The reaction to Jeremy Clarkson’s Sun column about Meghan Markle has been so over-the-top, it’s actually becoming quite funny. The most ridiculous I’ve seen so far was that of Chris Packham, presenter of Springwatch and a long-standing opponent of Clarkson’s on everything from driven shooting to farming. He tweeted: “It’s hate crime, pure and simple. If there were any sort of justice there would be laws that would jail him. And shut down the publisher. Is this the country we want to live in? Is this what we should tolerate? We must ask ourselves – where is this leading? Nowhere good.”
Does Packham really believe that Britain would be a better place if newspaper columnists could be imprisoned (and their newspapers shut down) for saying something offensive? Maybe he does.
I can’t link to the column in question because Clarkson has asked the Sun to take it down (which I think is a mistake). But it hardly matters because it’s been reproduced everywhere, particularly by those who claim to believe the words Clarkson used are likely to inspire violence against women and girls. (If they’re really so dangerous, why keep repeating them?) Here’s the offending passage:
I hate her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level.
At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, “Shame!” and throw lumps of excrement at her.
This is an obvious reference to the scene in Game of Thrones in which Cersei is forced to do a ‘walk of atonement’ by the High Sparrow, but that was ignored by all Clarkson’s critics who reacted as if he had dredged up with this peculiar form of ritual humiliation from deep in his ‘misogynistic’ psyche. Apart from David Baddiel, who got the reference but condemned Clarkson anyway on the grounds that the original scene was itself a “violent misogynistic fantasy”.
The number of people who’ve interpreted Clarkson’s words, not as an attack on Meghan, but as an expression of misogyny, i.e. his deep-seated hatred of women in general and not just one woman, is extraordinary. When a female columnist fantasises about violence being inflicted on a man – Caitlin Moran once tweeted she hoped Germaine Greer would cut me in half with a sword – no one accuses them of misandry. But here’s the ex-Labour spin doctor Ayesha Hazarika giving her view on Clarkson’s column: “Many of us this week are reflecting on how misogyny has infected society and why violence against women is at such a frightening level.” That was also the view of Nicola Sturgeon, who described the column as “deeply misogynistic” – this was after a laughable bit of throat clearing in which the First Minister said she was a “passionate believer in free speech”! (This is the same woman whose government passed the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act last year.)
And it seems many members of the public shared this reaction. According to the Guardian, the Independent Press Standards Regulator has received a record number of complaints about the column – 17,500 so far, which is more than than the combined total it received in 2021.
Even Clarkson’s own daughter Emily condemned him, issuing the following statement on her Instagram account:
My views are and have always been clear when it comes to misogyny, bullying and the treatment of women by the media.
I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything that my dad wrote about Meghan Markle and I remain standing in support of those that are targeted with online hatred.
That has the whiff of Mao’s China about it, but it didn’t stop numerous commentators praising her. Carol Vorderman, for instance, described Emily’s denunciation of her father as “wonderful” and went on to condemn Clarkson for writing such a vile thing about “any woman”. Vorderman said in a follow-up tweet that she’d received “lots of abuse” about her condemnation of Clarkson, but didn’t mind because witnessing his demise – and seeing the ejaculations of anyone foolish enough to defend him – was “like watching the last death throes of the dinosaur age”. (Isn’t that a bit ageist?)
The Clarkson Effect.
— Carol Vorderman (@carolvorders) December 20, 2022
I've received a lot of abuse obvs, but it's like watching the last death throes of a dinosaur age. Sad souls who are angry at new thought, at equality, at kindness. BUT this chapter has also brought the calm, normally silent, people together. We fight onhttps://t.co/LkOhqNxtun
Incidentally, Vorderman quote-tweeted a letter to the Chief Executive of ITV signed by 60 MPs, including some Conservatives, urging her to sack him as presenter of Who Wants to be a Millionaire? They, too, didn’t get the Game of Thrones reference – or pretended not to so they could work themselves up into even more of a lather. “Expressing a scatological, misogynistic fantasy that Meghan Markle might be assaulted with faeces is an insight into a disturbed mind, openly expressing violent hate speech,” wrote the letter’s author, SNP MP John Nicholson. He claimed he had “consistently defended freedom of the press” – oh really? – but Clarkson had “crossed a line”.
