and objecting to, like, immigration -- which predated morrissey's birth (to immigrant parents) anyway.

crosspost

he's not objecting to immigration per se, he's objecting to the perceived specific consequences of immigration in England (or so i suspect).

morrissey was in his youth in the 60s and 70s, i think -- so before all the immigration.

no, sorry, i mean 'during and after' all the immigration.

You think immigration is responsible for the fracturing of the 'British national identity'? I think it's way down the list.

or not even objecting, just lamenting. his examples (quoted) are absurd however and if he had better ones he might get more sympathy/taken more seriously.

"he's not objecting to immigration per se, he's objecting to the perceived specific consequences of immigration in England (or so i suspect)."

i doubt that he cares about the other consequences.

if you end up leaving the country is it because you care or because you don't care?

You think immigration is responsible for the fracturing of the 'British national identity'? I think it's way down the list.

-- Mister Craig, Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:41 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I think this is a fair point because Morrissey's not attributing any of this fracturing of British national identity to "non-English accents". Oh wait.

I have no idea if he's a racist or not - but he did the smart thing in getting out of England. It's a shithole full of angry, repressed, frustrated, alcoholic, ill-educated people crammed on to part of a tiny island. Give me the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, or Scotland any day.

you've lived in all of these countries?

" ... With the issue of immigration, it's very difficult because although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are... If you walk through Knightsbridge you'll hear every accent apart from an English accent."

I have no idea if he's a racist or not - but he did the smart thing in getting out of England. It's a shithole full of angry, repressed, frustrated, alcoholic, ill-educated people crammed on to part of a tiny island. Give me the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, or Scotland any day.

-- Emily S., Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:54 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^this is true except Americans, Australians, and Brazilians are all awful people

Possibly not as bad as the English though, apart from the Australians

And Brazilian couriers

You think immigration is responsible for the fracturing of the 'British national identity'? I think it's way down the list.

-- Mister Craig, Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:41 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

I think this is a fair point because Morrissey's not attributing any of this fracturing of British national identity to "non-English accents". Oh wait.

-- Dom Passantino, Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:48 (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

If you view the post in the context it was intended, to reject a false assumption in the comment I was responding to, i.e.

morrissey was in his youth in the 60s and 70s, i think -- so before all the immigration.

no, sorry, i mean 'during and after' all the immigration.

and refer to Morrissey's comments

"It's not true that the reason I wouldn't wish to live in England is the immigration explosion"

"The British identity (is/was) very attractive...I grew up into it, and I find it quaint and amusing. But (that) is a memory now"

To the question 'Isn't immigration enriching rather than diluting the British identity?'

"It does in a way, and it's nice in its way. But you have to say goodbye to the Britain that you once knew"

Then you might get a broader scope on his views. If you want.

And don't you think the *perceived* proliferation of non-English speakers *affects* the British national identity in some way?

Basically I think Morrissey is saying he misses a romanticised post-war Britain that was essentially fictional anyway, and that the modern world is increasingly unrecognisable to him.

Is he a racist for thinking that it's possible to have an overgenerous immigration policy?

Shit, that needed indents.

having thought about this for an hour or two, I think I need to rephrase what I said...

Morrissey's love of nation is much closer to a sort of High Romanticism than it is any sort of patriotism. I think thats why things like "Bengali In Platforms" have never really bothered me: many writers (of any sort, song or otherwise) are in love with things that never really existed. Thats why it seems so insane to me that anyone could mistake the comments of a (great) pop singer/lyricist for the comments of a member of the National Front.

"He's wearing rose-colored glasses instead of swastikas, therefore it's uncriticizable."

lol swinburning its pretty easy to mistake the comments of someone who "is in love with a thing that never really existed" based on a romantic concept of people- or nationhood with a member of the national front because, uh, the national front is all about the romanticization of a people or nation that never really existed in the way they think of it.

see: fascism.

Hey, this all worked for Eric Clapton, didn't it?

Also, I think Dom is jealous that Morrissey has zinged the NME about ten million times and he never will.

I have no idea if he's a racist or not - but he did the smart thing in getting out of England. It's a shithole full of angry, repressed, frustrated, alcoholic, ill-educated people crammed on to part of a tiny island. Give me the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, or Scotland any day.

-- Emily S., Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:54 (8 hours ago) Link

now this i can get behind, except the last sentence.

he's not objecting to immigration per se, he's objecting to the perceived specific consequences of immigration in England (or so i suspect).

-- blueski, Thursday, November 29, 2007 12:41 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Link

eh?

Next year on ILM: Morrissey releases album of Prussian Blue covers. "Clearly ironic/whimsical/nah nah not listening" claim ILMers.

Prussian Blue are just nostalgic for an era when Jews _were_ in gas chambers, they're not saying that they'd like to go back to that time. God, listen to the lyrics in context.

Prussian Blue are just trolling black people duh.

England is a memory now. Other countries have held on to their basic identity, yet it seems to me that England was thrown away

http://images.scotsman.com/2002/05/05/0505bnpb.jpg

London Bee Enn Pea head in "gay porn film" hilarity

Sheila take a, sheila take a bow
Throw your homework onto the fire
Come out and find the one that you love
Come out and find the one you love

http://ict.org.il/var/119/52807-Nazi_Book_Burning.jpg

Man, the only reason to get involved with the BNP is for the whole D/S scene.

said Morrissey exclusively in the NME this week.

