Piers Morgan cleared by UK regulator after nearly 1,000 complaints pour in after he made fun of gender-neutral penguin
Piers Morgan — co-host of "Good Morning Britain" — has been speaking out strongly of late against left-wing ideology.
Last month, he blasted the co-founder of radical climate crisis group Extinction Rebellion as a hypocrite for not reducing her "own carbon footprint" while telling others to do so and tore into an Extinction Rebellion protester who was dressed as, er, broccoli.
And in August he appeared on a Sunday program hosted by The Daily Wire's Ben Shapiro and ripped fellow liberals who've "become utterly, pathetically illiberal" and have embraced a "version of fascism."
Now what?
In that vein, Morgan apparently had it up to here during a September GMB broadcast that featured the arrival of a gender-neutral penguin at London's Sea Life, which prompted Morgan to announce that he was now identifying as a "two-spirit penguin" — a reference to a "two-spirit person" as one of 100 genders, Metro UK reported.
"What are you doing to these kids? What's a two-spirit person? What's wrong with male and female out of interest?" he asked, the outlet said. "I'm a penguin. Identifying as a two spirit penguin. Everyone happy with that?"
Oh boy.
As you might expect, the woke crowd didn't take too kindly to Morgan's jab at gender-neutrality, and the outlet said Ofcom — the UK's communications regulator — received almost 1,000 complaints from viewers over the host's jab.
Not to worry
Well, Metro UK noted in a follow-up piece that Morgan was cleared this week and that Ofcom wouldn't investigate him — which amused the host greatly, as he read the findings on-air.
"Thank you, Ofcom, and thank you to those who complained — you have empowered me," he said relaying the news, the outlet reported. "That's going to hurt, right?"
Morgan added, "Personally quite pleased about that. I love complaining," Metro UK said.
Although he noted the Ofcom statement indicated his swipe "came close to ridicule of those with a particular characteristic with the potential to offend some viewers."
The outlet added that Morgan also said "it's not transphobic to think that 100 genders is ridiculous. One of these 100 is called astra something, it means your gender is an identification with the moon and the stars. If that's your gender, I'm allowed to be a two-spirit gender. That's how it works."
More from Metro UK:
Continuing to gloat in his glory, Piers said: "Thank you Ofcom for showing a bit of common sense. My thing with this is everything is having to be changed to cater to a very small number of people, and very few people know what these are and my thing is, I don't think that's the correct way to do this."
He added: "These things have to be discussed without the hysterical Twitter mob saying cancel him."
