Jeremy Clarkson and the outrage industry

As a close (female) friend once remarked I just love Top Gear except for the little boring bits about cars.

And thats the point, the family light entertainment/comedy/travel show which Top Gear had become wasnt about cars at all it was about being globally politically incorrect, badly behaved, and casually insulting about Johnny Foreigner in a world where so many get so uptight about all three. Bonza!!! In short, Top Gear was UKIP TV before the party even arrived on the national stage except with more cash and better gags.

It became a weird national safety-valve allowing Clarkson to sound off like millions want to, but cant now because they fear everything from Twitter hysteria through to an industrial tribunal via some unsmiling HR robot who never saw the funny side.

So it was Men Behaving Badly and One Man Really, forget cars thats what people liked.

In an age when rock stars, sport stars (except football) indeed stars of all sorts and political stars most of all are essentially dulled by walls of PR and PC flummery Clarkson and Top Gear stood out.

Misbehaviour was the whole point. Auntie tolerated it nervously and creamed off the money from the global cash-cow this shouty, insulting, expensive panto had become.

Thats why Nigel Farage has done so well in the polls hes a political Clarkson he never quite received the PC/PR memo and very many people adore that in these times when above all else everyone in public life is terrified of actually saying what they feel. Hes to politics what Clarkson is to the telly.

The instantaneously, precious world of easily-offended social media heightens all this of course.

Being offensive: this is what Clarkson was for. He personally and the show generally.

The entire charade of course has long become increasingly hackneyed, ever more scripted and contrived to create offence at all cost editorially and allow Clarkson a stage to do it personally with the oh-so-scripted faux upsets with two other presenters who increasingly only exist to set Clarkson up to Clarksonise.

Read the rest here:
Jeremy Clarkson and the outrage industry