Then thinks better of it…
“The [NME] has criticised [Morrisey], 48, for allegedly telling a reporter Britain had lost its identity due to high levels of immigration. The singer’s manager has accused the NME of ‘character assassination’.
“The magazine quoted Morrissey allegedly saying: ‘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.’”
That was my best 9/10 friend’s nickname for Morrisey, whose appeal has ever eluded me. Especially his — are you sitting down? — sizable US Latino fan base:
Of Morrissey’s most arduous fans today, the southwestern-US-based Latino audience which turned up to see The Sweet & Tender Hooligans that night — as they do on many occasions, regardless of whether it’s to see the real Morrissey or an imitation — are undoubtedly the most devout. When the crowd chanted “Mexico! Mexico!” at an off-the-beaten-track Morrissey concert in the desert town of Yuma, Arizona a few years ago, trying to get Morrissey to acknowledge that the majority of the audience was Latino, the singer responded by saying: “I’m going to sing a couple more songs then all of you can go back to Mexicali.” The convention center auditorium ricocheted with cheers. “Only one white man in the world — and he’s not the Pope — can tell a group of Mexicans in the United States to return to Mexico and not only avert death, but be loved for saying so,” wrote journalist Gustavo Arellano in an article about Morrissey’s Latino fans in the pop culture ‘zine LoopdiLoop.
Morrissey’s “Latino connection” has been a source of amusement and confusion to journalists who cannot quite see how this skinny, effete Englander with his oblique references to dank Manchester cemeteries could appeal to the traditionally macho, sun-kissed Latino culture...
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