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/archives/mitfords.jpg

Some girls are bigger than others

I'd let the Mitford sisters kristal my nacht any time they want, hey guyz?

Dood, it's that whole Posh Women Be Dirty thang again.

We should have a poll on which other celebrities could come out with "I hate immigration" and have ILMers falling over themselves to defend him.

My vote = Kylie.

Burial

paris hilton

oh, wait.

cheryl cole

oh, wait

That dude from Savage Garden

Maybe more of a Poptimists thing, that.

I feel a Pole coming on.

Roald Dahl S/D

Thing is, I was listening to George Formby the other day, and nobody's gonna trump him for racists-who-made-the-best-music

From what I understand, for all the comedy Chinese stereotypes he made money off of, George's politics were pretty forward thinking.

Formby >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Morrissey

^^^4-4-2

I read this in Sainsbury's last night. There wasn't much to it. Mozzer's comments indefensible really, but at the same time I can't be arsed being bothered about them. Meanwhile, a few pages later is a full page advert announcing the fact that Mozzer's Roundhouse residency has sold out.

I liked the bit in the interview about how because of the internet, everyone's a reporter nowadays. I mean, who on earth is he talking about?

But the change in England is so rapid compared to the change in any other country. If you walk through Knightsbridge on any bland day of the week you won't hear an English accent

Funnily enough, he wouldn't have heard one in his own house when he was growing up as both his parents were IRISH and IMMIGRANTS. Fucking dickhead.

Next week in NME: Zucchero moans about the dilution of Italian culture by shit indie expats from the UK.

I mean, at least Ray Davies still lives in Britain! He can boohoo about penny farthings, chimbley sweeps and powdered eggs from day-to-day experience.

Also when he goes to America he gets shot so this may colour his opinion of abroad.

Racist?
Bengali In Platforms - questionable, I put it down to bad phrasing myself.
National Front Disco - no
Asian Rut - no, but arguably quite naieve.
Did anyone see Andrew Collins pop up on the SOTCAA forum? He basically said the whole Morrissey = racist thing was the result of a slow news day and a misjudged gesture by Moz himself...

-- DG, Sunday, 3 February 2002 01:00 (5 years ago) Bookmark Link

Andrew Collins and SOTCAA = the kind of British culture we must do our utmost to save

I find them quaint and amusing. But they are a memory now.

SOTCAA was the only kind of British culture worth saving.

Some of the Patos Are Amusing

Well put.

Perhaps Morrissey is hoping England could be more like, say, France, where they preserve their national identity by putting all the immigrants where no one can see them? That works really well.

TBF you can't move on French radio for Hip Hop tho.

Most of it about how shit it is being black in France.

Somebody needs to break into his kitchen and see if he has a Ronaldinho bottle opener. That would clear up straight away whether he's racist or not.

Perhaps Morrissey is hoping England could be more like, say, France, where they preserve their national identity by putting all the immigrants where no one can see them?

You mean in the French national football team?

Saying "immigrants are diluting our culture" kinda clears up whether he's racist or not.

You mean in the French national football team?

Elephant in room.

World Cups and Euro Championships in trophy cabinet

In my country, immigrants are diluting our culture. For the better.

Please pass judgement on me asap, kthx.

1p3 is not a country
the noise board are not immigrants

I say arrest Noizers and send them where they came from. 1p3 for the 1p3ers!

Can someone find that dude that wrote this awful blogpost for The Guardian during the World Cup, saying that France should beat Italy in the World Cup final because of the number of black players on their team shows how France has always been a bastion of liberal egalitarianism, ignoring the fact that the reason that France has a half-black national team is due to 400 years of colonialist oppression.

He then went on to say that Ian Wright was an "intelligent" football pundit. Shit was jokes.

The reason that Italy doesn't have a half-black national team is because they could never get their shit together.

honestly, i dont see how someone who cares about their country and wants to keep the national culture alive is automatically seen as a racist. if this was an african or asian country and someone was talking about wanting to protect it from western influence, who would bat an eyelid?

if this was an african or asian country and someone was talking about wanting to protect it from western influence, who would bat an eyelid?

the state department

I'm sick of African pop stars complaining about immigration.

He cares about country so much he's lived abroad for 10 years? Nice work if you can get it.

Also why when hip-hop recording artist "Fifty Cent" says the n-word in his chart smashes he's awarded with Grammies and gold records, but when I say it at my local pub I'm barred? Seems like it's one rule for blacks and another for the rest of us.
xxxp

i say we cut off the funding.

Where's Jagger to give the colonialist viewpoint on all this?

Mick Jagger is resident in the Turks and Caicos Islands for tax purposes.

Last time I looked he was sitting, quill in hand, penning a yearning love letter on the back of a slave.

If you say the N word, you get arrested.

For impersonating a police office.

I thangyew.

Actually maybe Morrissey does care about this country, after all he's spared us 10 years of Morrissey. I thangYEW.

