Piers Morgan, the CNN host, aired an interview with trans author Janet Mock last night. During the interview, CNN aired a chyron claiming Mock "was a boy until age 18" and Morgan asked probing questions that implied Mock is somehow lying about her gender identity to people she has dated.
Mixed in a feed full of Twitter spats with his followers over English cricket, Morgan found time to draw a false equivalence between being getting tweeted at and being disrespected for one's identity, to tell a women's group to "pipe down," and strangely to tell Mock that he'd "deal with" her.
UPDATE: Morgan most recently has claimed to have been a "victim of cisphobia" -- a term he may well have coined to describe the apparent prejudice of trans people, a historically oppressed group, against cis people, a historically privileged one.
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Morgan's earlier tweets about Mock follow.
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Presumably, Mock did not have the psychic foresight to know what the chyron over her face would say when sitting in-studio, which was what she took offense at on Twitter.
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On Morgan went, ranting about Mock's perceived motives.
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Not satisfied with a hard day's work spent mocking the idea he might possibly have been wrong, Morgan decided to mock the very idea of anti-trans prejudice.
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Mock, who is returning to Morgan's show tonight, had the perfect reply, joined by "Orange Is the New Black" star Laverne Cox in a shared side-eye at Morgan's insinuation that the trans author had been a "boy" earlier in life.
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Who knows what Morgan's endgame is? He's consistently weird and vituperative on Twitter when challenged, but refusing to listen to anyone who suggests he might, maybe, have been in the wrong on this issue is a pretty good way to get dragged further. Morgan, perpetually challenged in the ratings and at a network whose new management has proven itself unafraid to change with the times, has certainly found an unusual way to get the public's attention.
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