The pile-on against the “old fart” is ironic, given that the people leading the charge claim to be concerned about the psychological trauma his words have caused Meghan. What about the psychological impact on Clarkson of being the latest victim of two minutes hate? It’s almost as if his critics are demanding that he should be stripped naked and paraded through the streets of every town in Britain while he’s pelted with excrement for daring to suggest that someone should be stripped naked and… etc., etc.
Needless to say, far from being traumatised, Harry and Meghan will be rubbing their hands with glee over this row, not least because it’s shifted public opinion back in their favour after the poor reception given to their Neflix ‘documentary’. Here, at last, is the ‘evidence’ they’ve been desperately searching for that the racist British tabloids turned on Meghan because, to quote John Nicholson’s letter, she’s “the only person of colour in the Royal Family”.
How has Clarkson responded to all this performative outrage and opportunistic virtue-signalling? Alas, he has issued (sort of) an apology:
In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.
Oh, Jeremy. You should have reached out to the Free Speech Union, where we would have told you that apologising rarely succeeds in drawing a line under attempts to cancel you. On the contrary, it emboldens the mob who sense weakness and move in for the kill. When I stepped down from the Office for Students and apologised for various sophomoric remarks I’d made on Twitter in 2018, the Twitchfork mob immediately tried to get me fired from all my other jobs and I ended up losing five positions in total. And so it has proved to be in Clarkson’s case, with campaigns launched now to have him fired by Amazon, where he presents Grand Tour, as well as Clarkson’s Farm.
That issuing an apology was a mistake is also the view of Ross Clark, who has written an excellent piece for the Telegraph about L’Affaire Clarkson. It begins:
Jeremy Clarkson has never been the most subtle of writers, but his latest column has managed to exceed even his own outrage-expectations. In my view, if you want to call out the former royal couple for their excruciating and hypocritical behaviour, it pays to be everything they are not: reasonable, reserved and respectful. Fantasising about Meghan being paraded through the streets having lumps of excrement thrown at her is the very sort of thing which fuels the couple’s grievance machine, which allows them to say: see what we mean about racist Britain hating Meghan?
In truth, Netflix producers failed so miserably to demonstrate that Harry and Meghan were victims of an orchestrated hate campaign by the British tabloids that they were reduced to flashing up headlines from American publications. But Clarkson’s column will certainly be taking pride of place in the couple’s next film.
Today, however, that is not the main issue – for the debate has extended into one of free speech and Clarkson’s right to cause offence. The answer is easy: of course he has that right. And having written what he did, Clarkson made an error by appearing to apologise. That is exactly what Harry and Meghan and their supporters want: for the British press, and potentially its regulators, to be so fearful of causing offence that they grovel before them.
Clarkson should have followed one of two examples. The first, like the best comedians, is to unashamedly defend his right to write what he did. The second would be to maintain a dignified silence: say nothing, or, at the very most insist that “interpretations of my column may vary”.
It isn’t just Harry and Meghan whose interests Jeremy Clarkson has helped serve by means of his apology: it is the entire liberal-Left establishment and its demented campaign against what it calls the “Right-wing press”. Is there anything more ridiculous than watching Sir Philip Pullman, for instance, mounting his high horse over Clarkson’s column? This is a man who tweeted, following the Brexit vote, “When I hear the name Boris Johnson for some reason the words ‘rope’ and ‘nearest lamp post’ come to mind as well.”
Were the liberal-Left to apply consistent standards, it would have demanded that Sir Philip’s books be removed from bookshop and library shelves, and films based on his books to be banned from television. But of course, different rules apply to “enlightened” liberal commentators, who are allowed to employ violent imagery in their arguments and brush aside complaints that they didn’t mean it literally (neither, funny enough, did Clarkson when he called for Meghan to be paraded naked through the streets).
Worth reading in full.
What’s my view of Clarkson’s column? Well, I wouldn’t have written those words myself, not least because – to paraphrase Clark – I wouldn’t have wanted to give “the entire liberal-Left establishment” an excuse to launch yet another attack on the “Right-wing press” or lend any credibility to Meghan’s ludicrous attempts to smear the British tabloids as racist. I think I also would have recognised that it’s a little tone deaf to confess to fantasising about inflicting a Game of Thrones-style ‘walk of shame’ on a prominent female public figure, given the current campaign to criminalise ‘misogyny’. Such a law would pose a major threat to free speech because, among other things, it would almost certainly make it a criminal offence to say something ‘hateful’ against transwomen as well as women, which, as we know, includes saying you don’t think transwomen are women. I’m not sure all the feminist commentators citing L’Affair Clarkson as a reason we need a law against misogyny have thought that one through.
