I’ve never been a fan of Top Gear, hearing only at second hand how awful Jeremy Clarkson was, but I am now appalled at both his opinions and the fact that Sunday Times gives him space to spew. I’ve quoted excerpts below the fold — you might want to skip them if a ranting ignorant transphobe would ruin your breakfast.
Jeremy Clarkson has attacked the trans community in his latest column for The Sunday Times – claiming the issues facing transgender people have been over exaggerated.
He begins the diatribe by claiming left-wing activists
have decided that we must now all turn our attention to the plight of people who want to change their name from Stan to Loretta.
As far as I was concerned, men who want to be women were only really to be found on the internet or in the seedier bits of Bangkok,he continues.
They were called lady boys, and in my mind they were nothing more than the punchline in a stag night anecdote.Clarkson – who was sacked by the BBC last year – goes on to claim that he has joked about the issue with an NHS doctor, before slamming the parents of a trans child for
indulging their whims.
I wanted to seek them out and explain that they were free to live a lunatic life, they must not – and I was going to emphasise this with spittle -, be allowed to poison the mind of a child.
It’s what kids do: dream impossible dreams,he argues.
You don’t actually take them seriously. You don’t take them to a hospital when they’re 10 and say,He wants to be a girl, so can you lop his todger off?
Because what’s going to happen five years later when he’s decided that being a man isn’t so bad after all and he’s in the showers at the rugby club?
This is just so far out there that I’m surprised that no editor stopped him and said that we do have some standards here.
Apparently, to his mind, someone who puts on a dress once or sneaks into the girls’ bathroom is now all it takes to be a transgender woman, and that transgender women are all prostitutes.
The BBC saw fit to sack him after 13 years on television. How long will it take the Sunday Times to come to their senses?
As long as it sells newspapers it’s OK.
What an ignoramus!
I wouldn’t advocate that he be fired, because that would be inimical to a value that we all support, i.e. freedom of speech. But he needs to be educated. But how does one do that when the person needing it is so full of his own importance?
I used to try to think the hateful person on TG, they named ‘Jezza’ was a fictional caricature of the part of the audience they were trying to satirically ridicule.
It is becoming more evident that Clarkson was not playing a character, but portraying himself, with deliberate, arrogant, bigotry against everything non-British. Even throwing out occasional ethnic slurs with lame notpologies afterward.
Hammond and May tried to balance the bigot, with Intellect (May) and Humor (Hammond).
I understood they kept Crapster cuz he owned the show (~51%). But punching the associate producer over trivia, was the straw that broke the camels back. I mean insulting an entire country to the point of getting expelled, was insufficient. The BBC just scolded him about the incident, blaming Argentina for overreacting to a mishap in the license plate numbering.
Thank you again, for standing out against bigotry directed at the trans community. We in the State of Washington have a bill before our legislature, put up by Republicans of course that would remove protections for the trans community recently added to our civil rights law. They prefer forcing trans children to enter the ‘wrong’ bathroom for them. Despicable.
Yes, the BBC sacked him but then Amazon took him on for much more money and got him to do such a smarmy, gloating advert (that had him portraying his sacking as a joke rather than the very least that should have happened from assaulting a colleague) that I was close to cancelling my Prime membership. He’s not someone who’s ever suffered as a consequence of his actions and I can’t see that he’s going to following this. He’s hired for exactly this sort of offensive writing that unfortunately appeals to a great deal of people (the people who complain about ‘PC gone mad’ and how things were ‘better in their day’). The Sunday Times won’t sack him, they’ll be rubbing their hands with glee at all the page hits and free publicity they’re getting.
dick @2:
Not inimical at all for the papers to use their own speech to refuse to provide a platform for speech they disagree with.
We could start by firing him.
And of course, the usual misinformation (read: willfully ignorant lies) about pre-teen trans kids. No, they don’t take a 10-year-old AMAB who wants to be a girl for sex-reassignment surgery. They do some careful counseling to make sure the kid’s serious, then they put the kid on hormone blockers to stave off puberty long enough for the kid to think about it and make up their mind.
Firing him is hardly a freedom of speech issue. He can post that same exact piece on a website or make a video of it on a YouTube channel and still get a huge audience.
