Someone famous and beloved has died so Piers Morgan has said something shocking about them on Twitter – in the most depressingly predictable story of the weekend.
Muhammad Ali, boxing legend and unashamed equal rights figurehead, died of septic shock aged 74 on Friday night.
His funeral is planned for next Friday and expected to be attended by thousands, but Piers Morgan doesn’t care. He has Twitter followers to enrage.
Here’s the #fact tweet in question:
I’m struggling to know what to hate more here. What is frustrating is that these sub 140 characters may indeed be a #fact. But just because something is right, doesn’t mean it’s not wrong and hiding even more important truths.
Piers Morgan definitely knows that what he is saying is ‘correct’ – he’s too smart to post it to Twitter otherwise. Ali may well have said more ‘racist’ things about white people than Donald Trump has ever said about Muslims – that could indeed be true.
Piers Morgan knows that he can use that probable ‘correctness’ as a shield for everyone’s rage – while still enjoying the publicity spike.
But just because it’s correct doesn’t mean that drawing the parallel isn’t still wrong. The parallel with Trump is wrong because, as Morgan well knows, Ali was speaking during a time of huge oppression of African Americans by an institutionally racist system that they were powerless to change.
Muhammad Ali may well have said shocking and controversial things about white people – but in the context of the time his comments can be seen for what they are. A wake-up call, highlighting abuses and forcing people to reconsider their positions.
Let’s not forget what made Muhammad Ali ‘the greatest’, not just his sporting achievements but also making a stand on race relations in the US – when it could be deadly to do so.
His refusal to serve in the Vietnam war (at the expense of a hard-earned World Heavyweight belt) was a stand that required real bravery and forced the debate into people’s faces.
Drawing the comparison with Trump’s ill-informed and half-baked attacks on Muslims is misleading in such an irritating way. Piers has drawn an allusion between white people in 1960s America and Muslim’s in present day America. Simultaneously taking the powerful in 1960s society and painting them as victims, while taking the all-too-frequently maligned Muslims of 21st century western society and painting them as powerful and something to be feared.
He belittles the struggles of the past while elevating perceived present day issues. The exact paranoid and misguided thought processes that breed the hatred and suspicion that makes divisions in society so hard to overcome.
The most infuriating thing is that Piers knows there will be people like me writing these articles and getting furious in just the way he hoped we would.
When will people learn that saying something controversial doesn’t make you smarter than everyone else? It just makes you insensitive and a bit of a knob.
Saying controversial things can certainly be an excellent career choice though. On an unrelated note Piers Morgan has an estimated net worth of $20 million (£13.8 million) and even Katie Hopkins can boast a depressingly large net worth of $4 million (£2.75 million).
It’s just a shame that some knowingly use the death of someone who actually made a contribution to society to further their own careers. Careers, that when weighed against the life of someone like Muhammad Ali, would barely even register.
In Piers Morgan’s defence though he has since posted a completely sincere sounding ‘apology’:
