The television presenter Piers Morgan hasn’t made a career out of being nice, but his attack on Meghan Markle on British breakfast TV on Monday morning was particularly mean.
He laid into Meghan for having the temerity to write empowering messages of love and support on bananas that were going to be distributed to sex workers as part of food packages, during a visit to charity One25, which supports women involved in sex work in Bristol.
Meghan, acting on impulse, wrote on the skins of the bananas phrases such as, “You are loved,” “You are special,” and “You are strong.”
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It was perhaps a slightly more emotionally expressive way of doing things than the queen might have chosen, but few could doubt Meghan's good intentions.
Except, perhaps, Morgan.
Having previously attacked Meghan on Twitter for the gesture, Morgan then used his TV platform to do the same.
In an extraordinary and puerile comment, which one can only assume referred to the phallic shape of bananas, Morgan said: “Giving a sex worker a banana is clearly exposing them to potential mockery.
“If you had been advising Meghan Markle before this and she said, ‘I’ve got a great idea, I’m going to give a load of sex workers who are really struggling at the moment signed bananas,’ would you have said, ‘Maybe not the bananas?’”
One talking head on the show attempted to defend Markle’s actions, saying that Morgan’s extraordinary position of privilege and power made his attacks on someone seeking to provide a modicum of support to vulnerable and exploited sex workers inappropriate.
But Morgan deliberately missed the point and used the opportunity to cut across the ‘guest,’ shouting at her about Markle’s privilege.
“You mean Meghan Markle is [privileged], she’s living in a palace! You couldn’t get any more privileged than that!” he yelled.
He went on to call the messages ‘patronizing’ and continued ridiculing Markle for her effort.
Just when it seemed things couldn’t get any more unnecessarily nasty, Morgan then produced a pen and a few bananas and began writing his own ‘messages’ to Meghan on bananas.
“Hand me my sharpie,” Morgan declaimed in faux theatrical tones, “My moment has come to empower sex workers.”
He then wrote, “Man up,” on a banana.
However, not for the first time, it seems Morgan may be out of sync with the mood of the British people, who were quick to come in, by a large margin, on Meghan’s side.
