Lighten up, everybody and stop bitching about Jeremy Clarkson
As usual Jeremy Clarkson is in trouble for saying things on television. It’s not the first time and it certainly won’t be the last. He is on a show where he says the most surreal and dumb things possible, and he makes a lot of money from it. The BBC makes a lot of money from it. People are watching it (myself included). Indeed, Top Gear is one of the most successful properties the BBC owns. To sack Clarkson over some silly thing he said on a chat show nobody watches is crazy. It doesn’t matter if 21,000 people didn’t like it. It’s been known for years that if you like what someone says, you won’t write to the broadcaster. But if you hate it, you’ll write, phone and tell the world about what a horrible job the BBC is doing.
In context, what Jeremy Clarkson said about the strikers amounted to nothing but a small joke. Nobody expects anyone to take him seriously. He’s hardly the expert on public matters. He drives fast cars and insults people for a living. He’s done that for more than a decade. Does anyone sane really, really expect him to just quit or be fired for this? The unions are obviously making a big deal about this, when they should be spending their time doing something useful like shutting the fuck up working for better benefits for their members. The BBC and Clarkson have apologised for what it’s worth, and hopefully everyone just realises that he’s paid to say things like this.
