When Piers Morgan met Benedict Cumberbatch: a one-sided spat?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/04/piers-morgan-benedict-cumberbatch-oscars

Version 0 of 1.

This year’s Academy Awards ceremony has had a strange footnote, leaving observers of the cinema and celebrity scene a little perplexed.

There is a diplomatic froideur between Piers Morgan and Benedict Cumberbatch – although the Oscar-nominated actor may still be unaware of this situation. In a column for the Mail On Sunday, Morgan alleged that after they exchanged cordial words on the way to Harvey Weinstein’s lavish pre-Oscars dinner in Beverly Hills, Cumberbatch called him an “odious man” behind his back – although Morgan concedes he never heard those words himself.

Later, Morgan cut Cumberbatch dead: “I blanked him – deliberately, coldly and in a way that could leave no room for misinterpretation.” It is not clear how devastating Cumberbatch found this retaliation. But could Morgan have been overreacting? On the same evening, Morgan was evidently reconciled with John Legend and Kelsey Grammer, with whom he had also quarrelled on separate issues. So perhaps Morgan wants to build Cumberbatch into the same emotional narrative of breaking up and making up. But for the time being, things are icy: “Mr Cumberbatch needs to reflect on his duplicitous actions. If not for me, then for my mother, who will be distraught when she reads this.” That is startling: the equivalent of a glove-slap across the face. Surely Cumberbatch cannot be accused of giving offence to Morgan’s extended family? We need a peace process.

Droning on

Once again, drones are at the top of the news agenda: there is widespread dismay at the popularity of the Parrot Bebop drone. At £430, this is the hi-tech gift for the Peeping Tom who has everything. Guiding it with your smartphone, you can theoretically fly the drone into your neighbour’s back garden, up to the window, and video what you see. Then you upload the video to YouTube. All entirely legal.

Police and MPs are up in arms. It does sound mouthwateringly wicked. Until you remember the experience you’ve already had buying pricey remote-controlled toy helicopters for your 10-year-old. The people in the shop make it look easy. But before you have any success, it has to crash repeatedly on to the pavement from about 30 feet – leaving you with an expensive heap of crumpled, twitching metal. Buyers of the Parrot drone will experience the equivalent of handing over £430, taking it out of the box and hitting it about a dozen times with a concrete breeze block until it explodes.

The real English vice

Interviewed for BBC Radio 4’s World at One, Alan Bennett was asked what the English excelled at, and he coolly replied – hypocrisy. “Take London: we extol its beauty and its dignity while at the same time we’re happy to sell it off to the highest bidder.”

Sounds right to me. But Bennett is guilty of slipping into the “we/they” evasion of opinion-mongers everywhere: the sneaky practice of saying we when you mean they. Bennett clearly does not include himself among those happy for London to be sold off, or those who endorse selling off public libraries while eulogising Shakespeare – or all the other English hypocrisies he cites.

The we/they evasion is a pseudo-disarming tic. Rightwingers do it too: “We are all too happy to let political correctness corrupt our schools … we are content to let soft drug use undermine public order …” In the same interview, Bennett said he did not exempt himself from these criticisms: “I’m English; I’m a hypocrite.” But of course, he can’t exempt himself. If he did, then taking a moral position against hypocrisy would be valueless and meaningless. Bennett is a brilliant writer. But if hypocrisy is the English vice, false modesty might come a close second.