"He cares about country so much he's lived abroad for 10 years?"

he moved away because he saw the way things in this once glorious country were heading. if it wasnt for the erosion of traditional english culture, we might still be able to boast one of its true exponents (mr moz, in case you were unsure) right here where he belongs.

o

http://www.buckeyeinstitute.org/uploaded_images/Head%20in%20Hands.jpg

xxp
best post ever

"If you say the N word, you get arrested."

another problem you see. if i listen to my timbaland album in my car (british made, in case you were wondering), i hear the n word used copiously, yet if a nice young lady like emily parr says it, she is made an example of. double standards? i believe so.

we might still be able to boast one of its true exponents (mr moz, in case you were unsure)

What, that Paddy bastard?

"he moved away because he saw the way things in this once glorious country were heading. if it wasnt for the erosion of traditional english culture, we might still be able to boast one of its true exponents (mr moz, in case you were unsure) right here where he belongs."

seriously i cannot get over how fantastic this post is

xp stop trying to top it

you confuse me, titchy.

OKAY WHICH OF YOU SMART-ARSES HAS GOT A FAKE TITCHY LOGIN?

ah, i just saw that my dom passatino made a similar comparison above. good to see i am not alone.

"What, that Paddy bastard?"

did you not listen to irish blood, ENGLISH HEART? no, thought not.

you confuse me, titchy.

-- That one guy that hit it and quit it, Thursday, 29 November 2007 11:06 (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Link

4-4-2

Please tell me you are doing clumsy Martian-style irony. Please.

did you not listen to irish blood, ENGLISH HEART?

Do I look stupid?

YEAH WHY YOU NO RISSEN TOM SO-CALLED D

Stupid irriot

http://img176.imagevenue.com/aAfkjfp01fo1i-29787/loc429/47123_Nuts03_-_Emily_Parr_122_429lo.jpg

I don't know Morrissey doesn't move to South Australia. I mean, every second person in Adelaide is a fucking whinging pom who moved from Bristol and spend their lives talking about how wonderful it is that the weather is 35 degrees. Jesus fucking Christ, why don't those people go back from where they came from?

OK, quick, somebody call me a racist.

How the fuck do you dance to The Cribs?

how do you dance to any indie rock? stand mostly still and bang your head about a bit

Or that kind of weird effeminate version of skanking indie boys do.

I can't believe Geir was in London and didn't try to go for beers with us.

fuck, i would have fapped if geir was there.

Have he and Morrissey been swapping notes on Knightsbridge?

Geir was possibly too busy visiting the offices of Q and Mojo to hang out with you black-music lovers.

I have no idea if he's a racist or not - but he did the smart thing in getting out of England. It's a shithole full of angry, repressed, frustrated, alcoholic, ill-educated people crammed on to part of a tiny island. Give me the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, or Scotland any day.

I guess I was too busy going through HMV and Virgin's back catalogue racks, and then visiting all those wonderful ethnic restaurants that apparently Moz doesn't like. You know, while I love English music, there is no way I'd possibly even get remotely close to archetypical English food. :)

like tikka masala

Geir Hongro: not fucking with a chip cob

Our food culture has been totally diluted.

Is it Norway or Sweden where a popular fast food is hot dog sausage covered in prawn mayo in a potato pancake?

I have no idea if he's a racist or not - but he did the smart thing in getting out of England. It's a shithole full of angry, repressed, frustrated, alcoholic, ill-educated people crammed on to part of a tiny island. Give me the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, or Scotland any day

Fair comment, after all not many Scots are angry, repressed and alcoholic.

It's Norway, a "polse".

xp

Swedish fast food = rancid meatballs

Sweden has the world's only immigrant sports team that's ascended to professional playing level, so kudos to them there.

ILX need 1x Geir recipe thread.

"White Pudding"

"Crackers"

Sweden has the world's only immigrant sports team that's ascended to professional playing level

http://hibernian-news.newslib.com/img/logo/5403.gif

http://www.ukstudentlife.com/Travel/Tours/Scotland/Glasgow/Celtic.jpg

Haha, OK, fair enough.

But then again, weren't 70% of Italian football teams set up, and originally consisting nearly entirely of, English workers?

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/1623298.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=17A4AD9FDB9CF19390335F8FA9CA92A65F69984CFFBCCBED9930FDCFC4C15FBB

"You sayin' I huv not always, eh, acquitted myself in the manner accustomed of a professional athlete, if you will? Outside ya jakey."

Actually no, because the Irish weren't technically immigrants in 1875 or 1888

And yes, British immigrants/ ex-pats set up football teams all over the world

I love how a thread on whether Morrissey is a racist can run the whole gamut of national abuse, including a spot of French-bashing, English-bashing, having a go at Scandinavian food, and topped off with someone opining that "Americans, Australians, and Brazilians are all awful people"!

i don't think all of the french football players are immigrants. like their colonies were formally part of france or something.

Be fair, there's been love shown for Norwegian food and Syrian immigrant football teams

xp

and White Pudding.

I'm pretty sure the entire French national team was born after the African reclamations of the early 60s, Quitney.

You can't beat how Australian "soccer" got rid of all the ethnic teams (basically supported by Italians, Greeks and Serbs) and replaced them with generic teams (basically supported by ex-pat poms).

