Morrissey’s cancellation of his appearance on The Jimmy Kimmel Live! was only going to end badly, with a highly principled artist and a chat show host desperate to get a laugh out of anything, clashing in what, really, was the most tedious of ways.

As most of you probably know by now, staunch vegetarian Morrissey dropped out of his scheduled appearance on the show after discovering that Kimmel’s other guests were the Duck Dynasty, an American family who makes products for duck hunters. This provided ammunition for Kimmel to use when the show eventually came around on Tuesday (February 26, 2013); according to Slicing Up Eyeballs, Kimmel said that he sided with the Dynasty because ‘they had guns and Morrissey didn’t’, and also mocked the singer for repeatedly “finding ways to depress us”. The show also featured a skit where the Dynasty hunted for vegetables. 

Never one to back down, Morrissey has since issue a statement on fan site True To You, writing “I was disappointed with last night's Jimmy Kimmel Show wherein our smiling host managed to ridicule depression (70% of Americans have experienced depression according to the National Institute of Mental Health). He then found time to ridicule healthy eating (the obesity epidemic in the U.S. costs $147 billion per year in medical expenditure), and he also ridiculed the notion that animals should be entitled to the possession of their own lives.” 

Morrissey at Letterman 2013

Morrissey tore into Kimmel after Tuesday's show

Moz wasn’t done there: “Furthermore, he found time to jokingly promote gun-ownership - hugely amusing for the parents at Sandy Hook, no doubt. He also promoted his special guests Duck Dynasty - who kill beings for fun.” Continuing, he wrote “None of the above issues are, of course, as important as Jimmy Kimmel himself, who has finally revealed his show to have an overwhelming loss of meaning. Tune in and relive the intellectual fog of the 1950s.” Morrissey is supposed to be on a US tour, but has had to cancel several dates due to a bleeding ulcer. He resumed his scheduled last night in San Diego (February 27, 2013). Check out the Kimmel clip below.