NEW YORK -- Having swum in the choppy waters of gun control during his time at CNN, Piers Morgan waded into the even more turbulent rapids of race on Wednesday.
In a comment piece for the Mail Online, the former Mirror man took aim at raunchy songstress Nicki Minaj and a selection of “toxic firecracker” tweets she posted during the MTV Music Video Awards that led to an online brouhaha with fellow singer Taylor Swift. The thrust of Minaj’s tweets, according to Morgan, were that she didn’t get nominated for an award because she’s not thin and not white.
So far, who cares?
However, Morgan went on to attack “Back Twitter,” what he describes as an “aggressive social media group of mainly black Americans who collectively leap on any perceived racial insult or bias to expel their indignation.”
…and we're up and running.
Morgan claims he fell foul of “Black Twitter” on Tuesday after responding to a tweet from HuffPost Live presenter Marc Lamont Hill, saying, “All Black Lives Matter.”
Morgan responded by pointing out “All Lives Matter.”
Twitter responded with attacks ranging from reasoned to reactionary. Many just called Morgan a “white supremacists,” an even more loaded term (if that were possible) after the killing of nine African-Americans in Charleston last month.
Morgan concluded his column thus: “For Nicki Minaj, who is indisputably very talented, to play the race card just because her video didn’t get the nomination she wanted is a cheap piece of faux outrage deliberately designed to stir up unnecessary racial tension where it shouldn’t exist. Shame on you, Ms Minaj.”
The journalist's name has burned at the top of Twitter trends ever since.