With the news of Sinead O’Connor’s passing, headlines this week have been a flood of tributes. This is to be expected, that’s what happens when a celebrity passes. Everyone comes out of the woodwork to regale the world with even the most tangential connection to the deceased. Sinead wasn’t your average celeb, though. It isn’t possible to eulogize her without mentioning what she’s most famous for and how much it cost her. In the moment that she tore up a photo of the pope on live TV, she became something bigger than herself, she became a symbol. Symbols are polarizing by nature. For most of the people eulogizing her, their connection to her is how Sinead the symbol impacted them. Sinead was an anomaly even for a symbol, though, as she became a symbol relatively early in her life. Her life continued for decades after that moment. All symbols suffer detractors, but she had to suffer hers while she was still alive. In that regard, she became a sort of modern artist version of Joan of Arc. The persecution she suffered was a reflection of the times: she wasn’t burnt at the stake literally, just figuratively. It may have only been emotionally barbaric, but she was still made to suffer for speaking the truth. She was persecuted as an artist and as a person, and was ultimately a victim of the same corrupt system she spoke out against. To the type of person who’d keep score of such a thing, Sinead O’Connor was the realest possible deal. She attained the highest level of cred. It’s a craven mentality, but it’s a mentality we’re seeing pop up more & more, with a new grating voice joining its droning choir every other day. Feigning outrage is a cottage industry now, and some of the highest-paid media figures exist solely to lead as many viewers as possible in a national salute of pearl-clutching. Some of those talking heads were the establishment figures who derided her back in the day. The subject of this spiel is perhaps their most lamented recruit.

It shouldn’t be surprising that there’d be people who want to ride her coattails posthumously. I don’t begrudge even casual fans posting their stories about how much an artist’s work meant to them after that artist is gone. Everyone I know has done it at least once, myself included. It’s a normal, healthy response. It’s also just part of the deal; if this finite being’s life work touches you, you may outlive them, but you can’t outlive their impact. Are there people who post eulogies for cool kid points? Man, I don’t know, and I don’t really care. Why would that matter? Posting your eulogy on social media is a surefire way to feel less alone in the often sobering event of a seemingly immortal icon’s physical form failing them. Perhaps someone who wasn’t really a fan just wanted to feel part of something for an afternoon. I wasn’t the most avid fan of Sinead; I’ve always loved her music, it speaks to me in a unique way, but I didn’t listen frequently enough to feel like I was qualified to eulogize her publicly. I still felt the loss when reading others’ stories about her & her effect on them, though. I cried! Sinead the symbol meant something to me too. That one colossal, universal moment alone was inspiring to me, but how she lived afterward, weathered the backlash, never apologized, never backed down, just kept being herself, that was fuel for my own fire. As a repressed church kid all too aware of the injustices my religion swept under its prayer rug, I looked up to her. Seeing thousands of other people on my social media feeds expressing the same sentiment was a wonderful feeling. I felt less alone reading eulogies for Sinead, I felt vindicated for believing most of my life that she was a gift to the world but was given a raw deal in return. There were a few pieces from some very unlikely sources, people & institutions that failed her after that SNL performance! They took the opportunity to apologize, set the record straight once and for all that they eventually came around, that after her passing, they can admit they were wrong in how they reacted to her historic moment. I don’t side-eye those eulogies, I see them as proof that people can learn, can change. Isn’t that a good thing, redemption?