Also, what’s wrong with firing someone for using their employment to spout bigotry? It’s not even like he did it on his personal time in his personal space.
dick
Wrong. It’s called “Freedom of Speech”, not “Right to be paid serious money to spew hateful shit”
A newspaper is NOT obligated to freezepeach to allow bigoted brainfarts to be published on their paper. “we mustn;t call for his firing, cuz of free speech” is an argument error than deserves a moniker, such as Poe’s Law, Godwin’s Law, etc.
Free Speech is argument concerning legislation, not citizen actions.
Telling the paper that firing the bigot may improve their reputation and increase the value of their advertisement ‘inches’ [newspaper jargon], is not advocating restriction of freezepeech. Allowance to speak freely does not require forcing publishers to print ones screeds. Amazon is free to denigrate their brand by promoting such hateful rhetoric, just don’t force me to subscribe to Jezzaspew, even while I subscribe to Amazon’s Transparent (trying to indirectly jab at the transphobe).
Shades of John Derbyshire. It says a lot about the Sunday Times that they printed Clarkson’s drivel.
I’ve never understood anyone saying, “This is your last chance.” If someone has done enough to elicit that statement, then they haven’t learnt anything by now and will do it again. Clarkson had his “last chance” at the BBC, then did it again, assaulting a producer. Clearly he doesn’t get it, and he never will. The same goes for the Sunday Times.
How this man was ever treated like an acceptable part of a civilised society is beyond me. Meet the avatar of privilege on earth, don’t look at it too long, he will burn your retinas, the ignorance and the entitlement burn too bright.
Hey. Hey Clarkson, psst. Come closer. Little closer! Little closer. There we go.
*ahem*
THAT’S THE FRIKKEN PROBLEM, YOU DOLT!
I wouldn’t mind if something like this got posted if the next day they ran a detailed “Everything that was factually wrong with the garbage we posted yesterday” or now that I think about why waste time and space? Just forget the first round and make it “Look what kind of shit doesn’t pass our editing process and let us explain what exactly is wrong with it …” Article (and maybe split it over two days …)
You know, I think I could almost deal with ridiculous bigotry from celebrity-type people if they’d just take the time to get their facts right. What’s so wrong with understanding what you’re talking about before having your little rant about it?
I’m so glad he’s off Top Gear, because I actually enjoyed the show, despite my devout pedestrianism. Apparently it’ll have an actual racing driver on it now, so that’ll be pretty good. I want to say that I’m pleased she’s a woman, too, just to spite him, but I don’t know if misogyny is one of his things? I’d guess it probably is, but I never really tried to keep up with his nonsensical opinions.
You do have to remember that the Sunday Times Is a News International (Murdoch) News?paper.
YES it is. add that to his BINGO card.
Run of the mill shit. Nothing I have seen nor heard before.
Jeremy Clarkson. Everyone’s boorish, bigoted uncle.
Has anyone seen National Geographic lately? It’s obvious how awful it has become already since Murdoch bought it. One issue has a map of sighting of the Virgin Mary and calls her the most powerful woman in the world. Why not a map of Elvis sightings or the Loch Ness Monster?
No, not “again” – “still”.
You’d think I’d know better than to read the comment sections on articles by now.
I used to like Top Gear. Clarkson was always a buffoon. I thought it was just an on-screen persona.Then I heard about how he attacked one of the producers of the show for some silly reason. He reminds me of some political pundits who gets paid for shooting off their big mouth and get a secret thrill from the attention it gets. If anything he’s gotten worse since he doesn’t have Top Gear feeding his ego.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)):
Yep. As a caricature of a bigoted, hateful idiot, Jeremy Clarkson is quite amusing – sort of like a slightly toned down British version of what Stephen Colbert used to do on the Colbert Report. He becomes very much less so when you realise that, unlike Stephen Colbert, he isn’t a caricature, and isn’t playing a character – he actually is like that.
I wonder what Stephen Fry thinks about Clarkson when he’s such a dildo, they have been good friends for a long time (that’s probably the reason Jeremy still appears on QI regularly)
As a side note, I recommend Louis Theroux’s Transgender Kids to those who haven’t seen it already. These children are awesome and I would love to see one of them ridiculing Clarkson live on air.
Clarkshites appearance on Graham Norton was amusing; being radically opposed philosophically. Yet not much better than laughing at a turd on the sidewalk.
johnm55@16 beat me to it: The Sunday Times is Murdock waste of dead trees / electrons, and is as honorable and reliable as toilet paper made from rusty steel wool is usable and sensible.
