Jeremy Clarkson: Too Bigot To Fail?

It’s boring, isn’t it? Watching, as the circus that is the annual Clarkson kerfuffle rolls around again? Oh blimey, what’s he said now? How has he managed to be too offensive/racist/sexist/insert-unacceptable-behaviour-here this time? It’s become typical, up to the point where it almost seems to be a big fuss about nothing. Especially with the continuing tensions in the Middle-East, the increase of religious fundamentalism, NATO’s stand-off with Russia over the Ukraine and the ongoing crush of austerity. It almost seems somewhat trivial.

Because, surely, Clarkson doesn’t say anything that bad, does he? And even if he did, was it really racism? It’s just Jezza, that’s what he’s like. I mean, are we still having this discussion?

It does seem trivial. But it shouldn’t. It would be a trivial matter, except that Clarkson is still in his job.

It is quite possible that he will still be presenting   Top Gear even after  this latest unnecessary transgression has trundled past. But he shouldn’t be. The fact that he has not been fired is an insult to every hard-working person in any of the nations that Top Gear is shown in. Why? Because you would have been sacked for any one of those offences, let alone for punching a co-worker! Immediately. And not one of us would have questioned the decision. So why not Clarkson?

Jeremy Clarkson has provoked this conflict, as he has the majority of Top Gear’s numerous controversies. He knows that this is not a moral issue, but a contractual one. This is about Clarkson’s earning power, and how rich or influential you need to be in order to get away with it.

Every year, when the latest outrage surfaces, I repost Steve Coogan’s wonderfully articulated response to Top Gear’s now-habitual incident of contemptuousness, whereby Coogan expressed something we all agree on, that although Top Gear has proved itself to be consistently entertaining and, despite everything, we tend to like the three presenters… enough is enough. The article resonated with me because it was a not a banshee-wail for Clarkson’s removal but rather it is an impassioned plea that the Top Gear boys just tone it down and stop being so unnecessarily callous.

However, Coogan’s article was written in 2011, referring to Top Gear statements at the time that Mexican cars were, much like Mexicans themselves, ‘lazy’ and ‘feckless’ and that their food resembled ‘sick with cheese on it’, yet little appears to have changed since. That year’s series also elicited complaints due to homophobic comments about George Michael and, even more deplorably (although made outside of Top Gear), Clarkson’s comments that public sector workers, who were striking at that time to demand fairer pay, be ‘executed in front of their families’.

Since that incident, the lads have managed to cause offense in India, including driving a Jaguar with a toilet mounted on it around a slum, while 2013 saw the surfacing of Clarkson’s (initially unaired) muttering of ‘eeny, meeny, miny moe, catch a nigger by his toe…’ gaffe, for which he received a ‘final warning’. Last year actually saw a rise in instances of controversy, with Jeremy in Thailand joking about a ‘slope on a bridge’ and October’s inflammatory Argentina trip, which resulted in the Top Gear crew being attacked with stones and forced to flee the country.

Now Jeremy has punched a producer for not having organised his food on time. Clarkson seems to have no shame regarding the act, nor any fear of reprisal. He just doesn’t care. Most likely, it is because he knows that he and the Top Gear brand are big business. With profits of £50 million worldwide per year, broadcasting to more than 50 countries and with a worldwide audience of 350 million, we understand why the decision is a difficult one, financially speaking.

But this kind of thinking is backwards. The very fact that Top Gear has such global appeal and a massive fan-base should be a case for ensuring that its presenters conduct themselves admirably, that they act as respected and beloved international statesmen. It should not be a license for three rich, white men to indulge in casual racism, dangerous stereotyping and seemingly thoughtless social insensitivity. None of us would get away with the kind of wanton behaviour they indulge in and keep our job, so neither should they. It is similar to the defence extended to the Liverpool footballer Luis Suarez, who repeatedly bit opponents on the pitch but was too important to punish severely, and too valuable to fire. A vast amount of money had been invested in him, so only a lip service to punishment was meted out. Money buys impunity, and even if it doesn’t, it certainly takes the sting out of taking risks that could lose you your job.

Such wealth makes it very difficult to punish these people, as they have very little to lose. And this power is what Clarkson appears to be demonstrating, that he is too rich and important, too big to fail, for the BBC to do anything about it. Clarkson resides up there with the über-wealthy right, next to the unimpeachable Rupert Murdoch and alongside the tax cheats of HSBC. His friend and neighbour David Cameron, another of the ‘Chipping Norton Set’, has already defended him publically.

