Recently, on the BBC show The One Show, Jeremy Clarkson made a bad and tactless joke. Oh. The end....right? After all, Clarkson making bad, tactless jokes has become one of the universal constants that are the cornerstones of our understanding of the Universe. Except, this time, it collided with another upstart cornerstone: self-righteous indignant outrage. The BBC was inundated with over 21,000 complaints. Actually, I don't know if that counts as an inundation these days, but for dramatic purposes let's assume it does. Hilariously, Unison threatened to report Clarkson to the police. I wish they would, so the police could laugh at them in their stupid faces. Hmmm....perhaps I should take a step back and give that comment some context.......
There's an idea. Clarkson's comment about shooting strikers was not said in isolation. The joke wasn't even about the strikes; it was at the expense of the BBC's need for political balance, a deliberately exaggerated opinion to counter a previous one. Therefore, those 21,000 complainants comprise two sets of people:
1. People who saw the original broadcast, or have since seen it or the transcripts, but didn't recognise the full context. These people are just plain thick. You can't hold Clarkson responsible for thick people's thickness. If we all had to go around taking into account people's potential thickness before speaking, then god help us we'd never say anything. We'd become a nation of mutes, carefully avoiding any sort of interaction with anyone else ever. Hmmm....that does sound quite tempting now I think about it.......anyway;
2. People who haven't heard or seen transcripts of the full comments, but have just heard the "strikers should be shot" part. Now even here, I'd hope that most reasonable people would recognise that Clarkson, if he had said this in isolation, wasn't being entirely serious, and although it is a bad joke it's still just a joke. If the BBC is going to sack everyone who makes a bad joke then it's going to run on a skeleton crew of David Mitchell, Charlie Brooker and the Irish bloke off Mock The Week. Hmmmm....that does sound quite tempting now I think about it......
People in category 2 exist purely because large parts of the media knowingly misreported the story. This whole sorry episode is quite well-timed, against the backdrop of the Leveson enquiry, showing that media conduct isn't just about such extreme examples as phone hacking and extreme harassment. I suppose it says a lot that if I was to say "gasp! The media deliberately misrepresented the facts to stir up controversy and sell more papers/ get more attention! They're all a bunch of publicity-hungry shitvultures!", the reaction would be "well.....duuuuh". We are cynically accepting of this state of affairs.
Meanwhile, one suspects that Clarkson himself and the BBC, once they're done humbly bowing their heads, tugging their forelocks and offering well-practised meek apologies, are feeling quite smug about the whole thing. Because as it turns out, Clarkson has a new something out to sell. In fact I only know this because i read some other commentary from some other media outlet that cynically pointed out that Clarkson has a new......ah, nuts...I've fallen into the same trap, haven't I? Sorry. Turns out that they're all a bunch of self-publicising profit-weasels! Duuuuh.....
There is another sub-section of people in that 21,000: people who heard what they wanted to hear. We all do this, we don't hopefully all choose to hear the worst parts. It's almost like some people actually want to be offended.......I do remember reading some research recently that showed that you get a definite, measurable surge of adrenaline from being presented with opinions that are counter to your own. You get a kick, a buzz from being opposed or affronted.
But there's got to be more to it than that surely? Margaret Thatcher once said that there is no such thing as society. Loathe as I am to ever go anywhere near agreeing with what that Ancient Daemon of the Void said - and pointing out very strongly that I, unlike her, am not saying it whilst chortling with glee, the putrid intestinal fluids of the poor dribbling down my chin - she may have had a point. Most of us now live, if not in cities, then at least in what used to be identifiably independent towns and villages that have now been swallowed up into some vast identikit sprawling blah. Do we still have a sense of community, of communal cohesion, structure, hierarchy that we can feel part of, have an identifiable place and role in, recognise and be recognised by? And if, lacking that, we have become like the plankton or barely conscious fish of some vast shoal, entities in a vast grey formless sea of faceless individualism, schlomping from one existential crisis to the next, how do we in that sense measure any sense of self, claim any status to our individualism? Why indeed am I writing this blog?
