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Jeremy Clarkson Dismissed From Top Gear
An anonymous reader writes According to BBC News, Jeremy Clarkson, longstanding main host for the automobile television show Top Gear, will not have his contract renewed. This decision came about two weeks after he was suspended due to an altercation with a Top Gear producer involving catering during filming for the show. Admittedly not the nerdiest news of the day, but it can be said that his thirteen-year run on the new format of Top Gear has interested many Slashdot users who love their cars and the entertainment that the show has brought to them.
End of show.
will be watching bbc management scramble when they realize their cash cow left the building when May and Hammond, decline to renew their contracts.
The BBC is a public broadcaster, funded and owned by mandatory license fees in the UK.Clarkson was on contract to the BBC. Once the organization confirmed that unprovoked verbal and physical abuse had occurred, they had to take action or leave the corporation open to an indefensible lawsuit from the victim. They can't exactly say, "Yeah, get stuffed. We have extensive policies promoting equality and prohibiting harassment and violence in the workplace, but we're ignoring them because the presenter is popular and profitable."
No doubt Clarkson and pals will make a profitable jump to Netflix or Sky to make a similar motoring comedy show. Meanwhile, the BBC has a chance to reinvent Top Gear with younger presenters and a reinvigorated format (there are only so many new Lamborghinis, Ferraris and Aston Martins that can be driven around a track in a cloud of smoke every week and only so many routes for contrived road trips through war zones in ancient sports cars).
Yeah, Jeremy Clarkson is funny until you realise he actually means what he says.
It's a bit like laughing at Saddam when he says "Let's go gas some civilians" assuming he has a dark sense of humour, then only to realise that, no, he actually means it.
Jeremy Clarkson is easy to replace, there are plenty of celebrities in the UK that do a great job of playing the bitter miserable old Englishman without actually being a bitter miserable old Englishman for real.
Honestly, a lot of people moaning they wont watch Top Gear because Clarkson is gone, I've tried watching it many a time and he's always the reason I changed the channel when he went off on a xenophobic rant. Now I'll be able to watch it and enjoy it, it's not Clarkson that made the show, it's the fucking cars, that's why you watch it. If it was Clarkson then some of the other shows he's been on would be the best there have been, like a number of quiz shows he's turned up on, but the ones he's in have always been crap episodes.
Mostly his popularity is just a rallying cry for populist bigots, one of the talking heads put it best - Clarkson was Farage before Farage. Good riddance.
Even if the guy intentionally put his food in the refrigerator, it would not justify flipping out and yelling for 20 minutes, let alone punching the producer in the face.
I wonder where the rest of the world is putting all of the cars that they ask to have put on huge freighters and shipped overseas? There must be some huge warehouses full of those vehicles. And all of the private exporters who gray-market US cars to destinations all over the planet must be truly perplexed by the money they receive, since no one is actually driving the cars.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
May has changed his Twitter status to 'ex-presenter'. He's already said the show only works because of the chemistry of the three and he's right. Top gear US is nowhere near as good. It seems he's quit too.
Clarkson did nothing particular bad, making a joke about a slope of a bridge (which people claimed is an insult to asians but I've never heard of it), he said 'nigger' in the eenie meenie miny mo rhyme *decades* ago in old top gear, when it was acceptable. It's a pity he couldn't travel forward in time and see that 'nigger' would be unacceptable. He said Mexicans were lazy, and so what. He made a joke about Truck drivers killing prostitutes, and that upset neither prostitutes nor truckers nor viewers, but newspapers had a slow day so did some mock outrage.
Basically the newspapers have been trying desperately to take offense at him, and every little incident has been exaggerated with mock outrage, the sort you see on Fox News at everything a Democrat does. It was pathetic.
So now they've got Top Gear cancelled, and they'll do a little high five at their victory and look for the next target.
The correct headline would be "Millionaire Celebrity Thug and Bigot Finally Dismissed by BBC."
The correct subhead would be "Assault on staff last straw, after insults to Mexico and use of n-word insufficient to force BBC executives to punish their cash cow."
Well, yes, he'd have still got sacked, if that's what you're saying about it not making any difference.
But are you implying that verbally and physically assaulting a colleague aren't grounds enough for dismissal?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
How the fuck does that "make me wrong"? Because I didn't specify what nationality the "well known car manufacturer" was? In what world does your post contradict my post? It adds information (that Lexus is a brand of Toyota, a Japanese car manufacturer), but it doesnt negate any of the information in my post.
Or are you one of these people who always has to show that someone is "wrong", somehow, in some way?
Comments that, according to what I heard, may not have happened because it wasn't exactly clear what he said. Also they never went on air with the comments. Lastly the racist remark was in completing a certain nursery rhyme in a way that I'm everyone reading this has done at least once in your mind if not verbally. It's something that can't be avoided when the N word is being mentioned all the time either as something not to be said or as something that comes up all the time in rap and common conversations involving black people (yes, I know it's not supposed to be the same word but it sure sounds the same.)
I'm not suggesting that racist comments are something that anyone should indulge in whether in public or private, but given the context and Clarkson's tendency to try and be funny on camera I can see him saying it as part of the rhyme knowing that it won't make it on air. At worst someone should have said don't do that, but that he got a warning from the BBC seems overkill to me. It would be entirely different if he did that in front of an audience and not just while recording some set piece that they were probably working on all day long. From what I read they had already filmed the same segment three times so he was probably a bit bored.
That's obvious, but it still doesn't clarify whatever point it was you were trying to make.
He punched a colleague. He got sacked. Seems pretty reasonable. But it's also pretty much the ultimate sanction the BBC can impose on him, so I'm really not sure what you're trying to say by comparing it with a much worse hypothetical assault which would still have resulted in him getting sacked, albeit with perhaps a little more alacrity.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Even if so, there's very probably enough provocation on the failing there by the Producer alone.
Bollocks. Instead of turning up at 8pm for dinner at the hotel, Clarkson stayed at the pub drinking. Then he turned up at 10pm, probably pissed, and demanded a hot meal. The cook had already gone home, so Clarkson abused the producer for 20 minutes then assaulted him.
What an entitled prick who deserves not only sacking, but criminal prosecution.
It's good luck to be superstitious