to be unsurprised that Jeremy Clarkson used the N word?

[lessonsintightropes]

Abject apology here.

Surely the Beeb will have to sack him now?

Didn't know about slope.

Of COURSE "chinaman" is offensive.

Well, we have them on record as having admitted it.

Why use a nursery rhyme that most people know contains an offensive word?

On a different note - the word I learned in that nursery rhyme was piggy. We've had tiger, midget (?!), tigger, nipper - any other variants?

I know lessons midget!

Especially as there was a girl with dwarfism at our very small school

We sang catch a baby by the toe

Beggar

Which is ... Nut great!

we sang catch a fish by it's toe

ds sings tiger

we sang catch a "nicker" (sp?) as in someone who nicked/robbed things

Fish don't have toes.
I also didn't know about slope.

Also learnt it with the n-word in the 70s & have to consciously replace it - we had squirrel as the substitute.

And never knew slope was a slang term. Sometimes I think people make things like this up as a sociological experiment to see if spreads.

I didn't know about rthe word slope either. im sure he was saying about the bridge otherwise the Beeb would surely have pulled that word off.

Jamelia was saying on loose women today that rap 'artists' use the n word, call women female dogs amongst other things yet they are never reprimanded/banned/censored.

Slope was a new one on me, but I'm prepared to guess that Clarkson knew it and was being sly. To me, exploiting a little known term that most people don't know in order to make a joke with racist foundations is far more of a sacking offence than this recent event because he's not just being racist, he's also taking the piss out of his viewers.

We used the n word in the 70's but I always thought it was nicker (had never come across the n word).

Surely the clip was scripted? So if racist intent was meant it was the fault of the script writers/director as well as Clarkson. I think Clarkson is often outrageous but this is not an example of that.

I quite liked James May's tweet yesterday which said JC is an enormous bell end but not a racist.

'Jamelia was saying on loose women today that rap 'artists' use the n word, call women female dogs amongst other things yet they are never reprimanded/banned/censored.'

Yes but there's a huge difference between a black person using that word and Jeremy Clarkson using it.

Everyone used to recite that rhyme when i was a child,and as clarkson is only a few years younger than me, i daresay he recited it as a child too. he was probably unwise to think of using it in a T v show, but since i gather it wasn't actually broadcast, i am not sure what the problem is.

Squoosh she also said- (should have added but just remembered ! )that she gets offended even by black people using that word its offensive by anyone using it, also the words they use for females.

Another one here who had no idea "slope" was considered offensive. I watched the Bridge over the River Kwai programme and if there were racist nuances to that comment I totally missed them.

Of COURSE "chinaman" is offensive.
Is it? But WHY? Genuinely asking. "French man" isn't offensive. Why "chinaman"?

'Squoosh she also said- (should have added but just remembered ! )that she gets offended even by black people using that word its offensive by anyone using it, also the words they use for females.'

And she has every right to be offended by anyone using that word, but there's still the world of difference between a black person saying it and a white person.

5foot5

There's a nasty edge to it; the connotations of past usage, I suppose. I've mainly seen it in old literature (think Arthur Conan Doyle) and not used in just a factual manner, if you know what I mean.

Notice how it is constructed differently from Frenchman, to start with. The exact equivalent to Frenchman would be Chinese man, with or without a space.

It was used with the N word (not by me, as I was quite aware that it was an offensive term even at that age) in Norwich in the early 1970s. However, one would hope that in the ensuing decades Clarkson has, you know, heard that it is widely known to be offensive.

Am still boggling at the PP who says many of us are probably married to men like Clarkson...

I'm not surprised that Jeremy Clarkson said this - and he did say it, and it is a story to any wannabe sophisticates who're saying it's not.

I'm struck by this, though, from the OP's link:

Former BBC chairman Sir Christopher Bland also rebutted calls for Clarkson to be sacked, despite acknowledging "a serious error of judgment".

"He shouldn't be sacked. I tell you who should be sacked, and that's the person who released the clip to the Daily Mirror in order to give the whole thing a wider circulation than it deserved".

Bland was in charge while Jimmy Savile was a big cheese at the BBC. And he's saying that whistleblowers should be sacked.

I'm not for a minute saying that Clarkson's thumbnosing idiocy is in any way comparable to Savile's crimes.

I'm just saying that they haven't learned, have they?

Top Gear fans get to keep watching the show and I don't have to have license fee money pay for it

Your license fee money doesn't pay for it. It pays for itself many times over.

He's a broadcaster and journalist. Words are his livelihood and I cannot believe he didn't know exactly what he was saying.