Baby-carrier hating Morgan deserves the scorn he’s getting online
Conventional wisdom suggests that if someone is an internet troll, he lives in his parents’ basement and seldom sees the light of day. But conventional wisdom is wrong, as usual, because the king of the internet trolls is not a cave-dwelling millennial who subsists on Doritos, but a 53-year-old man who meets the sun each morning as a host on “Good Morning Britain.”
I’m talking about Piers Morgan, the TV personality who appears to love nothing more than pissing people off; a man so committed to the task you have to wonder if his life depends on it. Morgan, a former tabloid editor with a long history of highprofile feuds (he’s had it out with the likes of Janet Mock, J.K. Rowling, Trevor Noah and Emily Ratajkowski), picked an unusual target for his most recent Twitter outburst: the papoose, a.k.a., the child carrier.
Morgan doesn’t object to the object itself, but rather to the fact that men — even “manly” men — have been known to carry their infants in it. And why wouldn’t they? If a person has a baby and they have errands to run, it’s only logical they would choose to go about their day hands free. A baby carrier allows parents to do this.
Morgan, however, would prefer it if the fathers of the world inconvenienced themselves in the service of manliness (or his own warped idea of it) by rejecting the child carrier altogether. He believes men should hold babies the old-fashioned way — in their hands, presumably like footballs. Not even James Bond himself is safe from Morgan’s machismo monitoring. This week the host tweeted the following, alongside a photo of Bond actor Daniel Craig carrying his baby daughter on his chest, in a papoose: “Oh 007. not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond.”
You’ll never believe what happened next. Well, of course you will. People got really, really mad and immediately proceeded to put Morgan in his place.
But what’s interesting and heartening is who exactly did the majority of the online scolding. It wasn’t, by and large, women lecturing Morgan about sexism and outdated gender norms. It wasn’t mothers defending fathers. Rather, it was papoosewearing dads who took to social media to admonish Morgan and post photos of themselves proudly lugging their kids around in child carriers. Better still is that many of the men who corrected Morgan happen to be some of the most traditionally macho souls in existence.
Chris Evans, the actor who plays Captain America, shot back at the “Good Morning Britain” host on Twitter, writing: “You really have to be so uncertain of your own masculinity to concern yourself with how another man carries his child. Any man who wastes time quantifying masculinity is terrified on the inside.”
Australian mixed martial artist Alexander Volkanovski, a man whose nickname is literally “The Hulk,” chimed in, too. He posted a photo of himself carrying his daughter in a baby carrier alongside the caption: “#emasculatedUFCfighter en route to Thailand, did my whole fight camp with her in the papoose … she finished camp unscathed!”
It probably didn’t occur to Morgan that baby carriers make life a lot easier, not only for those who want to go grocery shopping, walk the dog and feed the parking metre, but for those who want to punch an opponent in the head. Piers was, unsurprisingly, quick to clap back at his critics.
“Britain used to be a country where people debated such matters with gusto, humour & civility,” he tweeted. “PapooseGate perfectly personifies how pathetically self-righteous, hysterical & humourless the Twitter mob has become.”
In reality though, it “personifies” exactly the opposite: It proves that the internet, and in this case the “Twitter mob,” can be a source of immeasurable good.
The news is depressing these days, if not terrifying. But it’s nice to know that despite the daily proclamations of doom — women are screwed, the planet is screwed, we’re all screwed — teenage boys are growing up in a world where the archetypes of masculinity — James Bond, Captain America and a UFC fighter known as “The Hulk” — are vocal champions of carrying babies close to their hearts. And the guy opposed to this natural act is, in the eyes of today’s youth, a nobody. Heroes: 1. Troll: 0.