(Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images)

Ever since L.A. declared November 10 to be Morrissey Day, it seems that the former Smiths frontman has been doing everything he can to disprove the idea that he’s worthy of such an honor. First there was the interview with German news outlet Spiegel Online, in which he expressed some suspiciously Trumpian views on the integrity of modern-day news media before defending Kevin Spacey by saying the charges against him were “ridiculous,” and that “when you are in somebody’s bedroom ... you have to be aware of where that can lead to.”

There’s a lot to unpack there, but we don’t really have the energy to do so right now. Instead, we’ll tell you that Morrissey then doubled down on his comments to the Sunday Times, then threw a temper tantrum and declared that he wouldn’t be giving any more print interviews when that went over poorly, then denied that he had said the more eyebrow-raising parts of the Spiegel Online interview at all, adding that his request to hear the “unchopped, un-fiddled with” audio of the interview had been denied.

Well, shortly after Morrissey called “FAKE NEWS!” on Spiegel Online’s parent outlet Der Spiegel, the paper went ahead and called his bluff by putting all 43 unedited minutes of its interview with him online. In the audio, Morrissey can be heard saying the statements quoted in the interview, elaborating on his position about how cracking down on sexual harassment is simply unfair to the romantics of the world: “To a point I [followed the accusations], but then it becomes a theater, and suddenly everybody’s guilty,” he says on the tape. “Anybody who has ever said to a person, ‘I quite like you,’ suddenly they’re being accused of sexual harassment.” He also goes on at length about the dangers of multiculturalism, and his belief that refugees have made Germany into “the rape capital of Europe.”


Meanwhile, in completely unrelated news that should in no way be interpreted as a parallel to what you just read above, earlier today, Donald Trump said he had “never met” the women accusing him of sexual harassment. Just a few hours later, photos and footage of Trump with several of them had emerged online.