Morrissey on the Olympics

Oh, does anyone much care what Morrissey has to say about the Olympics?

I am unable to watch the Olympics due to the blustering jingoism that drenches the event. Has England ever been quite so foul with patriotism? The "dazzling royals" have, quite naturally, hi-jacked the Olympics for their own empirical needs, and no oppositional voice is allowed in the free press.

It is lethal to witness. As London is suddenly promoted as a super-wealth brand, the England outside London shivers beneath cutbacks, tight circumstances and economic disasters. Meanwhile the British media present 24-hour coverage of the "dazzling royals", laughing as they lavishly spend, as if such coverage is certain to make British society feel fully whole. In 2012, the British public is evidently assumed to be undersized pigmies, scarcely able to formulate thought.

As I recently drove through Greece I noticed repeated graffiti seemingly everywhere on every available wall. In large blue letters it said WAKE UP WAKE UP. It could almost have been written with the British public in mind, because although the spirit of 1939 Germany now pervades throughout media-brand Britain, the 2013 grotesque inevitability of Lord and Lady Beckham (with Sir Jamie Horrible close at heel) is, believe me, a fate worse than life. WAKE UP WAKE UP.

Do you see? Morrissey isn't the Nazi, it's US who are the Nazis because of the Olympics.

I'm no fan of the Olympics - just imagine how many missions we could have had to Mars with nine billion quid - but most of today's newspapers have got massive front-page splashes of a Jamaican on the front. Blustering jingoism?

Down in the Olympic Park, orange-haired crowds of partying Dutch rub shoulders with Australian water poloists; Ukranian coaches try to not be glum and Moroccan athletes wander about, winding in and out dozens of different accents.

There's a coherent argument that can be made against the Olympics, but jingoism misses the national mood by a mile, while the "24 hours of royals" just seems like a random misapprehension perhaps grabbed by watching a few minutes of the wrong sport.

Maybe Beckham might land a knighthood, but does Morrissey really think he's going to be elevated to the Lords in the next year?

There was a time when we'd listen to Morrissey, and thought he had something worth hearing. But now he's just the Michael McIntyre of indie outrage; working up a routine floating on faux outrage. He knows he shouldn't like the Olympics, but can't work out why, so he whips up something half-heated, empty-hearted about Nazis and The Spice Girls and Princess Anne.