Never one to refrain from saying something incredibly offensive, Morrissey took some time out of his otherwise touching tribute to the late Richard Attenborough and Lauren Bacall to criticize the media's focus on Robin Williams' suicide. In a post made to his website True To You yesterday, Morrissey expressed some disappointment that Bacall's death on Aug. 12 was overshadowed by Williams' death the day before.
After opening the statement with a tribute to actor and director Richard Attenborough, who passed away on Aug. 24 at age 90, Morrissey then paid his respects to the late actress Lauren Bacall. "I also had the extraordinary pleasure of meeting the recently deceased Lauren Bacall..." the former Smiths singer recalled, before making one of his trademark unnecessarily mean-spirited comments.
"So beautiful, so cautious...and so sad that her death was overshadowed by that of Robin Williams. It was Lauren, not Robin, who changed motion picture history. Yet modern media has an odd way of forgetting the more senior servers of the arts."
Sure, it may have been unfortunate that the overwhelming shock of Robin Williams' suicide caused the media to largely ignore Lauren Bacall's death, but most people managed to pay tribute to her without insulting Williams' legacy, so there's no reason Morrissey couldn't have done the same.
Closing out the statement, Morrissey addressed his disappointment one last time, writing, "However, in our x-factory society, it seems that anyone who has NOT appeared on Big Brother just isn't worth remembering by the British media...alas." I love Morrissey's music, but I'm secretly hoping now that the Queen dies the day before he does.