Another reason why La Moz should move here.

Also, I had a hot dog last time I saw Adelaide United play. Hmmmm.

French football players aren't immigrants because they were all born and brought up in France (probably, couldn't be arsed to check). Their parents/grandparents were the immigrants.

and topped off with someone opining that "Americans, Australians, and Brazilians are all awful people"!

Who said that?

Patrick Donalé Vieira (born June 23, 1976 in Dakar, Senegal)
xp

and that other guy.

French football players aren't immigrants because they were all born and brought up in France (probably, couldn't be arsed to check).

Wrong. Very wrong.

Claude Makélélé (born February 18, 1973 in Kinshasa, Zaire)
Patrick Donalé Vieira (born June 23, 1976 in Dakar, Senegal)
Patrice Evra (born 15 May 1981 in Dakar, Senegal)

Ok ok ok, I bow to your superior knowledge!

Senegal is getting diddled here, isn't it?

Marcel Desailly (born September 7, 1968 in Accra, Ghana)

Thuram, Guadeloupe. Malouda, French Guiana. Etc etc etc.

i was gonna say faye but he actually plays for senegal.

Makelele, Viera... Dioufy, it would be magnificent.

Jean-Alain Boumsong (born November 14, 1979, in Douala, Cameroon)
Lilian Thuram (born Ruddy Lilian Thuram-Ulien, January 1, 1972 in Pointe-à-Pitre, Guadeloupe
Pascal Chimbonda (born 21 February 1979 in Les Abymes, Guadeloupe)

Franck Ribery (born March 13, 1831 in Notre Dame, Paris)

Ha ha

Thuram, Guadeloupe. Malouda, French Guiana. Etc etc etc.

Guadeloupe and French Guiana are both French departments. But OK, I was very very wrong on the "born in France" thing. Less wrong on the "brought up in France" aspect though I think. They're culturally more French than Senegalese or whatever. When you hear them speak, they speak with a French accent and not with an African one.

And where did anyone say "Americans, Australians, and Brazilians are all awful people"?

I'm aware that Guadeloupe is a department. It's a long fucking drive from Biarritz tho.

I have no idea if he's a racist or not - but he did the smart thing in getting out of England. It's a shithole full of angry, repressed, frustrated, alcoholic, ill-educated people crammed on to part of a tiny island. Give me the US, Australia, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, or Scotland any day.
And where did anyone say "Americans, Australians, and Brazilians are all awful people"?

-- Emily S., Thursday, 29 November 2007 00:54 (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^^this is true except Americans, Australians, and Brazilians are all awful people

-- Dom Passantino, jeudi 29 novembre 2007 02:05 (11 hours ago) Bookmark Link

Woops, that came out wrong.

Guadeloupe and French Guiana are both French departments.

this nonsense started with you responding to a post i made that said this.

Ah! I'm not paying attention! (xxp)

Yeah, but he went to France to post that.

xxxxxpost ah forget it.

Ban Zelda Zonk and Raymond Domenech

I'm aware that Guadeloupe is a department. It's a long fucking drive from Biarritz tho.

Guadeloupians do tend to take offense when people consider them non-French though!

Anyway football is hardly a subject I know much about, even less so French football, so I hereby withdraw whatever inane comments about it I've made on this thread.

Anyway football immigration is hardly a subject I know much about, even less so French football English immigration, so I hereby withdraw whatever inane comments about it I've made on this thread NME interview.

-- Zelda Zonk Morrissey, Thursday, 29 November 2007 12:24 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

In my country, immigrants are diluting our culture. For the better.

Please pass judgement on me asap, kthx.

-- King Boy Pato, Thursday, 29 November 2007 10:43 (2 hours ago)

OTM, and the crux.

Oh, I wasn't really making a serious point about what the NME says Morrissey said.

I was only speaking the truth, bruv.

It's a better publicity stunt than trying to get the Sex Pistols to number one.

Oh, I wasn't really making a serious point about what the NME says Morrissey said.

I was only speaking the truth, bruv.

-- King Boy Pato, Thursday, 29 November 2007 13:11 (16 minutes ago)

The interview basically says the same thing though. People pick on 'dilution of a culture that Moz identifies with' as if Morrissey's saying 'this shouldn't be allowed to happen'.

Some of the best things about living in England are associated with the social change, and the cultural syntheses that occur due to this.

Some of the best things about living in England are associated with the social change, and the cultural syntheses that occur due to this.

But, not living in England, Morrissey wouldn't know this

But he reads the NME. He said he got their 'Whiteboys against Racism' issue.

I knew he was out of touch but I didn't realise he was that out of touch. Mind you, he probably gets it and wonders where all the Roy Carr and Max Bell features are.

Some of the best things about living in England are associated with the social change, and the cultural syntheses that occur due to this.

Out of interest, what examples would you give?

Phineas Fogg's Tortilla Chips.

Everything.

Nice cup of tea.

Eastern European prostitutes

Wagamama's

Some of the best things about living in England are associated with the social change, and the cultural syntheses that occur due to this.

Out of interest, what examples would you give?