For clarification, Clarkson wasn’t even sacked by the BBC, his contract was up for renewal and they didn’t rehire him.
Clarkson is very much like a British Trump – superficially charismatic, appealing to hordes of despicable morons, and so politically connected they’ll never suffer the repercussions of any of their actions. In addition, suffering from the delusion that they have any class whatsoever.
This guy is in serious need of counseling. Before that, he should be given a restraining order to stay 50 meters away from a word processor. I am sure I do not need to tell people here that there is a virtual spectrum of gender identities. Those who lie anywhere outside of the cis- landmarks deserve all the support and caring that one can give to another, plus a medal for having to be the bravest of the brave.
Fucking really?
I was a huge….huuuge I say…fan of Top Gear. Some of the ‘films’ they made were works of near-genius, and much of the humour was self-deprecating, always an endearing trait. I saw Clarkson as portraying a larger-than-life caricature and as such (usually) enjoyed his rantings, especially given that (most of the time) one or other of his co-hosts would take issue with him.
Even his exit from Top Gear, for punching out a member of the production team, didn’t trouble me very much for the reason that there was a lot of media attention paid, including a video clip showing him being asked questions about it. He was very forthright in saying that it was entirely his fault and that nobody should imagine that the man he assaulted bore any responsibility at all. Given the propensity of celebrities to utter the notapology, this was, I thought, something that went some way to redeeming his character…..not all the way but far more than most celebrities caught out in a scandal.
This article, however, seems to go beyond what any media personality should think remotely ok. He may, for all we know, still be pandering to his audience, still be playing a role, but even if that is the case, there are some positions one ought never to articulate with apparent sincerity unless one is prepared to be judged on them. So I think, unfortunately, that the evidence now shows that what I thought to be, and may in fact have been, a ‘stage persona’ is in fact also the real, and ugly, human being.
He is very wealthy and likely immune to consequences, since he made a ton of money from selling Top Gear to the BBC, more or less at the pinnacle of its popularity. I suspect that the only way he might learn would be if one of his kids, or (eventually) grandkids turned out to be trans.
So is Clarkson going to run for PM soon? He and Trump would make great international partners…
@marcoli, 29
Dude, please. I get that you’re being supportive, and that’s great (unless you’re being sarcastic?), but medals for bravery? For all of us who aren’t cis? I can’t speak for anyone else (although I seriously doubt I’m alone in this), but that just seems weird to me (not to mention condescending). It’s not brave of me to be me. Certainly, the idea that I’d apparently be considered equally worthy of being recognised for bravery as a trans woman in downtown Conservatopia is just wrong, and however I look at it, it feels like it’s either dismissing the shit they deal with, or making an overly huge deal out of what I deal with, and I’m really not cool with either of those things. Besides, we’re already labelled as “special snowflakes” for daring to not fit perfectly into the moulds we’re told are the only options. There’s no need for people who want to support us to do the same sort of thing. Just the support and caring are enough, and helping to make a world where it’s not brave to deviate from the expected norms, and where there’s no need for support and caring beyond what you’d expect for anyone else.
Watch this. You’ll feel better. Stewart Lee just destroys Clarkson.
ryancunningham #34
Thank you for the introduction to Stewart Lee.
BUT
that video needs a few Content Warnings
The thing that’s always struck me about Clarkson is that 90% of the things he says are uninformed snippets of conversations with a bloke in a pub. The critical thing is that he knows this. He is acutely aware that the things he is saying are unfair, probably factually inaccurate and distasteful. I strongly believe that he is constantly amused by the fact that people listen.
I doubt he would say any of the shit that he does if there was no audience there to receive it. It’s a vicious circle, wherein a particular section of society cheers on Clarkson as their voice, and he confirms everything they believe by saying the things they want him to say.
Clarkson himself is just a symptom of a cancer within UK society, one which believes its factless opinions to be god given truth because it is white, male and British.
@ryancunningham: You beat me to it, posting that brilliant Stewart Lee bit. Well done.
@chigau: Here’s another taste of Stewart Lee that’s very satisfying. (Content warning for adult language and intelligent humour.) http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x23yv5y_stewart-lee-on-immigration-paul-nuttall-and-ukip_fun
#3
But it really was an overreaction to a license plate coincidence.
