Piers Morgan Kardashian Hypocrisy

[Update at end of post]

Former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan once more mounted his high horse on ITV’s Good Morning Britain today, his chosen specialised subject being the Kardashians, that family famous for being Themselves Personally Now. “We need to be better, as a world, than idolising these cretinous individuals” he began, which may cause a little spontaneous mirth over at Private Eye magazine. And he wasn’t finished yet.

“Don’t we? Am I wrong, people?” he went on, co-host Susanna Reid biding her time, rather than telling him that yes, he was wrong. “The Kardashians, really, who don’t have a discernible talent between them … They are the most followed, most idolised people on this planet, the planet that used to idolise Marilyn Monroe, Ironstein [surely Einstein - ed.], Oliver Cromwell, The Beatles … and now we’re down to Kim Kardashian?”

But, sadly, this was a campaign destined to progress not necessarily to his advantage, as Ms Reid took advantage of the rant pause to remind Morgan “They run extremely profitable, successful businesses … they’ve made a ton of money, they’ve got millions of fans … they are reality show stars … that qualifies them to run for President”. Morgan almost choked on his coffee at the Trump analogy side-swipe.

The thought that the Kardashians have not yet featured in a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case will also not have gone down well with Morgan. But what marks him out as an ocean-going hypocrite is that his attitude to the Kardashians was so different when he needed the cachet of their brand and their presence, at the time that CNN was running Piers Morgan Tonight (later Piers Morgan Live) in its weekday 9pm Eastern slot.

Morgan took over that slot from veteran Larry King, also inheriting the declining ratings. Although the viewing figures for his very first show, when he persuaded Oprah to guest for him, were above expectations, the numbers soon fell away and he was back in third place in the cable news war behind Rachel Maddow at MSNBC and Sean Hannity at Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse). And that was where the Kardashians came in .

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By the second week of Piers Morgan Tonight, the ratings were bad and getting worse. So on the Thursday of that week, on were wheeled the Kardashians. Ratings did not improve. Nor did Morgan’s image: during the interview, he was reduced to questioning them about whether their breasts were real. And rather than tell him to fer-fer-fer-fer-forget it, Kim Kardashian humoured The Great Man: “They’re completely 100 per cent real”.

Bonnie Fuller at the HuffPo commented “I know the Kardashian sisters are extremely open about their lives … but there was something incredibly creepy about a 45-year-old man staring at their breasts on a national talk show and demanding relentlessly to know whether they were real or fake”. And now there’s something incredibly hypocritical, too.

Piers Morgan was grateful enough to work his way “down to Kim Kardashian” when he needed the ratings. Now he’s got himself a nice little earner at ITV, it’s so very different.

[UPDATE 1730 hours: the interview Morgan did with Kim and Kourtney Kardashian also features the hugely embarrassing revelation that he begged them for help to get more Twitter followers. Not that he's for telling GMB viewers. You can see that segment on YouTube - right HERE]