Should it be against the law to write what Clarkson wrote? Absolutely not. Should he lose his gigs on ITV and Amazon? Of course not. Should he be sacked by the Sun? No. I’ve got nothing against people condemning Clarkson on Twitter and elsewhere – they’re as entitled to exercise their free speech as he is. But trying to get someone fired for saying something you find offensive – or, more accurately, pretend to find offensive – goes beyond healthy debate in the public square and strays into cancel culture. That’s crossing a line, John Nicholson.
Whenever anyone says they support free speech but draw the line at hate speech, the six million dollar question is: Who gets to decide what hate speech is? In today’s political climate, accusing the Royal Family of being a racist institution isn’t hate speech – even though it’s clearly intended to stir up hatred against King Charles et al – but saying you would like to strip the accuser naked, parade her through the streets of every town in Britain… etc., etc. is the secular equivalent of blasphemy. Why? How did that become the rule? Because Chris Packham, Ayesha Hazarika and Carol Vorderman say so? And if it’s just whoever shouts the loudest, or whoever’s opinions align with the prevailing orthodoxy on Twitter, how will those purse-lipped puritans defend themselves when the fashion changes and their equivalents in 25 years’ time regard their speech as hateful?
As Ira Glasser, the ex-head of the ACLU said:
Speech restrictions are like poison gas. You see a bad speaker out there. And you don’t want to listen to him or her anymore. So you get this poison gas and say, “I’m going to spray him with it.” And then the wind shifts. And pretty soon the gas blows back on you.
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I don’t think I would have written what he wrote, for various reasons, but Markle seems like an enemy – I expect she despises people like me, and seems to be an enthusiastic advocate for trains of thought intent on destroying our civilisation.
The only claim to fame of that woman is that she has managed to bed a not overly bright member of British royal family, not exactly a unique accomplishment. Everything beyond that is just Say what everybody else is saying (Especially if you can profit from it!)-style stuff. The notion that Hollywood actresses married to royal princes are victims of oppression while British working-class people are privileged compared to her is absurd. Insofar the lady keeps making noises which are too loud to ignore, only mockery is appropriate.
Yes, they seem pretty lame to me, struggle to think anyone takes them seriously, even people who believe the woke bollocks they spout.
Bedding a member of the royal family is pretty humdrum. Getting him to marry you and apparently stay faithful – that IS a unique accomplishment.
I think there are way worse people to get our knickers in a twist over to be honest. For instance, correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t specifically remember reading of Meghan inciting hate and advocating the segregation and stigmatization of those of us who didn’t wish to get jabbed, i.e Piers Morgan-style. Now there’s an example of a prime tosser I wouldn’t mind chucking copious amounts of poo at!
True, though I am sure she supported lockdowns, vaxxing, don’t recall her speaking out about any of it. She’s a bit player, but still she is batting for the enemy team, not for me.
The whole of Britain has to overreact to Clarkson’s article to prove Markle wrong and show that Britain isn’t a racist country.
So in the end everyone will be dancing to her tune.
This is self victimisation at its best. Provoke abuse and then watch everyone panic and fall over themselves trying to over-correct.
We all live in Meghan Markle’s world now.
Does Clarkson have membership of FSU?
I guess he doesn’t, or he wouldn’t have asked Sun to remove his article!
A good retort to this would-be tempest in a teapot would have been something like I’m sorry that your education is so lacking that even the most over-the-top hyperbole escapes you, but that’s really not my problem. Sue the headteacher of your secondary school.
Oh dear Jeremy. If you’d only directed your wrath at Sturgeon I could have got behind you. Of all the worthy public figures to aim your vitriolic comments at ( given the shitstorm we’ve all weathered these last few years there are no shortage of possibilities ) you go and waste your time on someone as irrelevant as Meghan. What a wasted opportunity.
Exactly.
I couldn’t care less about both.
I do care about free speech though.
Yes it was tasteless, but from Clarkson, what else did anyone expect?
He’s an a*sehole and that’s his brand.
In Germany, the left has its equivalent in Jan Boehmermann.
And he has his show at the BBC2 equivalent.
