Louise O'Neill: 'I’d love to know when Piers Morgan has ever been quiet – we should be so lucky'
Louise O'Neill, author. Photograph Moya Nolan
In Netflix’s mockumentary, Death to 2020, Lisa Kudrow plays a Republican spokesperson who claims that, “Online and in the media, conservative voices are being silenced.”
She continues, “I said this before. I said it on my YouTube channel, I said it on Joe Rogan, on the Jordan Peterson Kayak podcast. I said it on Tucker Carlson. Twice actually. And I said it in my New York Times bestseller, ‘Conservative Voices Are Being Silenced’. It’s a point I have to make over and over because conservative voices are being silenced.”
I was reminded of that scene this week when The Mail on Sunday put Piers Morgan on their front page, saying he was ‘breaking his silence’ on Meghan Markle and quitting Good Morning Britain.
I’d love to know when Morgan has ever been quiet – we should be so lucky – but the idea that he has been ‘cancelled’ and ‘silenced’ when he’s tweeting constantly to his 8 million followers and his face is plastered across one of the biggest selling newspapers in the U.K would be laughable if it wasn’t clear that many people believe him to be the victim in all of this. (Not, you know, the bi-racial woman who was driven to suicidal ideation because of a large-scale bullying campaign, rife with sexism and racist dog whistles.)
A video of Morgan on the Late Late Show went viral in which he admitted he was frustrated with Markle because she ‘ghosted’ him, thus confirming that hell surely does have fury greater than a woman scorned, and it belongs to a man who simply cannot understand that he is not entitled to attention from a woman he likes.
Morgan’s claim that Sharon Osbourne was fired from her job on the American chat show The Talk because she defended him doesn’t hold true either. It wasn’t Osbourne’s defence of her friend that shocked audiences, it was the subsequent clash with her co-host Sheryl Underwood. Sharon yelling, “educate me! educate me! Tell me!” at a Black woman on live television was never going to fly in 2021.
I would hope that after George Floyd’s murder in June of last year and the Black Lives Matter protests that took place afterwards, most white people understand that it is our work now to be actively anti-racist, that we must do the work to dismantle the white supremacy that has benefited us for so long. It is egregious to expect Black people, many of whom are exhausted and traumatised, to do the emotional labour in educating non-Black people about racism, both overt and microaggressions.
Elaine Welteroth, who was co-hosting The Talk that day, and her hairdresser, filed complaints alleging the show’s set was a ‘racially insensitive and hostile environment’, and ultimately, that had to be taken seriously by the network. They have a duty of care to ensure their employees feel safe at work.
Consider your own workplace. If you shouted down a co-worker who was sharing their experience of racism, what would the reaction be? If a co-worker said they had suicidal thoughts and you said you didn’t believe it, how would your employer respond? If you insisted on using the wrong pronouns and misgendering a trans co-worker? If you used racial or homophobic slurs at the water cooler, you don’t think the HR department might want a quick word?
No one has arrested Piers Morgan nor thrown him in jail, the government hasn’t ‘silenced’ him or threatened his or his family’s life. Democracy and freedom of the press are not under threat because an old man quit his job.
Amnesty International defines freedom of speech as the ‘right to seek, receive, and impart information and ideas of any kinds, by any means,’ but we must remember, freedom of speech comes with responsibilities. Hate Speech and Incitement cannot be tolerated, and there is a huge difference between censorship and de-platforming.
I often think of Oprah Winfrey, who says the day she interviewed members of the Ku Klux Klan on her eponymous chat show in the late 80s was the day that changed her career. She’d invited the KKK members on in the hopes to “change they way they thought about Black people” and also, she said, “to let the rest of the world see what their vitriol and hatred look like.” But she realised quickly that they were simply using this interview as a tool to spread their hatred and recruit new members to the Klan.
“They were using me,” she said, “because they understood it was a platform more than I realised it was a platform.” That is what many of us fear when racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia etc, is given a national platform under the guise of Free Speech and the importance of hearing ‘both sides’ of the debate.
We fear that it won’t be exposed as the bigotry it is, but instead, will somehow be legitimitised and those listening will be radicalised in the worst ways possible.
A Living Edit is a collection of hand wash and dish soap bottles that are aesthetically pleasing and will also reduce the amount of single-use plastic in the home. I adore mine.
House of Hollow by Krystal Sutherland. This has everything I want as a reader – a deliciously dark concept, glamourous characters, and some of the finest writing I’ve seen in YA fiction.