-- blueski, Thursday, 29 November 2007 13:39 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Link

Really fucking hardcore Polish spirit being in a shop 1 minute from my house

Acid-jazz

Loads of delis

Starbucks

vietnamese pork pies

But srsly, everything. Food, music, yo mama.

And don't forget the consternation of bigots

I think Morrissey just left because he was fed up with no-one in this country being able to given serious answers to a question!

i love valourizing historical shifts

xpost

No, I think it was because he's a big fat racist.

but y'know, serious answer: the nhs

I think Morrissey just left because he was fed up with no-one in this country being able to given serious answers to a question! giving a fuck what some washed-up reactionary old queen has to say about anything anymore

If only had Morrissey had Ed and Tracer Hand to show him around the Thai charcuteries that are on every street corner in the country these days, maybe he wouldn't hate so much.

Oops:

I think Morrissey just left because he was fed up with no-one in this country being able to given serious answers to a question! giving a fuck what some washed-up reactionary old queen has to say about anything anymore

lol Gordon Brown joke

xp
I was serious.

I knew 'food/drink' and 'music' would be the top two. Service and Entertainment.

Re food what's happened is a great expansion of range of options to eat out, but at the indirect expense of preserving or restoring any idea of native (for want of better word) food culture? Specious maybe but I was wondering earlier if visitors to the UK 50 years ago had quite the same attitude or stereotype in mind of British food (whatever this is) as they do now. Chains are a much bigger problem in this regard tho (plus should be noted that chain outlet staff are almost always recent immigrants now).

but y'know, serious answer: the nhs

is right but then you might still wonder how you get into the position where you have to basically rely on importing people to heal and teach.

Potatoes are an import. This is obvious shit but when yr economic progress depends on trade/colonialism you're always gonna be open to cultural imports. So I have no clue what native culture of any kind might be.

its pretty easy to mistake the comments of someone who "is in love with a thing that never really existed" based on a romantic concept of people- or nationhood with a member of the national front because, uh, the national front is all about the romanticization of a people or nation that never really existed in the way they think of it.

I suppose this would be true if Moz was involved in xenophobic British politics, but as far as I know he isn't a member of the house of commons. The man is entitled to his opinion, and if people wanna pay money for it more power to them.

And if people wanna make stupid comparisons on the internet between Smiths lyrics and the burning of books, more power to them, too.

(this is all way xpost. i just got to work.)

Re food what's happened is a great expansion of range of options to eat out, but at the indirect expense of preserving or restoring any idea of native (for want of better word) food culture? Specious maybe but I was wondering earlier if visitors to the UK 50 years ago had quite the same attitude or stereotype in mind of British food (whatever this is) as they do now. Chains are a much bigger problem in this regard tho (plus should be noted that chain outlet staff are almost always recent immigrants now).

Hi dere Morrissey...

It's a bit silly to argue the pros & cons of immigration on whether it's "enriched the culture" or "diminished the culture" or whatever. People immigrate, and countries let in immigrants, on economic grounds.

Re food what's happened is a great expansion of range of options to eat out, but at the indirect expense of preserving or restoring any idea of native (for want of better word) food culture?

I'm not sure what you mean by native food culture but if what you mean is regional specialities then their decline was much more to do with the growth of supermarkets, chain restaurant, etc in the 50s and 60s and little to do with migration. And anyway I would say that that decline is reversing. See "The Bad Food Guide" by Derek Cooper from 1967 for starters. Ho ho.

Has food diversity in the UK really got that much to do with immigration? Do the vast numbers of sushi joints that have sprung up over the past decade correlate to a Japanese immigration spike?

Yeah, the vast number of sushi restaurants that exist in every town in Britain and not just central London.

"Here pal, you fucken' at it? Not only has this fucken' fish's no' goat any batter oan it but it's no' even fucken' cooked!"

http://www.ufindus.com/sushi_bar/corby

Weird, there's no sushi joints in Corby?

*short appearance in thread from Bobby Gillespie* (xp)

xp
Well, sushi isn't a great example but otherwise yes. Starting with the french and their heavy sauces.

One does get tired of the endless round of sushi restaurants in Hull.

(Akshully there's a little independent Chinese restaurant that does sushi and it's dope.)

No Sushi in Bletchley or Droylsden either :-(

I'm willing to bet there isn't one in Goole.

We should start an I Love the Provinces board.

OK, sushi is a poor example! But a lot of the increase in food diversity is not about immigration. There are other factors.

Morrissey would join.

xpost I already said as much tho. Imports like potatoes, coffee and tea weren't initially accompanied with swathes of immigrants.

But largescale changes in British diet (curry, kebabs, spag bol) are pretty much directly tied into mass immigration.

Except chilli con carne.

And holidays abroad.

xp

I remember when Colman's started doing this chilli packet mix in the early 80s and suddenly we had a new meal for tea that wasn't meat and two veg or fish fingers and chips. Happy days.

Dad started bringing the spag bol round about then too. It seriously was some kind of nirvana.

My best in with posh girls has always been them going "Oh wow, we had a Sicilian who worked on my grandparent's farm in the 50s. He introduced "linguini" to them!"

