I know you don't want to discuss it, but just for clarification: the "Norma Desmond/Howard Hughes" thing wasn't intended as an insult. For me, it signifies someone who completely detaches from convention and mundane success (looniness optional, but eccentricity desired). I think I've compared Morrissey in a similar vein to Greta Garbo as well as one of my absolute favorites, Syd Barrett. Barrett held so much mystique for me when I was young, in those pre-internet days when rarities and bootlegs and snippets of gossip could cultivate a genuine cult of enigma. Morrissey has always had that quality for me, too, impressively even while still being an active artist. It seemed like he was becoming truly impenetrable, reclusive, and aloof for a while there, and I saw that as a kind of positive. What I'm trying to say is, I love a funeral for a pet monkey. Norma Desmond probably wouldn't cavort with giggly young scenesters because she'd think they didn't deserve her, and she'd be right. I don't think they deserve Morrissey either, but that choice is his.
Ok, well, understooo. All I can say then is, to each their own. I have been around here on and off and in various guises for more years than I care to remember or to admit, and in that time i have watched everybody here, and all those who came before, call him anything and everything under the sun, accuse him of anything and everything in the universe, make up things, repeat things that weren’t true, invent things, and back to insults of every variety for every day of the year and back again, through to interminable sniggering and “liking” of other posters also equally idiotic comments and insults towards him. And in the context of all of that as the backdrop, to me, the howard hughes/norma desmond comment was i thought, one of the most obscene that i’ve seen being thrown at him around here, yet.
It’s a truly revolting, abysmally derisive, and abominable comparison. When anybody says something along the lines of “so and so is in their howard hughes/norma desmond phase”, it boggles my mind how that could be said
without meaning to convey all of the most degrading and most stomach-turning facets of each of those two individuals demises.
There is nothing neutral, or charming, or quaintly eccentric about howard hughes or norma desmonds respective downward spirals. They are not exclusively, or even primarily, associated with innocuous reclusively - as it appears to me that you’re saying now would be one of the main reasons you mentioned them.
They are associated with rampant alcoholism, with extreme drug abuse of the most destructive kinds, with psychotic paranoia, with other kinds of abuses and proclivities, and with grotesquely frightening, devolving horror-show clown caricatures of their former selves which invited nothing but horror and ridicule from audiences, from their former fans, and from anyone and everyone who even looked in their directions.
With everything Morrissey already has been and will continue to be called, I very rarely if ever get into any kind of contradictory back and forth with anyone to defend him over things that he’s gets insulted with - first because if anyone wanted to do that it would be more than a full time job. Second, because i consider the people who make the kinds of comments i’m talking about to not even be worth the shortest retort from me, let alone anything else. It’s like by proxy below even Morrissey, for anyone to be engaging with the level of cretinism of here even in defense on his behalf. But the howard hughes / norma desmond thing was truly one of the worst, to me.
You’re certainly allowed to say whatever you want. And i do accept your comment at absolute face value that somehow you don’t think it was even an insult at all. I’m sure there will be any number of people here who will also agree with you. I’m just not one of them.