clarkson

clarkson is a hero of jay’s
and he is a bit of a cunt really (no not jay, though he has his moments, no i mean clarkson is a bit of a cunt).

there i was in the wonderful coffee@ in brick lane. enjoying a lovely cup of coffee (well there is a surprise!) and i decided to flick through the pages of the sun newspaper, it is something i like to do on the odd occasion, mind you if i do it too often i feel like i have sullied my soul. well this saturday i was on for a treat there was a clarkson piece.
in this particular self-opinionated column he was lambasting the bbc executive who said he a made a comment that was likely to cause offence.
it all came about because of some complaints the beeb had received because he had with an audience member.
clarkson: would you buy a daihatsu opel?
audience member: no it’s a bit gay.
clarkson: yes it is a bit ginger beer.

now i have left out clarkson’s oh so witty deconstruction, and justification, of this exchange.
to be fair i partly agree with clarkson that po-faced pc brigade are perhaps too quick to jump to be offended at something that most will find mildly humourous.

now clarkson paints himself as an outspoken man of the people, and of course he is a bit of a right winger (he is probably still wearing black pants as a mark of respect for the passing of pinochet) so the problem i have with clarkson’s explanation in the sun was that instead of standing by what he said, his piece was an attempt to use weasel words in order to pretend he hadn’t said what people thought he said.
a sad and, very, feeble attempt to try to have it both ways.
instead of appearing clever and funny he just came across as one of those smarmy brown nose public school boys who probably spent a lot of time blaming others.

the “voices of the people”, who are of the right, have it very easy when they do opinion pieces as they can go for the lowest opinion, pick on the easiest targets and use the crudest humour. yet when they are criticised pretend that they are either being censored or they are being deliberately misunderstood.

i would have had more respect for him if he had said: yup i said it, it was a joke, people laughed, no one died, end of.
but he didn’t.
instead he was mealy mouthed about it all.
so all in all he is not all that tough talking.

but give him credit he did manage to get another homophobic reference in another piece on his sun column. in a little comment on the liberal party he dragged up the phrase “pillow-biter”.

perhaps the bbc executive was right.