Piers Morgan, the brittle bully

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Piers Morgan, judged by his failed American experiment on CNN, is the rare type of Brit that pulls our Yankee imaginations away from the special relationship, and towards a warm remembrance of Lexington and Concord.

He is a preposterous figure, a perfect avatar for early 21st century media corruption and its accompanying fetish for vapid, meaningless and empty celebrity. In fact, if technology so advances consideration should be given to miniaturizing him for storing and passage on the next version of a Voyager 2-type deep space probe. The original Voyager probe contained a solid gold record upon which was pressed the story of human civilization in case it would one day encounter intelligent life.

The next probe, with miniaturized Piers aboard, could serve as a beneficent warning about the dangers of contamination from our societal decay that would await our alien visitors if they were foolish enough to make first contact with humans. A miniaturized Piers Morgan would certainly do the trick and repel their instincts to explore Earth.

It could redeem his legacy from common bully to savior of the planet. Imagine the write up in The Sun for his next New Year’s bash.

Of course, he would be in outer space, which might change the tenor of the evening from one of vacuous celebrity transactions and instagramming towards a celebration of genuine joy. It would be quite a thing.

Piers Morgan is common. He is a common bully. He is a cheap television thug and he is a very brittle man. He blocked me on Twitter following the publication of my essay on Monday.

Like all bullies, he is a coward. Like all narcissists, he is an abuser. Like much of the vicious British media, and all of the Murdoch media, he is corrupt. He is vicious. He is nasty. He is mean, and he is cruel. What he has done to Megan Markle is an abomination that is only exceeded by the palace courtiers who allowed it to happen. They did this by entering into information transactions that metastasized into character assassination carried out by sleazes like Morgan. In fact, according to this analysis between May 2018 and January 2019, Meghan Markle received more than double the negative media coverage than positive.

The role of Piers Morgan in assassinating the character of Meghan Markle and Prince Harry is singular. If internet smearing and abuse had epidemiologists they would almost certainly identify him as tormentor zero in the same way that they would identify Monica Lewinsky as patient zero.

What exactly is Meghan Markle’s crime? What is it that she did wrong? What ethical breach has she committed? Of what transgression is she guilty?

There seems to be a singular offense. She ended her communications with Piers Morgan when she fell in love with her husband Harry.

Why would she end contact? Simple. She had no idea who Piers Morgan was, but Harry did. He knew he was a shallow predator and bottom dweller, and he didn’t want to let that cancer into his life. By that point, Harry had learned lessons about the corruption of the British media the hard way. He absorbed it fully during the long walk behind his mother’s casket in front of a global audience of billions at the age of 12. His future wife would follow in his footsteps by learning the hard way about the character of men like Murdoch and Morgan.

Suffice it to say, Morgan’s paper thin ego was badly bruised by what he regarded as an unpardonable slight. It has triggered a spasm of viciousness and cruelty that has lasted years. What is most astonishing is that the motives for Morgan’s smearing are incandescently clear. Yet, he seems to be completely immunized from his cruel motives with a double 00 license for character assassination.

There should be little doubt that when he cruelly dismissed Markle’s candid and courageous revelations of suicidal ideation triggered by non-stop abuse that he deterred at least one person from getting help. That person probably heard Morgan’s words and believed they, too, wouldn’t be believed. They are likely dead now. Those are the real life consequences when unhinged people are given television platforms to pursue personal vendettas.

Piers Morgan spurred a cottage industry of televised and written abuse that is brutal, unearned, undeserved and deeply immoral. Here is what Morgan’s friend Jeremy Clarkson wrote about the Duchess of Sussex three days after they both lunched with the former Camilla Shand:

He is “dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her.”

Appalling doesn’t begin to describe it. The decision to publish it was a shameful and despicable act. It was an act of vicious dehumanization and it was beneath contempt. The Sun has since taken down the column, and apologized for its publication by stating that “as a publisher, we realise that with free expression comes responsibility.”

It has been reported that King Charles wishes to modernize the monarchy. Among his modernization ideas is for him to be described as “defender of all faiths,” as opposed to “defender of the faith” at his coronation. It’s a nice sentiment, but seems a bit of a reach given the refusal of the institution he leads to defend his closest family members from the slanders and abuse of a coward like Morgan. Silence indeed becomes betrayal at some point.

Prince Harry hasn’t attacked his family or the monarchy. He defended his wife and he’s told the truth about the symbiotic relationship between the palace and the media that brutalized her.

Prince Harry has been one of the most famous people in the world since the moment he was born. He deserves the chance to speak. He has earned it.

Why should he be silent about his life and experience in favor of having his existence defined by Buckingham Palace? The royal industrial media complex — with its ubiquitous, omniscient and clairvoyant anonymous sources — seems to always know more about Harry and Meghan’s life than Harry and Meghan. It seems that the argument against Harry and Meghan speaking about their lives is that the only people who are allowed to speak about them are the anonymous courtiers who carry out the biddings of the King and Prince of Wales.

There comes a time when dignity requires a response. That hour has clearly arrived for Meghan and Harry because of the dishonest and vicious abuse of men like Piers Morgan and Jeremy Clarkson. Their conduct is grotesque. They are bullies, and bullies deserve to be called out because there is nothing lower.