The Top Gear host's fate was sealed when he punched a co-worker. But the papers blame the BBC.
Political correctness, it is said, has gone mad. It seems you can’t even punch a subordinate any more for fear of offending the loony Left. Why don’t they lighten up?
Depressing as it has been to read the weird defences of Jeremy Clarkson, after the BBC decided not to renew the Top Gear host’s contract over his punching his producer, worse is the attempt by some newspapers to paint him as the victim of a left-wing BBC plot.
Efforts of this nature have not been limited to Twitter and cranks like Rod Liddle. Today’s Times said Clarkson has been ‘sacked for more than his own idiocy’. Apparently it’s all down to Danny Cohen, the BBC’s director of television:
“Cohen, a fixture of the north London metropolitan elite, was keen to have the presenter removed after the most recent Top Gear controversy.
“He and Clarkson are like chalk and cheese – or steak and tofu. Clarkson, politically incorrect, shooting from the hip, unafraid to ruffle feathers, stands in stark contrast to Cohen’s cerebral background.”
(The Mail also ran a piece about Cohen recently in its Clarkson coverage with the same ‘north London’ wink wink tone about the Jewish TV executive. The Times adds that Cohen is married to academic Noreena Hertz and is friends with Nigella Lawson and Rachel Weisz.)
The Right’s charge-sheet against Cohen includes his ruling that BBC panel shows should feature at least one woman, and his public objection to Clarkson’s use of racial epithets like ‘slope’ and ‘nigger’. Apparently these are left-wing positions. (Notice how pinched and conventional the hip-shooters and feather-rufflers get when it comes to women and ‘minorities’.)
The Times leader column joined in:
“[T]he corporation’s senior managers, chief among them its director of television, Danny Cohen, seized a chance to rid themselves of a star they never really liked nor understood.”
Though it agrees that ‘hitting a colleague is never acceptable’, the Times says the BBC overreacted, ‘sacrificed £50 million in annual revenues’, lost a popular show and could have suspended Clarkson and slapped him with a ‘heavy fine’.
The Times did run a counter piece by David Aaronovitch, but no such balance can be found in the Sun. The fellow Murdoch-owned tabloid said Clarkson is ‘hurt and upset’ over his sacking, and ran a string of vox pops called ‘Your Verdict’, all of which were pro-Clarkson. Its leader column said the BBC has ‘given the finger’ to licence-fee payers:
“Left-wing BBC executives, already itching to rid themselves of someone so politically incorrect, pounced on it [the punch] and turned it into an international incident. […]
“Its bosses say they had no choice. That it had nothing to do with politics. It’s just a coincidence that lefties everywhere are uncorking the bubbly because Clarkson, a Tory whose popularity is an affront to every belief they hold dear, finally got his comeuppance.”
And it’s not just the Murdoch papers pushing this line. The Telegraph’s leader column wailed: “The loss of perhaps the BBC’s last big right-wing personality will only compound the popular image of a corporation dominated by the metropolitan Left.”
Of course, there’s no mention in the Sun and the Times of Clarkson’s friendship with Murdoch’s goddaughter, Rebbekah Brooks, and David Cameron, Murdoch’s horse in the general election.
In other words, never mind the ‘north London metropolitan elite’, what about the Chipping Norton elite who actually have power, with links to a press baron and the prime minister?
Rumours Murdoch is thinking of hiring Clarkson for future car-themed television may also play a part in the coverage.
In some ways, the papers are right to blame the BBC. The corporation has been far too lenient with this overpaid bully, and allowed him to think he could do what he liked. But the charge of political bias could just as easily be made against these papers. After all, Clarkson’s status as a right-wing totem and promoter of reactionary views is betrayed in all the quotes above.
But in reality, Clarkson was sacked and faces police investigation not because of some left-wing plot, or because he challenged taboos, but because no-one should be able to behave as he did, at licence-fee payers’ expense, and expect to get away with it.
As BBC director Tony Hall said very well:
“The BBC is a broad church. Our strength in many ways lies in that diversity. We need distinctive and different voices but they cannot come at any price. Common to all at the BBC have to be standards of decency and respect. […]
“There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.”
‘Decency and respect’. Are even these conservative values to be jettisoned now in the name of smashing political correctness?
Adam Barnett is a staff writer at Left Foot Forward. Follow him on Twitter
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30 Responses to “Jeremy Clarkson was sacked over violence, not ‘political correctness’”
GTE
You can bite a colleague and still head up the BBC on 800K a year plus.
damon
Don’t know about the Jewish angle raised here in this piece. I doubt that’s anything real.
But people who hate Clarkson are happy. It’s a bit pathetic really. He is an oaf and I went off the programme some years ago as I don’t find it particularly funny. It’s too contrived for me.
But his previous ”crimes” are not so bad IMO. The ”one eyed Scottish idiot” one was the worst I’d say.
But people were even getting offended by the one about Mexicans.
Omg, someone made a crass stereotype about old ideas of Mexico, which is a country very very far away from the British consciousness. We’re more likely to have an idea of Mexico from Clint Eastwood films like ”A fist full of dollars” or The Magnificent Seven.
But today we’re so PC that you can’t make a joke about any country on earth. Not even Papua New Guinea, like Boris Johnson found out when he mentioned cannibalism some years ago. (There were cannibals there in the not so distant past).
Even the ”Eeny meeny miny mo” thing was pathetic, as it was something that an enemy of his had picked up of the cutting room floor and passed to the media. Which is pretty disgusting in my opinion.
Clarkson had to go over punching this guy once it got out, but maybe it could have been sorted out internally.
Treated like a rugby player punching another during a match maybe. It’s bad, but not the end of the world.
Cole
That’s was years ago. At least they’re now applying normal employment rules to their staff. There can’t be many employers who would tolerate their people punching co workers.
Cole
But these right wing papers often do dog whistle antisemitic jibes. For example, we are told Miliband looks ‘weird’ (compared to, say, Osborne or Gove?). ‘North London metropolitan’ is another one they use. Nothing very subtle.
Guest
You “don’t know”, but you then “doubt” it’s real. Because of your bias.
Rudeness is not the same as PC. As you excuse violence…