#19
I see this particular statement, or variation thereof, all the time. Am I truly one of a tiny minority in not having a boorish uncle?
And yet people keep paying attention and giving him the promotion he desires.
He clearly doesn’t believe these things and says them to get attention and wind people up, he’s made a career out of it for decades, and yet people still fall for it…..
The man is an idiot. Ignore him.
fal1 (just by way of example, I mean, as a great many people say something along these lines), what is the difference between someone spewing racist, misogynist bile that he believes in, and someone spewing racist, misogynist bile that he doesn’t believe in but says to get attention that earns him a lot of money? … to all intents and purposes, none whatsoever. In fact doing it for the money and lulz is kind of a pretty strong indication that you don’t give a gnat’s fart for the marginalised … so in fact the behaviour really is just as racist and misogynist as it purports to be.
@opposablethumbs The difference, at least as I see it, is he thinks he is being funny. He has a script and he plays to it. I find it very hard to understand how people can be genuinely offended by his column, what do people expect he is going to write about? It’s clickbait plain and simple. f people had just ignored him his column in the times would of been read by a small number of the 800,000 people that buy the paper, now thanks to the guardian and
sorry hit return by mistake there….
If people had just ignored him his column in the times would of been read by a small number of the 800,000 people that buy the paper, now thanks to the guardian and the like here are millions of people aware of it and he will just carry on as usual, getting paid vast sums of money to outrage people that can’t really be all that outraged by what he said. The guardian and the like must secretly love Clarkson, he’s there clickbait and vice versa. Its the same with that oxygen thief katy hopkins.
Less outraged than enraged, actually, but sure, I’m not actually all that upset about what he writes, nope, not at all, never mind that it is vile, incorrect and hurtful bullshit against a marginalized group of people who deserve far better than this world gives them. If it manages to give them anything at all.
If Clarkson is just performing, he could easily perform for social justice.
Think of the outrage that would result!
@rq Well I’m sure Mr Clarkson is very grateful for your rage, and the associated bank balance it generates him.
How hard is it to avoid jeremy clarkson though? Like, seriously, there isn’t a person alive that doesn’t know that he is a dickhead with an archaic sense of humour. Just ignore him and his attempt at humour.
The times is a subscription only paper, so they’ll also be delighted, this whole cycle just encourages him.
@fal1 #45,
If your recommendation for dealing with racist behavior is “ignore it and it will go away”, I invite you to examine history more closely.
fal1,
The two correct answers are:
1) He shouldn’t be such a bigoted little shit
2) Organizations need to stop hiring him and disseminating his vile views
Us not ignoring him is in no way the same as giving support to his views.
“The standard you walk past is the standard you accept”. Ignoring arseholes doesn’t work.
@fal1
Can you do me a favor and explain some things to me? I have heard some people say what you are saying and I don’t really see the reason or logic, and I have not seen any realistic and effective alternative strategies suggested. Additionally this ignores important aspects of the situation that results from such attention-getting criticism.
What I write below seems analogical to criticism of big names in creationism which has been effective over time which is why I’m hoping you can fill in some gaps for me?
We have a culture that is full of bullshit that it considers to be knowledge about people and the world. Left alone the dynamic remains so that is out of the question. I need to agree with opposablethumbs here and say that the distinction between him really believing it and not believing it is not relevant because his expression still maintains the current social dynamic.
That they think they are being funny does not really matter because if you look at what humor seems to be for a good chunk of it involves making us feel better about things that we fear or are disgusted or angered by. If that humor is at the expense of a group of people that humor is simultaneously an attack on those people and a means of emotionally comforting the bigots and xenophobes that fear them. Not only is humor part of how culture is shaped and maintained, but when that humor is prevented from being effective the bigots and xenophobes are forced to deal with that negative emotion in ways that are hopefully more constructive (that can probably be prepared for).
Interacting with that culture can take many forms and can occur at many levels and in this case this is the level of celebrity criticism (so challenging a cultural authority figure with influence in, and a role in the dynamics of their culture). Yes celebrities thrive and survive on attention but you seem to be asserting that there is no criticism that will result in a net gain for us in the short or long term.
The attention drawn to the social tension caused by the criticism will result in focus on what that celebrity is saying, but it will also result in focus on the celebrities defenders, the criticism and the critics. When there is a fight onlookers show up, it’s pretty standard and yeah someone might get paid. The fans will rush to defend them and you end up with two kinds of conflicts, the ones between the celebrity and critics and the ones between the defenders and critics.
