Two very famous British people are fighting online. One, Piers Morgan, has become one of the most reliable hate shares of Liberal Twitter. And J.K. Rowling, his foil, is one of its greatest “heroes.”

Why are they fighting? For starters, Rowling very much enjoyed this clip from “Real Time with Bill Maher” in which Morgan defends President Donald Trump, and Maher’s guests tell him to do something that is unprintable at The Washington Post, even on our website. The clip is below, but please: don’t play it unless you are okay with strong language. Thank you.

Both Rowling and Morgan regularly inspire headlines from their tweets. So when Rowling did this:

And Morgan did this:

It was inevitable that this fight was going to become a *thing.” It also did not end there.

There are… more tweets. Many more. Rowling eventually gets in these burns:

While this tweet appears to summarize the main thrust of Morgan’s argument:

More celebrities joined in, largely siding with Rowling:

And so on, and so on.

One of the major lessons from the Harry Potter series is that our heroes are just like us. You can likely extend that conclusion to celebrities. Celebrity, in part, thrives on distance, limited access and image control. When a celebrity becomes a regular, personal, Twitter user, it quickly becomes the defining manner in how they are viewed.

Some, like Rowling, become perpetual viral “heroes” to their fan base, adding another facet to the celebrity character. Others remain Piers Morgan.

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