Jeremy Clarkson’s Meghan column was plain nasty. But the backlash he’s facing is infinitely harsher than the outcry over these repellent slurs, writes ROSS CLARK
Clarkson’s Meghan column was plain nasty. But the backlash he’s facing is infinitely harsher than the outcry that greeted this cartoon and these other repellent slurs.
Within two days, it had become the most complained about article in the history of IPSO, the Press regulator.
It attracted a letter signed by 60 MPs across all parties and was even condemned by the author’s own daughter.
Jeremy Clarkson’s column in The Sun last Friday, in which he said he despised Meghan Markle ‘on a cellular level’ and wished she could be paraded through the streets naked, was unquestionably nasty.
In an apparent reference to the iconic ‘walk of shame’ scene in Game Of Thrones, the former Top Gear host added that he wanted to see ‘people throwing lumps of excrement at her’.
Clarkson himself has been shocked by the backlash and forced into a climbdown.
‘Oh dear,’ he tweeted. ‘I’ve rather put my foot in it. 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.’
His statement did little to quell the mounting outrage, however.
The BBC Springwatch presenter Chris Packham declared that Clarkson was guilty of a ‘hate crime’ and called for him to be jailed.
Labour MP Stella Creasy also suggested he should be prosecuted for a hate crime and that the law should be changed, if necessary, to make it possible.
A petition on the website change.org demanded that Clarkson be sacked by Amazon Prime and ITV, where he presents Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? It has already attracted five thousand signatures, although ITV says he will keep his job.
‘I have no liking for Jeremy Clarkson, whom I have always thought boorish. His column wasn’t just offensive, it could be interpreted as misogynistic and it certainly distracted attention away from Harry and Meghan’s own appalling behaviour towards the Royal Family, feeding their narrative of victimhood.
But the backlash against Clarkson has also highlighted the monumental and ceaseless hypocrisy of the Left.
For while its commentators, politicians and Twitter warriors erupt into outrage at a columnist in a Conservative newspaper, the truth is that the Left has its own despicable record of making horrible remarks, some of which might be said to verge on incitement to violence.
I am not in any way trying to excuse Clarkson — just pointing out that many of the voices now demanding his head will have been conspicuously silent over even viler comments from the Left.
When they cause offence, they rarely seem to pay a price or even apologise. Different standards seem to apply.
