In case you don’t know, Morrissey is the former lead singer of The Smiths and now a solo artist and professional curmudgeon. He is an animal-rights advocate to the exception of almost everything. Like, he sort of believes that a mass human genocide should happen just so animals can rise up and take back the earth. He holds very strong (some would say extreme) views about hunting, gun ownership, America, music, and of course, the British royal family. He has a particular hate-on for the royals and he occasionally provides some of the most amazing/unhinged quotes about them. One of the things he hates the most about the royals? The fact that they hunt. So of course Morrissey had many, many thoughts about Prince William’s interview last week, where William said he thought it was alright to kill some animals if those animals were old and infirm. Or if they were boars, pheasants or what have you. You can read Morrissey’s full comments here (he even included a Photoshopped image of the royal family’s heads-as-trophies).

If Prince William were black: “If ‘Prince’ William had endorsed shooting and killing this week, as he has, but ‘just happened’ to be black, not only would the media blast him to oblivion, but he would also be arrested and would have his many, many firearms confiscated. Obviously gun laws only exist in order to enforce upon people who are poor.”

William is dense: “William The Terrible laments the fact that many species will be wiped out by the time his daughter is 25 (by which he means ‘she will have nothing to kill’), yet he is too dense to realize that species are mainly being wiped out by people such as himself and his even-dimmer brother. William laments on behalf of his daughter, yet he doesn’t understand that all of the animals that he kills for fun are also daughters and sons and parents.”

On the killing of older animals: “William, why endorse the killing of anything? What is it about you that cannot survive without killing? If any animal living freely can manage to survive to reach an ‘old age’, why shoot it? Should it not be cherished for its determination against born killers such as ‘Prince’ William?”

William needs to go away: “William, please go away – to any of the many other islands owned by your grandmother. Go there. Stay there. Spare us of your children, and for your own sake, say not another word. You are an intellectual embarrassment.

The royal family: “[They have] no social use, are infirm, lazy, useless, unemployable and are also England’s most famous benefit scroungers – on whom the Conservative government are apparently determined to crack down.”

[From Morrissey’s statements to his fansite]

He apparently wrote another post – which I cannot find on the fansite – called “William The Terrible: idiot eternal,” wherein Morrissey asks if William “claims it is OK if the animal is infertile or past its best… Since all of these terms apply to ‘the Queen’, is William suggesting that she, too, should be shot?”

While Morrissey is definitely on the extreme end of things, it’s worth noting that there was widespread head-shaking and tut-tutting about William’s interview last week. I understood what he was trying to say, that some African conservation efforts are financially supported by wealthy Westerners paying big money to hunt and kill any of the big animals. But William’s message was pretty convoluted, and the message is utterly lost on people like Morrissey who don’t see any reason why the royals have to engage in any kind of bloodsport.

Photos courtesy of WENN.