He just insulted all women not agreeing with the LBTQXYZ+ agenda as ‘Scheisshaufen’ aka pile of sh*t, on this show.
This time, the ‘right’ went berserk.
Again, I think it’s tasteless and that he certainly is a j*rk, but I also think he should be entitled to say so and dig his own grave.
I object to having to finance his sh*te and hate speech through license fees though, and the same would go for Clarkson, Morgan&co.
I have said many times and my position has not changed. The best thing you can do with the clown prince and his revolting wife is to ignore them. This does exactly the opposite and just gives them more of the publicity they crave.
The people hysterically condemning Clarkson are so stupid they’re almost certainly multiply jabbed.
I look forward to their voices becoming still.
Well, I believe Toby has written two excellent pieces there and largely he is correct.
What was downright stupid was Clarkson even speaking about those two deplorables. Firstly, he has put them back on the front pages where they can continue to milk their ‘victimhood’ and secondly he’s given the hypocrites like Packham and Vorderman some publicity which they don’t deserve. And Sturgeon? Freedom of speech? How the hell she has the sheer gall?
Clarkson went for the wrong victims and has simply provided them with publicity that they have no right to. The best thing to do with these tax leaching, dysfunctional, hate filled idiots is ignore them.
I think Clarkson was wrong to say what he did. Massive waste of perfectly good excrement.
Misogyny? It’s nearly Xmas, so I’m biting my tongue on this one, but the usual hypocrisies are out there in plain sight. Again.
I’m happy to say that I’ve not got any idea what this Meghan Markle’s like. Never listened to her. Not interested in what amounts to a posh soap opera. Toby’s right though, you won’t placate these people with an apology. They will now smell blood. He should have doubled down and made another reference to some other scene of unimaginable indecency from GoT to show how ridiculous the reaction is. Quite a few to choose from!
I don’t particularly like Jeremy Clarkson nor pay much attention to him (nor have I ever watched Game of Thrones) but I think I know him well enough to understand that he clearly didn’t literally mean what he said, it’s just his sense of humour, as was his equating Nicola Sturgeon with Rose West – which I thought was quite funny, I wonder if there have been any complaints about that!
It would be a pity if people with a well-developed sense of humour had to mitigate their natural output and dumb it down, so as to satisfy people who have a lesser understanding of humour – it would be like musicians or poets having to dumb down to avoid displeasing people with less sophisticated tastes in music or literature.
Im guessing his apology was for his daughters benefit, anyway he has smoked a few more hypocrites out ! Jezza represents life as it really is warts & all , of the women he mentioned the child that Rose West became was an actual victim , let all these hand wringers reflect on that ! Krankie is drunk on power and Markle leaves her ailing Dad unvisited by herself the Ginger whinger & the kids which in any level of society is disgraceful .
I just think it’s often best to keep such feelings and opinions to yourself. What Clarkson is doing is a sad sign of the times, whereby people are emboldened to spread their nastiness and legitimize it by basically hiding behind the very ambiguous concept of ‘Free Speech’.
Was it not Mike Tyson that said something like, ”Social media has made you all way too comfortable with disrespecting people and not getting punched in the face for it.”?
And this is the crux of it. Free speech should mean improvement and progression in society, so that people can say what they want, but I feel standards have slipped big time if this is the sort of thing deemed acceptable nowadays. What would happen if he’d said the same about Harry or Kate? I expect he wouldn’t bloody dare, but Meghan is apparently fair game and has become a public figure worthy of repeated abuse and ridicule.
And as an aside, I’m calling out Toby here because if somebody had posted that same comment on here about another poster, would that fall under ”free speech” or ”abuse”, and gotten removed, as per the notice above? Because I wonder if Toby shifts the goal posts of acceptability on a daily basis depending on what mood he’s in…
Can’t argue with that , however George Orwell gave us a view into this future where by the www in all its forms has inadvertently let us air our subconscious thoughts that we ALL have out in the open , that as Iron Mike said would get you filled in face to face ! Just to round up though I’ll leave you with the Netflix clip memory of MM explaining her curtsy to The Queen while H sat squirming !
Spot on.
