Punching downwards

*NEW COLUMN* Narcissistic Naomi’s cynical exploitation of mental health to silence the media is right from the Meghan & Harry playbook of wanting their press cake and eating it.

So reads a tweet from the TV presenter and polemicist Piers Morgan, plugging his article in today’s Daily Mail. It’s a hurtful piece about the tennis player Naomi Osaka who has announced she will no longer attend press conferences in order to protect her mental health. This is what Ms Osaka wrote on Instagram:

‘I’ve often felt that people have no regard for athletes mental health and this rings very true whenever I see a press conference or partake in one. We’re often sat there and asked questions that we’ve been asked multiple times before or asked questions that bring doubt into our minds and I’m just not going to subject myself to people that doubt me. I’ve watched many clips of athletes breaking down after a loss in the press room and I know you have as well. I believe that whole situation is kicking a person while they’re down and I don’t understand the reasoning behind it. Me not doing press is nothing personal to the tournament and a couple of journalists have interviewed me since I was young so I have a friendly relationship with most of them. However, if the organizations think that they can just keep saying, ‘do press or you’re gonna be fined’, and continue to ignore the mental health of the athletes that are the centerpiece of their cooperation than I just gotta laugh.’

This was too much for Morgan who read it with ‘mounting fury’, adding, with the knowledge you might expect from a trained therapist, ‘this has got nothing to do with mental health.’ It goes without saying that if Morgan really was furious he should urgently take an anger management course, but he isn’t really. He just wants attention. He’s the narcissist’s narcissist.

I know nothing about Osaka so I have to take her word for it that she suffers from long bouts of depression. And I am happy to take her word for it. Why on earth would you say you were suffering from an illness if you weren’t? In the end, it’s all about who you really believe. A brilliant tennis player or a temperamental provocative polemicist known for attacking successful women (often of colour, by the way)?

I suppose we could simply ignore Morgan’s hateful comments, but would that be the right thing to do? Unfortunately, he plays to a large audience in the Mail and, when he is not flouncing off in a fit of pique after being called out by a weather man, on TV and there are a lot of people who like what he has to say. ‘He tells it like it is,’ say many people. However, when he turns his fire on someone with mental health issues, it’s potentially more damaging, not just to the victim but everyone else who has issues.

As I write with increasing frequency, attitudes to mental health are, by and large, not changing. There is still a stigma and there is still a perception with many that illnesses like depression and anxiety are little more than people being fed up ‘and we all get fed up from time to time’.

If I’d been a talented tennis player who found press conferences too much for my mental health to bear, I’d act like Osaka and invite the venomous writing of Morgan (although he seems far more preoccupied with successful women than men, so maybe not).

I’d go so far as to say that Morgan represents everything that’s wrong with Britain today. He’s always angry, he’s intolerant, he’s a loudmouth, he hates. All of which probably makes him a good fit for the Daily Mail.

I’m sure Naomi Osaka reads my blog religiously every day so I hope I have cheered her up with my words of support, not that cheering someone up has anything to do with depression, but you knew that already.

I would love to see a kinder, gentler country but that’s as far away now than it ever was. And Piers Morgan is doing all he can to keep it that way, punching downwards as he always does. And that’s what bullies always do.