Yes, Piers Morgan, James Bond would totally wear a baby sling

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/16/piers-morgan-james-bond-baby-sling-daniel-craig-007 James Bond Stuart Heritage The breakfast TV contrarian is at it again, tweeting off about Daniel Craig (or 007) being emasculated by a papoose No baby slings or bananas: are these the new fragile masculinity rules? @stuheritage Tue 16 Oct 2018 15.08 BST Last modified on Wed 17 Oct 2018 00.50 BST Piers Morgan in typically combative mode on Good Morning Britain with Alastair Campbell and Susanna Reid. Photograph: Ken McKay/ITV/Rex/Shutterstock Responding to a Piers Morgan tweet is always a bad idea, because it’s exactly what he wants. The man spends his entire life spurting all manner of convictionless takes up into the atmosphere, purely because he gets to gleefully slurp up all the negative energy they create, like a donkey trying to get the last drop of custard from the trough. But sometimes it’s unavoidable. Sometimes the deafening crack of Piers Morgan’s brittle masculinity is too loud for even the most stoic among us to ignore. And so it was yesterday, when Morgan tweeted a picture of Daniel Craig carrying his newborn baby in a sling, hooting: “Oh 007.. not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond” in accompaniment. Piers Morgan ✔ @piersmorgan Oh 007.. not you as well?!!! #papoose #emasculatedBond Now, there’s quite a lot to unpack here. It’s probably best for everyone if I just did a numbered list of my grievances. 1. James Bond is an alcoholic rapist in a girdle. Maybe let’s not use him as a role model for our parenting ideals, eh? 2. Also, that isn’t James Bond, Piers. That’s Daniel Craig, an actor who plays James Bond in some films. This misunderstanding of the basic concept of fiction is nothing less than tragic. If you ever see Piers Morgan on the street, yelling at a car because it won’t change into a Transformer, please don’t be scared. Give him a hot drink, put a blanket around his shoulders and call his carer, Susanna Reid. 3. James Bond would totally wear a baby sling. Let’s break this one down into subsections: a) James Bond drives around in impractical cars that almost definitely don’t have Isofix connections fitted to the backseat as standard, so it’s not like he can drive his kids around. Sean Connery as James Bond in Goldfinger. Definitely no room for a babyseat in there. Photograph: Everett Collection / Rex Feature b) James Bond wouldn’t push his baby about in a pram either, because he’d have to park it and leave it somewhere safe whenever he wanted to do any of that tinpot bullshit body-double parkour that he’s suddenly really into, which would be a faff. c) With a baby attached safely to his chest, James Bond could quite easily perform most of the nonsense he’s famous for. Getting blackout drunk, murdering people, being genuinely horrible to women, going yellowface for a laugh, that sort of thing. In fact, the only behaviour that a sling might prohibit is getting naked and forcing himself on people while they are in the shower, like he did in Skyfall. But, you know, that might not be such a bad thing. 4. I’ve worn a sling with both of my kids. And they are honestly the greatest. Not only do they give you a much smaller footprint than a buggy – which means you can easily take them on public transport – but they fold down to nothing, and the warmth of your body makes your kids instantly go to sleep. They’re an invention that Q would be proud of, except that they weren’t created for the express purpose of murdering foreigners. 5. Plus, it’s just like wearing a weighted vest if you’re fragile enough about your masculinity to have to rationalise this sort of thing that desperately. Additionally, you will never be surrounded by more adoring women than the first time you take a baby out in a sling, if you’re so fragile about your masculinity that you need to maintain a direct psychic link between your baby and your genitals for some reason. 6. From a subsequent tweet, it appears that Piers Morgan would prefer it if dads carried their kids around on their shoulders instead. Daniel Craig’s daughter is one month old, and lacks the strength to hold her own head upright. If he put her on his shoulders she’d flop about like a rag doll and he’d definitely be in prison for it. 7. And anyway, real men can do both at once. 8. Piers Morgan doesn’t mean it. Piers Morgan doesn’t mean anything he says. He’s made his living as a hip-shooting contrarian and now he’s trapped there, formulating and farting out increasingly desperate takes to buoy up the notoriety that’s been waning ever since he traded CNN for an ITV breakfast show. He can’t ever say anything nice about anything, even though he’s probably perfectly decent in person, because then he wouldn’t get any clicks. Clicks, all the time, no matter what, give him clicks, wonderful clicks, more clicks, in exchange for his soul. What I’m trying to say is that Piers Morgan is Click Gollum. 9. Idris Elba would 100% wear a papoose. Idris Elba, who was rumoured to be in the running to play Bond. Photograph: Yui Mok/PA • Stuart Heritage writes about film, TV and music for the Guardian