#The legendary British TV presenter and virtuoso of sharp humor Jeremy Clarkson started the month of March with an interesting “letter” on his Twitter account: “I received so many nice messages about today’s posts. But take it easy. I have not broken up with Lisa and I have not been fired as a presenter on the show “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire”.
The 62-year-old, 196-centimetre colossus of humor-laden car shows’ short address has garnered more than 6.5 million views and more than 70,000 likes.
And what publications is Jeremy talking about?
A dozen media outlets reported that he would be taken off the air, and apparently he has personal problems as well. These headlines are the culmination of a media campaign against Clarkson since his now-legendary – and deleted – column in the British tabloid The Sun against Meghan Markle.
In an age of perpetually outraged and offended public figures, figures like Clarkson are an endangered breed. Not only can he easily cross the line of what today’s culture allows for acceptable speech, he can joke so uncompromisingly that he is declared a public enemy and a hateful menace. Something like this happened after the aforementioned infamous piece about Markle, taken down even by the otherwise mischievous editors and bosses at the Sun, with the approval of the author Clarkson himself.
Photo: Getty Images
Jeremy has long been critical of Meghan and Harry’s media tour and the way they “guard” their private lives with constant interviews, series, books and attacks on Prince Harry’s country and family. Clarkson had written in his regular column in The Sun that he hated Meghan Markle on a “cellular level”.
But what prompted the spontaneous media backlash, calls to “cancel” it and even an official investigation by the Isle’s communications regulator, was a brutal but apparently comical comparison to a scene from Game of Thrones. In the now-taken-down text, he described how he envisions Meghan as in that episode where the evil and deeply amoral Queen Cersei is forced to walk naked through the streets and squares of the city while people shout the word “Shame” at her and throw excrement at her. A ritual of humiliation, in which Clarkson’s imagination “cast” this otherwise second-rate and, in his opinion, actress Meghan Markle. It was clear that the former host of the top show Top Gear was not talking literally, and he was not calling for some extralegal detention of Markle and the forced divorce of the naked American on “Oxford Street” in London, say.
Photo: Getty Images
The joke was in Jeremy’s typical crass, but perfectly acceptable, pre-cultural metamorphoses of the era style. It is no accident that he uses a parallel with a fictional story for mass entertainment, rather than with images and events from the documented past.
But the paste of censorship is clearly already outside the tube of common sense and public conversation, and it probably cannot go back. Clarkson’s text “inspired” tens of thousands of official complaints, as well as threats from British MPs of dismissal and severe sanctions against the verbal offender. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, London Mayor Sadiq Khan and former Scottish leader Nicola Sturgeon spoke out against the presenter. Even Clarkson’s own daughter Emily criticized him publicly. This was especially reminiscent of the dystopian warnings in books like 1984, which describe how the ruling totalitarian ideology turns children against their parents by transforming the young, more susceptible to indoctrination and fanaticism, into informers against their own families.
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But Clarkson survived.
For decades, he has built a career as a controversial but beloved jokester capable of self-deprecation. Now the heads of the various media with which he works are thinking of ways of a softer “cancellation”. The television behind “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” announced that they will not stop the show and remove Clarkson as the presenter. At the same time, his contract expires after next season and it is almost certain that it will not be renewed. Also in question is Amazon’s Clarkson’s Farm series. But for now, he is not removed and so he decided to reassure his fans with a short message from the first of March.
Photo: Getty Images
Acrimony against him escalated when it emerged that Meghan and Harry were indeed offended, and their spokesman officially accused him of “spreading hate speech”. And this after Clarkson publicly apologized, which was not his style at all. And following Meghan’s complaints, an investigation into the Island’s press regulator began in February. The charges against Clarkson are “harassment”.
Clarkson has extensive experience in scandals.
Eight years ago he was fired from his legendary show Top Gear for jumping on his own producer. And let’s not forget a few of his legendary sharp car jokes on the show:
“I’d rather be in an Aston Martin V8 than Keira Knightley.”
“I thought the creatures from ‘Men in Black’ were fictional until I saw the American Airlines flight attendants.”
“Driving this pickup is about as enjoyable as getting a wasabi enema.”
“Electric scooters are for fat Americans to walk to the fridge without getting too tired.”
“A 4-seat convertible?! The only person who ever looked good in a car like that was Adolf Hitler.”
“A good van is not something car brands should brag about. It’s like shouting at the top of your lungs, ‘Hey, I have SYPHILIS, the best of the venereal diseases!’
Photo: Getty Images
Hmmm, it really is a wild image from another era. A media dinosaur perhaps doomed in the cultural climate of heated outrage. And maybe not.
