Lindsay Mitchell
lindsaymitchell.blogspot.com
I don’t know much about this guy Piers Morgan. His face is recognisable from a British talent show I watched for maybe a season? I live in New Zealand and don’t follow social media – or barely – so am unfamiliar with his views.
Verity Johnson’s column Stop shouting, Piers Morgan, we’re not listening in today’s DomPost presented the perfect opportunity to hear them.
She begins, “…he’s basically just been that drunk dude outside a pub who yells at you when you walk past.”
Then , “…he constantly, publicly, screams at successful, opinionated young women like Meghan Markle, Greta Thunberg and Ariana Grande…”
No example of what he screams at them though.
Regarding Meghan Markle, “She continued to ignore him, causing ever more acidic outbursts, to the point where, on Monday, he trashed her mental health confessions (subsequently crossing a line that made even Meghan’s detractors draw in their breath sharply).”
I didn’t watch the Oprah interview. What did Meghan say and what did Piers subsequently say?
Again no dialogue forthcoming.
Historically Piers’ offensive statements have apparently been made “so openly and for so long” they are “part of the script that we as young women always struggled with.”
I scrutinise Johnson’s own script but still no examples.
She continues, “No-one stopped his ranting on Monday. And it took a calling out by his weatherman on Tuesday, the devastatingly rational Alex Beresford, for him to shut up and flounce off.”
Rational! I love rational. At least we are going to hear what the rational weatherman had to say…
No such hope.
“A good 40 per cent of social media is predicated on the formula of angry man rants about something a woman has said and gets increasingly annoyed when she ignores his @s and invitations to “enter into a rational debate”. I’ve had it myself when male broadcasters have loathed columns I’ve written, repeatedly trash talked me on air, and been infuriated when I consistently won’t engage with them to “defend my position”.But why would we? We know the difference between rational debate and a drunk outside a pub.”
Verity might yet grow up to be a Prime Minister who declares that Mike Hosking is the ‘drunk outside the pub’ simply because she preferred not to debate the ideas.
Whatever happened to the fearlessness of feminism?
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