I suppose this would be true if Moz was involved in xenophobic British politics, but as far as I know he isn't a member of the house of commons. The man is entitled to his opinion, and if people wanna pay money for it more power to them.

waht

is right but then you might still wonder how you get into the position where you have to basically rely on importing people to heal and teach.

-- blueski, Thursday, November 29, 2007 1:55 PM (42 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

original fifties immigration was done to staff up the nhs (possibly transport too?).

and how you get into that position is partly by having a war.

Yep, transport too but not only public services, e.g. textile industry oop North

No English accents in Knightsbridge --> Harrods is in Knightsbridge --> al Fayeds in Harrods --> keep our British institutions British --> omg Morrissey killed Diana!

She was about to marry an immigrant!

Y'all know about that Morrissey/Diana conspiracy site, right?

http://www.dianamystery.com/Diana-Morrissey_Phenomenon.jpg

Morrissey is jackin' it in that picture.

Looks like he's smelling one of his own farts - and lovin' every minute of it

Let's do pix of Moz tugging one out

http://laswompe.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/fib06_morrissey_p.jpg

Wistful.

(also NV holy shit at that website! CUCKOO)

http://www.informationleafblower.com/blog/archives/morrissey1.jpg

UNNNGGGGGH WHITE WEE-WEE

xpost Yeah it's Old School web mentalism at its best, that one.

http://www.caffeine-headache.net/weblog/Morrissey-You-Have-Killed-M-353389.jpg

Readers' Wives

http://www.onewaymagazine.com/images/artists/morrissey1.jpg

On the Q.T.

From fatso to waxwork

This dude still rocks a suit better than all of us.

Speak for yrself, dude.

Indeed. Also he can afford good ones.

And he enjoys measuring his own inside leg, by the looks of it.

http://photos.contactmusic.com/m/morrissey_011007/morrissey_13_wenn1599952.jpg

Lost in a moment he can't get out of.

Morrissey's lawyers threaten legal action against NME

Do you think he'll be okay with the wanking pics tho?

Irish Blood, English Spunk

http://version2.andrewkendall.com/images/photographs/livemusic/morrissey_160306/main/morrissey_160306_4.jpg
And what a mess I've made of my...trousers...

I'll never make that mistake again, etc...

I thought he was farting in that one TBH.

I thought he was farting in that one TBH.

-- Noodle Vague, Thursday, 29 November 2007 16:04 (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

Hahaahh! You have killed me!

http://shinymedia.blogs.com/photos/uncategorized/2007/07/12/morrissey.jpg

You forgot the caption:

He likes it ruff.

Photoshoppers of the world unite

Good quote from that BBC article linked to above:

"If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are," the singer is reported to have said.

Morrissey has spent the last decade living in Rome and Los Angeles.

I think that about sums it up.

Jesus, I hope that "Diana-Morrissey connection" site is actually a spoof of conspiracy theorists, and not a genuine one.

being English sure sounds like a lot of work

I don't suppose now would be a good time to suggest that there's no smoke without fire?

Especially if you have a burning cross on your front lawn.

80 million posts back: haha can we cross-reference Moz missing a British cultural identity with "Bengali in Platforms" (who only wants to EMBRACE your culture)? It's kind of a "you're doing it wrong" thing.

Morrissey was surely just looking to provide thematic fodder to his biographers when he decided to move to the most famounsly transient-based, old-culture-lacking city in the world and play to a fanbase of immigrants accused of eroding said non-existent culture.

"Famouns" is LA slang for "famous." We look to Los Angeles for the language we use, London is dead, etc

what would happen if Morrissey recreates Panic to attack Islam-o-fascists like Abu Hamza

Burn down the mosque [only if it is a front to extremists]
Hang the blessed extremist
Because the message that they constantly say
It says nothing to me about my life
Hang the blessed extremist
Because the evil message they constantly play

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/3420334.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=D278A15CF533E62C50C610CEBE39CFE6A55A1E4F32AD3138

i think he moved to los angeles because he liked tanning, & being tan

don't blame me
don't hate me
just because I'm the one to tell you
L.A. is bad enough when you belong there
oh shelve your SoCal plans

today Morrissey was dressed head to toe in denim like a proper lesbian.

-- Curt1s Stephens, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 1:24 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

where did you see him?

-- jergïns, Tuesday, November 6, 2007 12:46 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

he works with him

-- roxymuzak, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 4:14 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

curt1s is talking about what he dressed his homemade morrissey fashion paper doll in this morning.

-- sunny successor, Wednesday, November 7, 2007 4:27 PM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Link

For a while I thought Geir and Titchy were trying to out-WTF one another but Martian has just stepped up and shown how a real artist does it.

Isn't Knightsbridge, like, the upper upper upper upper upper-class part of Westend London? I mean, isn't the Kensington area exactly where the wealthiest people chose to put their city residence?

I which case I don't quite understand where Moz is coming from. But maybe he heard all the foreigns accents of all the non-English tourists who are usually walking around to visit Harrod's, get a view of Buckingham Palace etc?

Morrissey is basically having a dig at Al-Fayed and trying to shift the blame for Diana's death from Morrissey back onto Al-Fayed who was editor of the NME at the time.