I don’t think your calling out of Toby Young is on point. If I invite people to a dinner party and one guest is amazingly rude to another, I would (as host and property owner) have the right to eject that person, but would not (and should not) have the ability to call the police to report the guest for being impolite (or worse). Of course we should strive to be nice and respectful to others, but it should not be required by law, because it is human nature occasionally to be angry and rude and mean and humorous and sarcastic and …
Yes I hear what you say but my point was, where is the line drawn between what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable, because ”free speech”? I’ve had posts removed on here where I’ve dropped ‘F-bombs’ but I’ve also been called worse than shit by some posters, even one in particular wishing myocarditis on me, and yet those posts and posters remain. Hux has had a post removed where he said something along the lines of politicians being guilty of mass murder ( I’m sure he’ll be along to clarify if necessary ), and received a ‘friendly warning’ over it, despite the fact that he’s totally justified and accurate in that statement, in my opinion, but this doesn’t fall under the protective umbrella term of ”free speech” apparently. Hence my remark about shifting goal posts. It would seem that free speech is whatever the creator of the website or moderators say it is. But this is too vague and lacks definitive boundaries as far as I’m concerned.
There should surely just be a blanket rule of remaining civil towards other posters and not behaving like a cry baby snowflake if somebody disagrees with you. Regarding Jeremy’s comment though, I do wonder how he would respond if somebody posted the exact same thing about his wife or daughter. My guess is he’d go ape-shit, but his ego dictates that he alone is allowed to display such crude and disrespectful behaviour towards his identified targets with zero consequences. Double standards to the max. In a nut shell, comment online how you would speak to somebody in real life. Surely that is a fail safe in these modern times.
“where is the line drawn between what is deemed acceptable and unacceptable?”
The question is: acceptable in law or acceptable in a discussion forum or acceptable at a dinner party or acceptable in MSM or…?
I think “free speech” is a question of legality, and I am pretty much in favour of the position taken in the US First Amendment (as interpreted by various Supreme Court pronouncements).
On a forum such as this, I agree with your position that the acceptability threshold should reference how you would speak to someone in real life. And I also agree that people on forums such as this should not be permitted to hide behind a notion of “free speech” in order to say “unacceptable” things. Something can be “unacceptable” without being illegal.
I’m not a Meghan Markle fan. I’ve often found Clarkson funny. But what he wrote was vile.. He absolutely should be fired for that, and surely most people would have felt that in the past, in the days before ‘cancel culture’.
Well…all the ‘don’t likes’…that’s predictable. Thank you to Mogwai, in his reply to Freddy Boy above, for helping me feel I’m not the only one out of step with what would appear to be the majority here, and expressing his/her feelings so eloquently.
I’m feeling in a non-binary mood today so that’s ok.
Perhaps I ought to get my testosterone levels checked…
Yikes!
Well, but he didn’t write it. The celebrated TV author George R.R. Martin did. He just chose an appropriate victim of such a ceremony – reportedly, fair-skinned and blonde, an original sin which always justifies any kind of public humiliation – while Clarkson should have known that light-brown skinned and black haired implies such a thing is absolutely not comme ils faut. This means his crime boils down to not recognizing Games of Thrones as the completely disgusting piece of work it is and thus, having his brain partially reprogrammed by it.
[I used to follow the books until the last published one which didn’t really contain anything but very graphic descriptions of the symptoms of unpleasant diseases mixed with plenty of random sex and violence and I’ve thrown them all away afterwards]
So far as I am concerned, “Hate Crime” is at best a lazy oxymoron.
Hate is one of the basic human emotions. Just like Love, Trust, Sympathy and so on.
The very idea of trying to ban hatred is ridiculous. Hatred is a strong feeling but sometimes necessary, sometimes strongly advisable, sometimes useful. When the Thought Police come breaking your door down at 3:00 am, a bit of hatred, (rather than love or timidity) may be beneficial.
Equally, Love isn’t by any means always positive. How many lives have been ruined by misplaced love? Try Stefan Zweig’s “Beware of Pity”.
Let he that has not watched that scene in it’s entirety, without skipping through, cast the first stone.
The problem is that Clarkson really didn’t think this through at all and, worse, the editor didn’t do his or her job either. Jeremy Clarkson likes to be controversial and say what he likes. He could have said the same thing without the controversy if he’d stopped and thought about it. Trouble is that Clarkson doesn’t do subtle and because of that he’s created what he was trying to destroy. More ammunition for Megan Markle to play the victim card. It reeks of stupidity.
Absolutely agree Aethelred.
Why is nobody condeming Game of Thrones? A series that portrays a whole lot of violence, sex, rape, public sex…
You become what you fill your head with.