Jeremy Clarkson is under the hammer..,apparently for a “fracas” with a producer.
We have of course seen this here, and are seeing it here right now over X-Factor.
Clarkson-bashing is the glue of Britain’s liberal elite. Fearing and fuming about theTop Gear presenter, wringing one’s manicured hands over the impact of this engine-revving bloke-in-a-blazer on gullible TV viewers, has become the great unifier of the snootier sections of Britain’s media classes.
You want in to their starched, censorious moral universe? Then practise shaking your head and making vomiting noises in response to every utterance of the words “Jeremy” and “Clarkson”.
The chattering classes’ Clarksonphobia was on full display this week, following Clarkson’s suspension by the BBC after he allegedly hit, or in the Beeb’s words “had a fracas with”, a Top Gear producer.
Apparently, after a long day’s filming, Clarkson was expecting a steak dinner but was given a plate of cold cuts, and he flipped.
Now, being giving cold meat instead of hot steak does sound fantastically annoying, but it doesn’t justify alleged fisticuffs.
Don’t hit your bosses, folks! But the wild glee that has greeted the suspension of Clarkson, the media demands that this “ogre” (The Guardian’s actual word) be forever banished from the Kingdom of TV, has very little to do with his alleged use of force.
No, the Clarksonphobics want him out because of what he represents: car-loving, free-speaking, un-PC folk, those eco-unfriendly, somewhat rough sections of society that the chattering classes would rather didn’t exist. Literally. The New Statesman, house magazine of Britain’s zombie Left, this week even fantasised about Clarkson fanboys being boiled to become biofuel.
No sooner had the Beeb announced that JC had been suspended than the Clarksonphobics were hollering: “Make it permanent!”
“Why does the BBC put up with Clarkson?” demanded a Guardian hack who clearly doesn’t have access to Google. For a quick web search would have revealed to her the reason the Beeb “puts up” with him: Top Gear is phenomenally popular, with the kind of people whose shoulders will never rub with Guardian writers’ shoulders. Five million Brits watch it on BBC2, 300 million people around the world tune in, and it has made the BBC £50 million ($95.6m).
This is what most terrifies Clarksonphobics: the fact that people, the little people, like him.
The Guardian writer said Clarkson has become a blot on the Beeb, through “pushing the boundaries of … political correctness”. Apparently the BBC should only be for PC people, people like Us.
