Morrissey would like to extend his best wishes to all, even the haters and losers, on this special date, December 18. In an eight-minute “state of the union address” video uploaded via his nephew’s YouTube account, Morrissey complained about the insufficiently positive reception of his latest album, the overwhelming negative reaction to his sympathetic comments about sexual predators, and attacked “haters” in the media supposedly out to assassinate his character. Referring to a recent interview with Der Spiegl in which he was quoted blaming victims for sexual harassment, Morrisey said:
Suddenly, I was sympathizing with sexual harassment. I was apparently sympathizing with pedophilia, I was sympathizing with rape, I was sympathizing with everything that would persuade anybody on the planet to stop listening to me. Of course, none of those assumptions were true. I do not support anything like that. You can hear it even in the tone of my voice.
However, this is the world we now live in with the print media. It seems to me that, in the first place, they get very angry or very excited if you stop to say something that people are listening to or that reflect the will of the people. They get very nervous. They won’t allow it. They shut it down and so forth.
But also, it seems to me that, in England at the moment, the right wing has adopted a left wing stance, and the left wing has adopted a right wing stance, so everybody’s confused, and nobody seems to know what people mean. This shuts down free speech. This shuts down any open debate about anything. And consequently, we’re all in a mess, and we don’t know where we stand.
So I fear that the campaign for Low in High School and for the surrounding singles was derailed and damaged purposely by the haters. They’re not listening to the music. They’re not listening to anything, really. They see my name, and they want to get rid of it as quickly as possible. And as I said, in many ways, they do succeed. There’s not really that much you can do about it.
Morrissey goes on to say that, during his recent U.S. tour, he was “cross-examined by the American Secret Service, who were very, very nice.” He also blames this on Der Spiegl, calling it a “very, very sad” result of the paper’s decision to print his quotes. (Der Spiegel later released audio of the interview in response to Morrissey’s claim that his words were misrepresented.)
By the end of his video address Morrissey seems to propose that all negative press coverage is part of a nefarious plot to turn his existing audience against him, though it does seem he’s doing a perfectly effective job of that on his own.