This is an opportunity because not every participant and spectator comes to this with the same disposition. The people representing the status quo do have an advantage in that many spectators/participants are “preprogrammed”, but that is always the case in any social change. There will be people who dislike current gender stereotypes, people who can be shown that current stereotypes harm everyone, people receptive to understanding the direct and indirect damage caused by stereotypes on people with atypical sex and gender combinations, people who can be shown how cruel this kind of expression is, people willing and able to be exposed to an accurate picture of the people being lied about and more. It’s an opportunity.
There is also room for other strategic gains like if the awful nature of the celebrity and their supporters can be clearly outlined. Or if the paper and its staff get enough heat that they become concerned about letting someone be so offensive in the future. It can be tricky but pressuring the group to monitor the behavior of members is a natural part of our psychology.
So sure, I can believe that Jeremy Clarkson might profit off of this to an extent. But that does not mean that there will be no gains for us in the short or long term. They are a perfectly valid target in an attempt to change the culture and outrage is a perfectly valid tool. I’m not really all that bothered by what they might gain relative to the potential that always exists when a celebrity is challenged.
@fal1
If we sit down, shut up, and ignore this kind of bigoted shit, are you honestly saying that you believe it’ll go away?
If so, could you cite one instance from all of human history when that worked?
@4
I’ve been horrified at how many people on my FB seem to legitimately believe that “Washington now allows men to go into womens’ bathrooms!!11!” Christ on a Crutch I guess I’ve been sheltered too much from assholes. My response has been, “No, ALL MEN may use the mens’ restroom, and ALL WOMEN may use the womens’ restrooms, what genitals they have is none of our fucking business.” Hoping sense prevails in all of this. :(
The current Top Gear is actually kind of a reboot of the original Top Gear, which was in structure and content similar to what became Fifth Gear a bit before the TG “reboot”. Even a couple of the main presenters (Tiff Needell and Vicky Butler-Henderson) went over to FG. Thing is, they didn’t hire Clarkson out of thin air for the new TG, he actually was a presenter of the old one as well, since ’88, and was also always notorious for being an asshole. Jibes well with the new format of the show, a more bombastic kind of Hollywoodized program.
Personally, I was a big fan of the old one and then of Fifth Gear. Butler-Henderson and Needell especially were great presenters as well as great race drivers.
I was referring to how to respond to Clarkson, not all forms of racism/bigotry. There are other ways of dealing with racists and bigots, draw attention to them where it will hurt them, ignore them when it is clearly done for attention. Clarkson is a caricature, and clearly seeks to wind people up- he has been doing it for decades and has had countless scandals regarding things he has said, none of which have hurt him (the bbc didn’t renew his contract, but I doubt that his contract at Amazon is going to be for less money, the opposite is far more likely). I’m merely suggesting there’s more than one way to skin a cat.
@fal1
Until you actually offer an alternative that is both effective and realistic your concern is dismissed with prejudice. It’s not our jobs to go hunting for some solution that you propose exists. If this is so distasteful to you, get cracking.
fal1 @ 53
Do tell.
Weird. I have been ignoring Clarkson all this time, and yet he seems to keep happening anyway. Am I not ignoring him hard enough?
Onamission5, were you truly ignoring him, you’d not be commenting about him, would you?
Damn. Never watching the show, reading anything he wrote, nor being invested in his celebrity up to this point except that his awfulness keeps entering my periphery wasn’t enough, I just had to go and write the one internet comment that kept Clarkson’s bad ideas and prejudices going.
Shit, I’m doing it again. If I stop talking about him his words and ideas will stop being awful, pretty sure that’s how it’s supposed to work. Here goes…
Onamission5, :)
Thanks for taking it well.
In short, he’s a shock jock.
Alas, you (and I) ignoring him will have fuck-all effect; it’s the proles who sustain him, and neither our derision nor our ignoring him will have any noticeable effect.
(Such is life)
Well, I am aware of him, but that awareness is pretty much against my will, as is the case with many people who say and do awful things and won’t fucking go away. Definitely am in agreement that ignoring people’s awfulness does nothing to help those who are hurt by it, nor to stop them from being awful. T’was the point of my original (and possibly poorly delivered) comment.