Rumorz...and the Press Gets Thwarted (Again)

Since when is Morrissey Page Six material? Oh yeah—since there were rumors (made up, like the rest of The Times of London rumors, by The Times of London staff smoking doobies in the men’s room) that he had a HOTT gay liaison with another famous gay:

MORRISSEY is shooting down rumors that he had an affair with R.E.M. frontman Michael Stipe. "That's absolute [bleep], absolute [bleep], and I don't know why people ever said that. Do you?" Morrissey told The Times of London.

Yeah, I know why they said that. Because any time two gay celebrities are on the same continent at the same time, the obvious conclusion is that they’re having sex. And also because Mozza and Michael Stipe had a well-known written correspondence, about which they both spoke, and everyone knows that “letters” is gay code for rampant buttsex.

When asked to address the long-debated question of whether he's gay, straight or bisexual, the Pope of Mope replied, "It's neither of those things. I'm simply myself, which is inexcusable to many people. I'm not trapped by anything."

When will the media learn that he will never indulge their prurience? And why would he? His answering that question would bring to a screeching halt the longest-running sustained frustration ever of an annoying question repeatedly asked by the media. For more than two decades, they’ve been asking him if he’s gay, and for more than two decades, he’s been thwarting their efforts with evasive redirections, enigmatic innuendo, claims of celibacy, and Oscar Wilde quotes. (Hello? Get a clue.) In 1984, he said, “I refuse to recognise the terms hetero-, bi-, and homosexual. Everybody has exactly the same sexual needs. People are just sexual, the prefix is immaterial,” and has said variations on the same just about every year since.

Every Morrissey fan in the world knows he’s gay, and the names of many of his long-term boyfriends. It’s no secret. Morrissey just doesn’t believe he owes the media an answer about something that doesn’t bloody matter, which drives them crazy, especially because it isn’t a secret. They don’t understand why he won’t go “on the record” with something he takes no great pains to hide, but it’s the principle of the matter. He is, bar none, the greatest antagonist of the media, refusing at every turn to play any of the games celebrities are expected to play, and I love him desperately for it.

“I think the mission of most journalists is to expose me, because they have this notion that I’m totally fake—as though I’m secretly some mad sex monster. People are ready, in wait, for the cloak to drop and to see me photographed in the Playboy Club. They’re trying to unravel me.” — December 1984.

Now why on earth would he ever choose to be complicit with that, when endlessly foiling them is ever so much more fun?