They seem to be making a unified statement; that when someone becomes this rich, influential or powerful, then such lowly concerns as assaulting a co-worker (let alone subversion of the law, tax evasion, etc.) are below them. These are the setbacks that afflict the lives of the plebs, not the ultra-rich.

In Murdoch and HSBC’s cases, their defence is made by our government, corporate law and politics, but with Top Gear’s immense public popularity, the issue becomes more muddled. That we enjoy Top Gear should not mean that we have to accept the casual racism Clarkson champions and with its fantastic production values the show would surely outlast his demise. However, by signing the petition to reinstate him, you are tacitly agreeing to a two-tier class system, whereby we serfs must accept one set of living standards, rules and punishments, whereas those with wealth and influence are given free rein to do as they please.

No one, in a fair and equal society, is untouchable. Jeremy Clarkson should be sacked for his continued, and continuing, disregard for the rules, let alone the unabated, and unarguably unacceptable, offensive statements he chooses to make. He should, at the very least, be punishable in a way that might force him to change his public behaviour.

If not, then, despite his popularity, he is just a pompous, bigoted and self-serving aristocrat.

A Farage in an unreasonably priced car.

Political Extremities and our Lack of a Left

With the recent popular political rise of Nigel Farage’s UKIP, there has been a frantic scurrying by politicians of all the political parties to adapt their stance and language. This is an attempt to capture the allegiance of those seemingly disenfranchised sections of society that put an unprecedented number of UKIP representatives into the European Parliament. With a glut of similarly right-wing parties doing well across the continent in the European elections, the press condemned the shift, whilst also bemoaning the lack of representation for this group of voters.

This overreaction to the situation is typical of our media in the UK. Although distasteful, the crisis, as presented by pretty much every newspaper and media outlet, was overstated. Their political clout has been exaggerated, they do not represent a power to affect policies in any meaningful political way, although it is a worrying statement on the general outlook of European nations.  It is no great shock that there were so many voters that hold these somewhat bigoted opinions but more that they were so easily and broadly successful.

However, I am not chastising the non-voting section of the public for their apathy in this regard, as many outlets have. If these voters ‘let’ these right-wingers in by not voting, rather it is indicative of the continuing alienation of the British public to the overall political process. And a product of the value-shift of this nation towards the political right. A trend that has built up progressively over recent decades.

The fact is that we live in a predominantly right-wing country. When Tony Blair and Gordon Brown dispensed with Clause IV, ending the supremacy of the Labour Party Conference, broke its ties with the unions, changed its policy-making procedures and distanced itself from its socialist roots, it brought an electoral win. But it was a pyrrhic victory. What we voted in did not protect the principles of the left-wing of this nation but rather, the Centrist movement was a preamble towards a slow, perpetual shift to the right. The Labour party faithful felt, rightfully, betrayed. I was one of them.

It was, effectively, the final capitulation of the potency of mainstream left-wing politics on this history-rich island. New Labour’s shift to the right, establishing for itself a left-of-centre economic stance was, as the late Baroness Thatcher stated, her ‘greatest achievement’. It was the end of a real political choice between the right and left, the end of having any say in the direction, politically and economically, the UK can head in. It was the end of there being a mainstream party who represented me. After that, there was no party I could honestly vote for.

Yet, despite the consolidation of market economics as the principle ideological driving force behind our society and the essential victory of right-wing economic politics, the instilled fear of Socialism still permeates the general consciousness. Some left-over, endemically imprinted belief that such a movement will somehow destabilise the fabric of our society. This is a nonsense. Those things that we should be proud of and were the envy of the world for having – a National Health Service and a strong Welfare State to support the most struggling within our population – are the very things that the capitalist system, aided by increasing deregulation and a lack of governing by our political parties, is endangering.

Our society is being destabilised, all of the rights that were so hard-fought to achieve are being stripped away. The social mobility that a strong economy and infrastructure should provide has been eroded in favour of supporting the profitability of the top levels of business and finance. Poverty levels are rising alarmingly, with no solution in sight, and there has never been so great a disparity between the rich and the poor.

This country needs a change. It needs one of the parties to offer an alternative to austerity and the direction of financial deregulation and non-involvement that led us to the banking crash in the first place. We need one of the parties to challenge the hegemony of big business and finance and instead champion the rights of the vast majority; the workers of this country.

What is needed is not Socialism necessarily, but a halt to this monumental and worrying shift to the right. That’s where those plastic-faced Tories we hate come from. That’s where UKIP live.

We don’t have to shift drastically, but we desperately need a shift to the left…