In Morrissey’s 2014 song “The Bullfighter Dies,” a bullfighter dies: killed in the arena by a bull, naturally. And the crowd is delighted. Sings Moz: “Hooray! Hooray! The bullfighter dies! And nobody cries.” (If you want to lose your appetite for a week, watch this fan-made video for the song, in which the realities of bullfighting are laid pretty bare.) Two weeks ago in Mexico, the bullfighter Karla de los Angeles was gored twice in the arena. She didn’t die. (I don’t know what happened to the bull. Probably he was put to death? If not, he’ll be killed soon enough.) Moz offered a reaction to the event (via the blog True To You), saying he “felt delight this week to see serial killer Karla de los Angeles justifiably gored in a bullring in Mexico City against her largely defenseless opponent.”

Morrissey has a tendency to take this stuff a few steps too far, but I’ll give him this: If I had the stomach to watch bullfighting, I’d be rooting for the bull, too. Which is about as useful as rooting for Janet Leigh in Psycho: No matter how many times you watch it, she’s gonna get slaughtered. Morrissey is correct when he says of bullfighting, “For the torment and slaughter of each bull there is an avowed plan and a strict script, so therefore there is no possibility of a contest of any kind … Whenever the matador is suddenly at a disadvantage, other matadors rush to her/his aid, and they stab the bull.”

Anyway, telling people you “felt delight” in witnessing an actual human being getting gored by a bull is maybe trolling, but I think “nobody cries” is pretty fair. Here’s Moz’s response in full.

The shame of beloved Mexico

I felt delight this week to see serial killer Karla de los Angeles justifiably gored in a bullring in Mexico City against her largely defenseless opponent. Make no mistake: there is no such thing as bullfighting. For the torment and slaughter of each bull there is an avowed plan and a strict script, so therefore there is no possibility of a contest of any kind. Yet there is the illusion of contest and action even if the order of events is very efficient – so efficient, in fact, that whenever the bull “wins” it is reported that the event has ‘gone wrong’. But why could anything go wrong if a contest is fair? Whenever the matador is suddenly at a disadvantage, other matadors rush to her/his aid, and they stab the bull. However, the bull is not allowed support from other bulls should he find himself similarly in trouble. For this reason, the event is superficial and can only appeal to people who have no intelligence.
Driven by perverted impulse, Karla de los Angeles wants to kill another being that has actually posed no threat to her, and her radio comment following this week’s failed attempt to out-wit a dying bull had de los Angeles confessing:
“I am sad because I could not cut off the bull’s ear.”
Well, Karla, please understand this: we are sad that the bull did not come away with YOUR ear.

Most tourist guides still list ‘bullfighting’ as a sport, yet nothing about the event is sporting. In actual and undeniable fact, it ought to be listed in travel publications as ‘torture’ because to the intelligent mind, it does not qualify for any other description.
This torture of bulls provides a small degree of employment in Mexico, as does the torture of humans at the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. The fact that some people will pay money to watch bull torture is immaterial because, after all, paedophilia presumably entertains the paedophile, but no one has yet described paedophilia as a sport.
The lack of moral heroism from Karla de los Angeles and her co-killers Hilda Tenorio and Lupita Lopez represents the very worst aspects of Mexican life, and for 2015 I wish all three women the very worst, for the very worst is their rightful due.

Thanks for reading this.

Morrissey
1 January 2015.