Of course, there was one person in the world who didn’t see it that way. There’s always a Grinch, spying on the world through a telescope on his remote, dreary mountain top. Of course this Grinch just had to insert himself into this press cycle. This Grinch had a hot take to deliver, Whoville be damned. Like the actual inactual Grinch, this man is mononymous & famously surly. The master of mope, the godfather of gloom, the original indie rock Elvis, the Oscar Wilde of the 80’s, the former frontman of the most sacred cow in all of hipsterdom… Have you guessed it yet? Born Steven Patrick, but he goes by his last name: Morrissey. Morrissey! Not too many people in this world convince the world to know them by a mononym, but The Smiths are still universally beloved, still considered one of the best, most iconic bands in human history. That’s excellent news for Morrissey, because if you’ve followed his arc since The Smiths broke up, you know that he’s had a pretty controversial run since parting ways with the band that put him on the map. Now, he’s so dreaded as the Bigmouth who never has the decency to refrain from striking again that I’m the zillionth music writer to make that joke. The bad reputation began as what sounded like a misunderstanding snowballed out of proportion by overzealous young music journos, but that rep has since been confirmed by words constantly spat out by the man himself. In the 90’s, there was an incident involving him performing at a Madness concert shrouded in the Union Jack (which was considered a nod to the white supremacist gang National Front at that juncture in time) that prompted music mag NME to print a piece asking if Morrissey was actually a racist. I thought that sounded like a stretch, but it didn’t help that he’d written songs like “Bengali In Platforms”, “Asian Rut”, or “National Front Disco”, and that the most optimistic reading of the lyrics for those songs was oddly vague. It also didn’t help that he’d dismissed genres of music like rap, R&B, and reggae, or that he told an interviewer that he thought it was impossible for black & white people to ever get along. His willingness to put his foot in his mouth has only turned into a deepthroating of right winger boots over the years. He has endorsed anti-immigrant political parties, couched various forms of bigotry in vegan legalism, and laid out his horrible politics plainly in an interview with his own nephew. He tried to sell tour shirts emblazoned with an appropriation of iconic civil rights writer James Baldwin’s likeness but the “Unloveable” Smiths lyrics: “I wear black on the outside because black is how I feel on the inside”. He did an interview with a German magazine, then claimed the mag misquoted him when the interview was published with sections of him blathering about how Harvey Weinstein & Kevin Spacey’s victims must have known what they were getting into. He accused the mag of misquoting him, and demanded the mag publish the full audio of the interview to clear his name. The mag published the full interview and the world found out that they only edited his appalling tirades for brevity.

Morrissey sucks. There’s no way around “telling it like it is”. If your politics are at all progressive, if you’re anti-racist, anti-fascist, if you want to smash the patriarchy and defund the police, if you believe in welcoming refugees, if you believe in just giving as many people as possible the benefit of the doubt, if you believe in the core goodness of most people, you will find contention with Morrissey. If your worldview is reactionary, if your politics are regressive, if you believe in “cancel culture run amok” instead of assholes facing the consequences of their actions, if you believe Trump or Boris Johnson or Bolsonaro or Erdogan have done nothing wrong, if you’re Brexit, if you’re MAGA, if you’re QANON, if you believe Louis CK or Dave Chappelle did nothing wrong, you will find a comrade in Morrissey. Never mind police brutality, the dystopian criminalization of terminating a pregnancy, states legislating schools to plaster over the unflattering aspects of American history, or the state-sanctioned silent genocide of trans people, what really worries Morrissey is cancel culture. Homicidal bigots being forced back into the shadows, out of the public debate, that’s the real danger we’re in. I’m not just doing a hatchet job on the man here, I’m quoting Morrissey about Morrissey. He’s made his stances abundantly clear by now, so we’re fools if we keep trying to reinterpret his own words.
I hate saying that. I am just like anyone else in my demographic: powerless against the charms of The Smiths. They were simply a force. Like Sinead, they became a symbol, but they didn’t have to suffer to be the type of symbol they became because they stood for something more than against something. They became an aspirational symbol for outcasts all over the world. Their appeal is so universal, Morrissey is an icon everywhere. Language barriers are no match for his talent. He has a direct line to the heart of everyone his lyrics would speak to. It’s a power anyone would die to possess, and it’s not enough for Morrissey. He wants more.

