Piers Morgan is receiving some heat on Twitter for a tweet that eulogizes Larry King with an unusual choice of an anecdote. King, a seminal figure in late-night broadcast TV, passed away today at age 87 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. Ora Media, King's production company, didn't specify the cause of death. King had been diagnosed with COVID-19 in late December, for which he was treated with supplemental oxygen. King's son Chance Armstrong has confirmed the media giant's passing.
Morgan, also a well-known TV personality, has helmed a number of his own programs including Piers Morgan Live and Good Morning Britain, which he currently co-hosts with Susanna Reid. The British talk show host is infamous for making irreverent and off-color jokes in public forums that often miss the mark with audiences. Throughout various stints on popular reality shows like America's Got Talent and Britain's Got Talent, Morgan has been involved in a series of controversies and feuds that have earned him a reputation as a pugnacious and provocative public figure. Morgan has been an especially unpopular character on social media and has frequently been the target of the Twitterverse's ire and mockery.
Alongside others paying tribute to King's legacy, Morgan tweeted a somewhat odd anecdote about the late talk show host that drew scrutiny from Twitter users. To his credit, Morgan shared that King was a "hero of [his]" but went on to qualify that praise with a strange story about a conflict between the two broadcast anchors. Here's the controversial Tweet in question:
Larry King was a hero of mine until we fell out after I replaced him at CNN & he said my show was ‘like watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in your new Bentley.’ (He married 8 times so a mother-in-law expert) But he was a brilliant broadcaster & masterful TV interviewer. pic.twitter.com/1JsXeeZYEk
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) January 23, 2021
Critics observed a few oddities in Morgan's tribute that many found to be crass and disrespectful. Some noted that the story put Morgan at its center and specifically emphasized his own career success over King's, despite King's inarguably impactful legacy:
Imagine making someone else’s death about yourself.
— Ryan Knight 🌹 (@ProudSocialist) January 23, 2021
Piers Morgan is a professional troll. There is no barrel he will not scrape to get attention and we should all collectively ignore him.
— Talia Lee 🏳️🌈 (@Eelailatan) January 23, 2021
What’s the point of this tweet? Couldn’t you simply say that he was a brilliant broadcaster and masterful TV interviewer and it was a privilege to follow him on CNN? Would that have been so difficult?
— Paul Gundlach (@PaulSGundlach) January 23, 2021
Others took issue with Morgan's choice to share an indirect quote from King that could be taken as painting the host in a bad light. After Morgan's show replaced King's on CNN, he recalls that King compared watching Morgan's version of the show to "watching your mother-in-law go over a cliff in her new Bentley." In turn, Morgan makes a dig at King's complicated marital history, a joke Morgan later claimed King would have appreciated.
Despite what some consider to be a bungled eulogy, Morgan includes a sweet photo of the professional peers together and ends the tweet by acknowledging that King was a "brilliant broadcaster & masterful TV interviewer." Morgan has previously tweeted jokes that users found inscrutable, and it's possible that his intentions with this tweet were purer than they're being perceived. Morgan reminiscing about a time that King savagely roasted him may have been intended as a sign of respect. Hopefully, responding in kind by roasting King's multiple marriages was meant as a friendly ribbing made in good faith. Still, it's inarguable that Piers Morgan's "joke" was poorly timed at the very least.
Source: Piers Morgan/Twitter
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