Three Reasons to Hate Morrissey (and Four Reasons We Still Love Him Anyway)

By now, everyone's heard that dear old Moz called the entire population of China a subspecies in a recent interview with the Guardian. “Did you see the thing on the news about their treatment of animals
and animal welfare? Absolutely horrific. You can't help but feel that
the Chinese are a subspecies,” he said. Oh, Moz. When you put your foot in your mouth and say “the Chinese are a subspecies,” it makes us want to hate you, even though we really, really love you.

A look at various interviews Morrissey's done through the years reveal three other reasons to hate the self-deprecating geezer–and three other reasons we'll always ultimately forgive him for his perennial foot-in-mouth disease.

1.  He told NME in 2007 that he's against immigrants:
“Although I don't have anything against people from other countries, the higher the influx into England the more the British identity disappears. So the price is enormous. If you travel to Germany, it's still absolutely Germany. If you travel to Sweden, it still has a Swedish identity. But travel to England and you have no idea where you are.”

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2. He was mean to Madonna!

While
performing at a PETA benefit show in Norfolk, Virginia, July 9, singer
Morrissey dissed Madonna by saying, “I wouldn't be surprised if she
made that African boy she adopted into and a coat and wore him for 15
minutes, then threw it away.”


3. He told Melody Maker in 1986 that he detests contemporary black music:
“But, ultimately, I don't have very cast iron opinions on black music
other than black modern music which I detest. I detest Stevie Wonder. I
think Diana Ross is awful. I hate all those records in the Top 40 –
Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston. I think they're vile in the extreme. In
essence this music doesn't say anything whatsoever.”

That said, it's not like Morrissey's haterade is limited to other people–he's also  mastered turning self pity into art: “I see myself rather like an old discarded dishrag,” he told Select in 1994. This is why, despite the fact that he's mega-nega, we can name three reasons to still love him.

1. He practically invented irony. As he told Details in 1992:
“I have a grand and endless capacity to find myself
slightly ridiculous. I'm not pretending to be some wallowing prophet,
for heaven's sake. I think we all have to sit down and look in the
mirror and think, What is that absurd monstrosity?”

2. Moz is afflicted with miserableness (or, at the very least, the opposite of joie de vivre). And how can you hate someone like that?
As told to Q magazine in 1995: “I never enjoyed life in my twenties, not one minute of it. It was a
test of endurance that I'm surprised I survived. Professionally, of
course, I was doing very well but personally it couldn't have been
worse or more difficult for me if I'd been living in a mud hut in
Leeds.”

3. Unlike the rest of the human race, he shuns the need for love:
Morrissey told Nick Kent in the Face in 1990: “I don't have relationships at all. It's out of the question…Partly because I was always attracted to men or women who were never
attracted to me. And I was never attracted to women or men who were
attracted to me. So that's the problem. I've never met the right
person.”

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