Muslim cunts who have been given the right to live in our country should show some fucking respect. Insted of being cunts and banging on about this ISLAM SHIT - they should look at the country which has given them a second stab in life.

There is no such thing as a a British Muslim.

http://www.nme.com/boards/showthread.php?t=84546&page=2

Hmmm, Johnny Borrell has let himself down, there.

All my life, trouble in Jalalabad.

Haha that guy's sig links to his Leeds Utd fansite

http://img518.imageshack.us/img518/5135/545613211a4212508150b60ne5.jpg

you guys!

"i wear black on the outside, cause black is how i feel on the inside" - unloveable

this argle-bargle came up on Question Time last night.

Bad idea having David Gedge on as a guest.

I dunno, he'd be good at questions

"Why are you being so reasonable now?"

Morrissey in 'read my article's comments, I've got more fans than Ron Paul' shocker:

I abhor racism and oppression or cruelty of any kind and will not let this pass without being absolutely clear and emphatic with regard to what my position is.

Racism is beyond common sense and I believe it has no place in our society.

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/12/morrissey_responds.html

This whole incident kind of makes me want someone to end music for good.

A supposed music writer who knows nothing about David Bowie is still not worth paying attention to.

I like to think Morrissey did all the HTML bits in that blog post himself

Main points of defence used by Morrissey stans:

1) lol nme more like rubbishy
2) "Send 'em back" is just my opinion, why am I not allowed to voice it?

I see one blog writer makes the same point I did earlier: In Knightsbridge, the main reason for not hearing British accents isn't about immigration, rather about tourism.

3) Aren't policemen getting younger these days?

xpost - see even GEIR is making more sense than Morrissey!

And, surely, "send'em back" is racist, but loving English culture, being nostalgic about British culture, and - not least - sceptical towards American cultural imperialism, is not.

Norwegian Blood, Melodic Heart

If we're lucky this whole Morrissey v NME robot v dinosaur fite will see them both crash into one another and explode.

It was then that I realized the full extent of the setup, and I felt like Bob Hoskins in the final frame of The Long Good Friday

"i'm going into business with the Krauts - yeah, the Krauts!"

liked Sarfraz Manzoor's two pence

When I was a teenager I dismissed Morrissey as a daffodil-waving tosser with a persecution complex. In recent years I have come to appreciate the Smiths' recorded output more and have enjoyed seeing Morrissey a number of times in concert but my defence of him is not based on blind fanaticism

Who the fuck finds themselves liking the Smiths _more_ as they leave their teen years?

"You know, at 17 I never really appreciated 16 Candles as a movie, but entering into my thirties I've begun to love it as a subtle work of mastery"

Because teens are more polar?

The good news here is that Morrissey has just written more words for The Guardian than Dom Passantino ever has and will.

I just read that entire Guardian comments thread and now I hate myself.

I got about halfway down and gave up (on the Manzoor piece's comments) Thought the Manzoor piece was good, but 9/10 comments were pretty brainless/rote.

Worst crime against humanity: ethnic cleansing or not knowing every single track on Aladdin Sane?

Actually the most annoying thing about that Morrissey article *is* the "ZOMG he's never heard of this minor Bowie song that is a cornerstone of my myopic and reductivist view of 'our culture'" nonsense.

Does a German equivalent of East Ham exist, incidentally? I'm pretty sure a French one does. Is it possible that they just don't see it because they NEVER GO THERE, in the same way that hardly anyone goes to East Ham by choice, especially tourists?

(OK the NME has a similarly myopic and reductivist view so maybe Tim Jonze hasn't been doing his homework but still...)

East Berlin?

Jonze is supposed to be an NME writer though? You'd expect him to at least recognise the song title as being one of Bowie's, as in it being indicative of a general interest in/knowledge of music? (lol i am old old old/lol music writing in '07 "who is capt. beefhreat" (c) teh lex etc etc)

I've stayed in the suburbs of Berlin and Stockholm where the majority of people are immigrants, and I'm pretty sure they wouldn't correspond to Morrisey's conservative ideals of Germany and Sweden.

Who the fuck finds themselves liking the Smiths _more_ as they leave their teen years?

I didn't like The Smiths at all back then. They were underground rock, and I was exclusively into pop (you know, English synthpop, the kind that was popular back then).
I am no big fan today either (still consider Johnny Marr an overrated composer that relied way too much on improvisation to write good melodies), but like them considerably better now than I did back then. Gene >> The Smiths though. :)

There's an emoticon I think we can all get behind

I'm unpersuaded that pining for a lost England that existed (or perhaps didn't) before mass immigration is necessarily racist.

The Smiths #2 Mar 1984
Hatful Of Hollow #7 Nov 1984
Meat Is Murder #1 Feb 1985
The Queen Is Dead #2 Jun 1986
The World Won't Listen #2 Mar 1987
Strangeways, Here We Come #2 Oct 1987
#2 Sep 1988
Best of The Smiths #1 Aug 1992

Underground.

They weren't that big a deal anywhere outside the UK though.