While everyone was eulogizing Sinead by lamenting how the world she gave her all to turned on her and crucified her, Morrissey, ever the contrarian, eulogized her by accusing everyone eulogizing her of being charlatans. He couldn’t simply make bizarre accusations, though, he also had to insert himself into the praise. He conflated his arc with hers, said that everyone who makes news in the world makes enemies too, and in that way they were kin. The eternally nebulous “they” tried to shoot her out of the sky, just like they shot at Morrissey, but just like Sinead, Morrissey never let “them” take him down. It’s pitiful to read. Frankly, Mr. Shankly, Morrissey’s guilty of the exact act he’s accusing others of doing: he’s trying to ride the coattails of a deceased icon to 15 more minutes of fame. For all the ire he heaps on the music press, they sure were eager to grant him his wish.
There’s a fucking gigantic difference between defacing the image of a religious figurehead in righteous protest and an asshat reaping the rewards of sewing bigotry for decades. Sinead suffered because she spoke truth powerful people paid hush money to never hear, Morrissey suffered because he wouldn’t shut the fuck up and listen when he was called out for whichever of Enoch Powell’s lies he was spewing during that day’s interview. Instead of learning & growing, he dug into ignorance, doubled down on the very vice he’s never gone a whole record without repudiating. We loved him because he portrayed the kind of person who believes in being kind to those who really need kindness, but hilariously merciless toward the unmerciful. His acerbic wit was only brandished protectively, against the people that would seek to hurt him or those like him. It felt like with him, we were all an “us”, and suddenly it wasn’t such a cruel fate to be an outsider, we were outsiders together. Thus, he’s become the worst thing an icon that’s iconic for being sensitive could become: intractably, irascibly insensitive. He doesn’t stand up for outcasts anymore, just fellow obscenely wealthy right wingers. He has totally jumped the shark and jumped ship to cruise in leisure with the real fake news peddlers. This isn’t news. His first solo record was even named Viva Hate, for Christ’s sake. “Oh, that’s just a lark, you can’t take everything he says at face value! He employs sarcasm to degrade the targets of his arguments!” Does his intent really matter when he has National Front holdovers singing, “England for the English”? Does it really matter if “Bengali In Platforms” is satire if it genuinely alienated his immigrant fans? It isn’t even his worst offense that he seems to relish in the fate of the vengeful eponymous Asian from “Asian Rut” after taunting him over the course of the song, it’s his last sentiment that underscores why Morrissey is no longer universally beloved: “I’m just passing through here on my way to somewhere civilized, maybe I’ll even arrive.” Can you hear that? It’s not a dogwhistle, it’s just shouting the dog’s name.
In extremist circles, there’s an understanding that there’s a quiet part to the things you say, an innuendo you don’t speak aloud in the company of nonbelievers. This is called “dogwhistling”, after the way a dog whistle emits a frequency dogs can intercept, but humans don’t have the capacity to hear. Just imagine there was a group of people who came together to advance the cause of white nationalism. Imagine they wanted to infiltrate politics, spread their ideas, eventually convince enough people to adopt their beliefs that they could enact their policies, eradicate minorities, establish an ethnostate. Would they just storm right up to the podium and start rattling off hatespeech? You would hope any such attempt by such a group would be dragged off the stage. No, extremist groups spread their ideologies through mainstream organizations covertly. They don’t say the quiet part out loud, they can’t. They have to code the quiet part into language their supporters will understand, but outsiders will hear as mostly innocuous. It sounds crazy, right? That’s one tin-foil-hat idea I just dropped, huh. I’m not just making this up. Take Trump’s infamous campaign announcement speech, the part about Mexico not sending us their best people. He makes sure to clarify that he assumes not all Mexican immigrants are bad people, just an unspecified number are bad. He doesn’t ever offer a number, not even a percentage or a fraction. He leaves it up to his audience to decipher why, if most Mexican immigrants are good people, he would bring the issue up at all. He only mentions the good Mexican immigrants so nobody would accuse him outright of being racist. The problem isn’t that they’re coming here, it’s that some are coming here illegally, and if they’re coming here without the full blessing of the law, they must be coming with the intent to break the law. If he says only some are bad, and that’s a problem, the problem isn’t that all Mexicans are bad, but that some are and Mexico isn’t doing anything to keep America safe from them. Those Mexican immigrants are bad not because all Mexicans are bad, but because there are bad apples in every bunch. “Every bunch” means that any type of human could be bad or good, we just need to be careful about the bad ones. So how could anybody say that’s racist?? He’s just speaking the truth! That’s all he’s saying. Right? *Trump voice*: WRONG
