Piers Morgan is facing backlash over his harsh criticism of tennis champion Naomi Osaka’s recent decision to not do any press while playing at this year’s French Open in order to prioritize her mental health.
Referring to her as “an arrogant spoiled brat whose fame and fortune appears to have inflated her ego to gigantic proportions,” Morgan’s column on Osaka was published on The Daily Mail’s site on May 31
After calling the 23-year-old “petulant,” and pointing out that the four-time Grand Slam champion is the highest paid female athlete in the world — making around $6,000 an hour — Morgan, 56, explained that he primarily took offense with “her frankly contemptible attempt to avoid legitimate media scrutiny by weaponizing mental health to justify her boycott.”
“This has got nothing to do with mental health,” he said of the tennis champion’s Instagram statement from last week that announced her plans to avoid sitting in for any required or optional press as she played at the French Open.
“What Osaka really means is that she doesn’t want to face the media if she hasn’t played well, because the beastly journalists might actually dare to criticize her performance.”
“And I’m sorry (not really…) if this offends any of the delicate little snowflakes out there who believe all this self-serving garbage,” Morgan went on, before adding, “but Osaka’s antics stink of a stupendous ego raging out of control.”
On Twitter on June 1, the former “Good Morning Britain” host followed up on the sentiment with a series of replies to those who criticized his especially mean-spirited remarks about Osaka.
In the midst of them, one of his tweets read, “Blocking a lot of wokies today. It’s for their own good – I’m bad for their snowflake sensitivities and bile-spewing spleens.”
Morgan’s stance follows Osaka being fined $15, 000 over the weekend at the tournament for standing by her choice. Almost simultaneously, it also strikes and the tennis star announced that she would be withdrawing from the competition altogether.
