Morrissey has written an open letter on the fanzine True To You sticking the boot into the media coverage of Thatcher’s death, report Pitchfork.
Whatever you think of him, this particular shoe pie is an eloquent piece of writing, taking on first the worryingly canonising tone adopted by the BBC and other media outlets. Says Morrissey: "[the news] reports [are] so dangerously biased and full of intolerant menace that we now wonder how we can possibly believe anything that has ever been recorded in British history books. The coverage by the British media of Thatcher’s death has been exclusively absorbed in Thatcher’s canonization to such a censorial degree that we suddenly see the modern British establishment as an uncivilized entity of delusion, giving the cold shoulder to truth, and offering indescribable disgust to anyone unimpressed by Thatcher."
He castigates the BBC for "reporting not on how things actually are on British streets, but on how they would prefer things to be", adding: "The Daily Mail and The Guardian have a steadfast message for us: You are nothing."
Elsewhere, he touches on the Metropolitan Police’s approach to tackling protesters, the vastly inflated budget for the funeral and David Cameron’s own response to any voices critical of Thatcher: "the protestors outside are simply not being British, or, even worse, are probably from Liverpool".
He returns to the BBC to point up the fact that Mark and Carol Thatcher were given platforms on the news at the same time that protesters were being arrested – "Sir Mark Thatcher (Sir!), unseen since the disgrace of his involvement in selling arms to countries at odds with Britain (magically, he avoided a 15-year prison term and was financially bailed out by his mother – her moral conscience nowhere in sight as Sir Mark patriotically took his 64 million and fled to Gibraltar having been refused entry to Switzerland and Monaco. What kind of mother raised such a son?)" – before a final run, stating: "The truth sleeps as the heartlessness of Thatcher is re-written as a strength".
Read the letter in full here.
