The Boy With the Stick Up His Ass

The only thing more inflated than his hair is his ego

"Hair of the Dog" - Nazareth
(from Hair of the Dog, 1975)

I like indie rock, ergo I'm a fan of the Smiths. However, something tasted sour about Morrissey's recent reemergence into the velvet blue of the spotllight. Perhaps its that the '80s Thatcherite England antihero has recast himself in the mold of the crusty crooning Vegas whore. Yeah, that was definitely part of it. Also, the solipsistic melodrama of songs like "How Could Anybody Possibly Know How I Feel" may have been fetching when Moz was in his twenties, but in his post-cocaine bloated forties, it wields all the emotional heft of a high school poetry professor's diary.

So leave it to Stephen to prove himself the once and future King of Self-Righteous Prigs when he declared war on Canada the other day. Like Paul "My Employees Are Contractual Vegans" McCartney before him, Morrissey is taking Canada to task for its annual seal cull by refusing to tour and urging a boycott of Canadian goods.

I'm not here to debate beating baby seals - though let's face it, if a baby seal had a face like a baboon's ass, no one would give a fuck. (Not to mention that, evironmentally, there are bigger fish to fry.) But let's have a quick look at the light in which Morrissey cast the Canadian government for sanctioning the seal cull:

"The Canadian Prime Minister also states that the slaughter is necessary because it provides jobs for local communities, but this is an ignorant reason for allowing such barbaric and cruel slaughter of beings that are denied life simply because somebody somewhere might want to wear their skin. Construction of German gas chambers also provided work for someone - this is not a moral or sound reason for allowing suffering.

...As things stand, Canada has placed itself alongside China as the cruelest and most self-serving nation."

Let me run that by you again: Hunting baby seals is morally equivalent to THE HOLOCAUST. Yeah. And apparently, we Canucks exhibit as little compassion and willingness to compromise as the world's largest military oligarchy.

This coming from a man who, for the past seven years, has maintained a residence in the United States - a country run by war criminals which also happens to be Morrissey's largest market. It's good to see some of that country's demagoguery and baldfaced hypocrisy have rubbed off on him.

Asshole.