When racists dogwhistle, they have to qualify two things: that what they’re saying isn’t being applied to a whole race but just the bad examples, and that there are good people who are of that race too. It’s the “My friend is (insert race, sexuality, etc)!” defense. They don’t have to mean a word of that, they just have to sneak the central idea past anyone who’d be averse to what they’re insinuating. Does Trump really think Mexicans are like any other race of person, that there are good or bad people, it could go either way, and that the problem is really just people sneaking in through the border with ill intent? His speech was a dogwhistle factory, but I’m not inside his head. He did say, “Mexico isn’t sending us their best people.”, as though it was some nefarious plot by a race of evil people that aren’t his honorable race, but that’s only my interpretation of his often just poorly-chosen words at the end of the day. I don’t know what his mind truly believes, but I do know how he acts. His administration enacted the most sweeping, cruel waves of deportation I’ve seen in my lifetime, and I thought Obama was harsh. Trump really tried to build that stupid fucking wall just to keep an entire kind of person out. He accused migrant families fleeing devastation of being covert violent drug cartels trying to infiltrate our peaceful country. He victim-blamed desperate refugees and encouraged his crazed followers to harm them. He detained innumerable people in concentration camps. He separated over 20 thousand migrant children from their families, and lost track of them. 20 thousand children unaccounted for, lost in a system that hates them, to a group of people that would traffic them. It isn’t what he said that mattered, it’s what he did, and he only ever behaved like he was racist against Mexicans. Isn’t it interesting then that white supremacists flocked to him? Trump became a symbol to them, and he embraced it, sending them constant dogwhistles that were so poorly executed they became a symphony of duck calls. If you can sincerely look me in the eyes and tell me Trump isn’t racist, you’re delusional. You simply must not believe that racism exists then. …or you know it does because you are one and you’re trying to hide it.
Thankfully, we still live in a country where racism is so frowned upon that racists have to disavow racism when caught in the act, but that’s only a start. There shouldn’t be racists in power. If you are bigoted against any group, and I’m talking actual bigotry and not just well-founded anger or suspicion learned from bad experiences, you should not be given any power over their lives. I feel insane for feeling like I have to say that. It should be common sense. It definitely is not, and definitely not in England, where horrifying news about an atrocity an immigrant committed prompts instant cries of, “ENGLAND IS LOST”. Instead of treating a bad apple as a bad apple, Brexit Britons want to throw out the whole bunch. It isn’t just inhumane, it’s batshit insane. Your brain has to be swollen with poison to want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Morrissey is fucking crazy. He’s bugnuts! He’s lost it! Look on his website, Morrissey Central, in the messages from Morrissey section. In between the tour photos, read what he writes. There’s one headline to a post, “GREAT SHOW TONIGHT NOT LIKE THE MUSIC INDUSTRY TOOK ANY NOTICE”. He’s the old man yelling at a cloud. He’s sipped the haterade for so long, his human decency has gone Jonestown. Read his eulogy to Sinead, he can’t even pay respects to a fellow indigo child of the Emerald Isle without turning it into a screed against “the woke mob”. He can’t go a whole eulogy without making it about himself. You’re not dead yet, pal! You do still have a career, and the music industry has never rescinded your platform. You’ve never really been persecuted, just rightly told off. Sinead was the “woke mob” you get all frothy about every time you unzip your yap. Sinead was the Joan of Arc you’ve always wished you were. If your Walkman is melting in the flames crawling up your feet, it’s self-immolation. For what? What is the cause you’re alienating half your fanbase over? You can’t even articulate it blatantly. Is it worth it? You can step down off the pyre any time, you would actually be welcomed if you did.