The assumption that the uk was in fact some kind of whites only zone at any time in living memory is false anyway, see:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-GB%3Aofficial&channel=s&hl=en&q=south+shields+race+riot&meta=&btnG=Google+Search

Reading the Tim Jonze blog piece it actually accuses Morrissey of using racially inflammatory language which is true. Where is this England that has supposedly disappeared anyway?

Go out to a medium-sized town in Dorset, go to the Lake District, walk down Canterbury High Street, hell even the High Street in some dull middle ranking English town like Swindon and tell me you could be in any other country in the world. It's bollocks, and you have to cast aspersions on the kind of thought processes that lead to such statements, particularly among people who don't even live here.

That's middle class though. But I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.

I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.
I'm pretty sure there's a lot of typical laddish English working class culture left if you walk around Camden Town too.

Delete ILX

Strange as it may seem, working class people also live in towns in England.

xpost

http://www.mattscdsingles.com/acatalog/15873.jpg

In Norway they did away with geography textbooks and just gave every pupil a copy of this single.

I momentarily read that url as matt dc singles dot com and was all WTF for a second.

Ah come on, Geir doesn't know Camden, why should he?

Because he's talking about it?

Geir talking about things he's not sure about is not a new thing.

that dave simpson guy who keeps splitting heirs about how morrisey couldnt possibly be racist because racism and immigration DONT EVER OVERLAP OF COURSE in the guardian comments section is really annoying. not that hes the only one of course, but hes also a guardian writer so its more annoying.

http://image.guardian.co.uk/artsblog/authorpics/dave_simpson.jpg

I gotta cut a shoot here, but if I was blogging for a major website and had to have a byline photo, I'd get myself down Venture and have some shots taken there for £60.

Yeah, Manzoor's piece is v good.

And got to say there are some real zings in Moz's piece.

does anyone know if 'asian rut' on kill uncle was written as something of a response to some of the stick he got for 'bengali in platforms'?

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/music/2007/12/morrissey_responds.html

I am writing this to apologize unreservedly for granting an interview to the NME. I had no reason whatsoever to assume that they could be anything other than devious, truculent and unreliable. In the event, they have proven to be all three.

Hmmmm. I've heard someone described as that before....

They weren't that big a deal anywhere outside the UK though.

except in the small village hamlets of Los Angeles, New York, and Latin America

The real reason for people not knowing DRIVE-IN SATURDAY these days (despite it being a number 2 hit and bigger than GOLDEN YEARS, SOUND AND VISION, HEROES or FASHION) is a trickle down from the fact that it wasn't on CHANGESoneBOWIE the big hits comp from the mid seventies. It was then as a result not included as the big Ryko CHANGES hits cd in the early 90's.

Just sayin'.

I'm unpersuaded that pining for a lost England that existed (or perhaps didn't) before mass immigration is necessarily racist.

-- Zelda Zonk, Tuesday, December 4, 2007 7:20 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Link

^^^^this is the only thing that needs to be said here. that and Dom's a moron.

the darkies are always ruining everything, i agree with morrissey on that one, its impossible not to really, but i still dont see how immigrants are responsible for changing england more than things like globalisation, americanisation, devolution, privatisation etc etc. granted, some of these things are being implemented and aided by the aforementioned people of a shall we say dustier hue, but even so, it would be silly to attribute all those changes that have swept the uk in the last decade to them exclusively (we shouldnt feel the need to overlook their role in it though, naturally).

hang on am i missing levels of irony here

Trying way too hard xp

thanks for the constructive criticism.

How the fuck does devolution change England?

Fair play to Moz and his fans tho, usually when you hear somebody moaning about "our" culture being "diluted" there is no racist subtext whatsoever.

I'm unpersuaded that pining for a lost England that existed (or perhaps didn't) before mass immigration is necessarily racist.

The strong correlation between his views and those of more logical, consistent racists is merely suspicious and not enough to convict him.

But let's not pretend he has views that are anything other than dodgy even if it isn't classic racism, and we can pedantically point out that he isn't technically a racist.

Like Douglas P from Death in June and his gay nazi shtick (and there's a collaboration Moz should probably avoid heh!) it doesn't have to be logically consistent to suck.

it doesn't have to be logically consistent to suck.

im sure that will not hold up in court

except in the small village hamlets of Los Angeles, New York, and Latin America

How big were the Smiths in these places? (I genuinely don't know and am curious, though I'd be surprised if they were big in NY[C, I can only assume] like they were in the UK. BTW I really liked your comments on the Kansas thread, J0hn. I meant to reply at some point.)

The real reason for people not knowing DRIVE-IN SATURDAY these days (despite it being a number 2 hit and bigger than GOLDEN YEARS, SOUND AND VISION, HEROES or FASHION) is a trickle down from the fact that it wasn't on CHANGESoneBOWIE the big hits comp from the mid seventies. It was then as a result not included as the big Ryko CHANGES hits cd in the early 90's.

An NME writer, supposedly their "best" according to their probably misguided author, is not the man on the street, mind you. Just because John Smith isn't familiar with one of Bowie's most famous 70s songs doesn't mean it's OK that NME's so-called "best" writer is.

But I guess it's just typical of NME's general detoriation. NME has spent the past 20 years being pathetic. It did have a clue during Britpop's heyday, but only for a few months before going clueless again.