Let's hear it for Piers Morgan. No, really

No one, perhaps least of all the cocky one himself could probably believe it when CNN offered him the chance to sit in Larry King's chair as their front line celebrity interviewer. Larry himself was considered next door to canonisation by the time he retired (I was never sure why; he always seemed too safe, if you understand me), and Piers was just some overconfident Brit with a lot of celebrity connections, but still he got the job, despite his embarrassment following the fake soldier story he signed off on in the Daily Mirror where he was editor at the time.


Now he has been fired again, this time apparently over poor ratings. But that isn't the whole story. Ratings have been falling all over cable television in America recently, and now some are wondering whether it might not have been more to do with his banging on about two issues very close to America's heart, and about which they don't take kindly to criticism. They are, of course, the famous 2nd Amendment, which permits every citizen the right to bear arms, and their ludicrous health system, which allows upwards of 40 million Americans to have no health care at all, in what remains the world's richest country. So, Piers may well have said, you can have a gun, but you can't get health care unless you stump up the cash- and if you haven't got that, you can just go away and die. Thus he was in sharp contrast to two Brits who have done rather better on the other side of the Herring Pond, viz. Posh and Becks, who whatever else they have done, have not ventured into such contentious areas.


These issues were frequently aired by PM, and I suspect it was these which led to his downfall.
So, although there is much to revile about the man, maybe we should cut him a little slack on this one. And don't worry, he'll be back soon, with a new chat show or whatever. You can't keep a good man down. Or Piers Morgan.