What I really hate about Morrissey isn’t even that I disagree with his politics fundamentally. What I really hate about Morrissey is that he’s just another sociopath who will never apologize. In other words, he’s just another bore. There’s nothing more abominable than that. White nationalists use dogwhistling to shift the Overton window until polite society is talking about tossing migrants fleeing a crisis out on their asses. Morrissey is trying to shift the Overton window in music journalism so everyone who is justified in simply not liking him is begging at his feet for an autograph. What if I just don’t want to like you after all you’ve done, Moz? Do I have that right, or am I now part of some insidious agenda?
Does Morrissey really want to return to some romanticized past era of England, when things were worse for Irish immigrants like his parents? I can’t help but think that what “Morrissey the For Britain voter” wants, as far as his reactionary impulses are concerned, is immaterial. What’s important is what “Morrissey the icon” needs to feel fed. Morrissey the mononymous once stood for something, something I respected as much as I respected Sinead O’Connor’s stances. Morrissey & Sinead were once the same kind of symbol, actually: empowerment to the disenfranchised. Sinead was a symbol for women, abused children, anyone who lives in a white-founded-or-occupied country but isn’t white themselves. Morrissey was a symbol for a smaller group whose plight is less urgent: shy kids who don’t fit in. Morrissey was a god to us, but we weren’t enough for him. It wasn’t enough to be a champion for unpopular kids, losers, subculture geeks, nerds, softbois. Martyrdom has always been his true aim, his actions over the last 30 years have proven that. But why? Why martyrdom of stardom? I have a theory. After The Smiths, he was afraid that without the band he made his name under, he would fade into obscurity. Maybe he did play around with fascism back in the day, maybe he just flirted with the National Front for attention. Maybe he truly believed in “England for the English!”, or maybe he’s just like African Americans waving Confederate flags: kowtowing to the heinous powers that be to save his own Irish hide. Maybe he started to chafe at his image as a vulnerable, brooding dandy. Maybe after years of browbeating in agonizing self-loathing, he started resenting the fans who loved him for it. The company you keep is who you are, and if you believe the people around you are the losers, you’re going to start to hate yourself along with them. And there aren’t any music awards just for writing compassionate songs, you don’t get worshiped for being a decent human being. As an artist, you risk trying to become only the traits you are praised for exhibiting. Your whole impetus can turn into fiending for accolades, especially if you’re insecure. Then when you slip up, when you inevitably out yourself as a flawed human just like the rest of us, you might choose the low road, because the high road doesn’t let you escape without showing genuine humility. After years of dodging the limelight you could’ve been thriving in for the relative anonymity of not having to own up to your bullshit, you become like a cave creature: adapted to the darkness, but squirming in the light. Morrissey is like the spawn of the Grinch & Gollum by now, I’m sorry as hell for that image, but it’s apt, I think. He’s poisoned by his unwillingness to let go of his hatred, no matter how much it hurts him. All he has to do is drop it, walk into the light. His heart may be shrunken, but it’s still there, still beating. It could grow a thousand sizes in one instant of acceptance, if he’d only welcome immigrants to Whoville. The difference between him & Sinead is really the difference between a martyr and a messiah complex, but he could be a genuine martyr, it’s just that that road is harder. (Hey, that actually sounds kinda like a Morrissey lyric…) It’s not too late for him to be a true friend to her and stop being the kind of person who persecuted her. This is an open invitation: Morrissey, step back into the light with us. We could use your unique tenderness tempered with protective sarcasm more than ever now.