to be unsurprised that Jeremy Clarkson used the N word?

[lessonsintightropes]

Abject apology here.

Surely the Beeb will have to sack him now?

"I'm amazed at the amount of people who didn't know 'slope' was offensive."

I didn't know it was offensive. My definition of the word is a slight incline. I have honestly never, ever heard it in any other context. I clearly don't mix with people who make racist remarks.

Does that mean I can't describe the road outside my house any more other than saying it is on a slight hill?

Yes what OwlCapone said - have you seen the clips? They were clearly scripted, it wasn't Clarkson in free conversation or even interviewing him, it was part of a clip talking directly at the camera - reciting lines from a script. So at some stage a BBC director/scriptwriter/Top Gear Producers/possibly Clarkson sat down & discussed using eenie meenie miny moe while mumbling the offensive bit. They then presumably decided it was too close to offensive to be used and so binned the clip. There are perhaps questions to be answered as to whether it should ever have been considered in the first place & what on earth the wider Top Gear team were thinking, but I'm not sure it says anything about Clarkson's himself. It's unlikely he wrote the script himself surely?

As I said it is used quite a lot in films and TV shows about Vietnam ( I obviously watch too many war films and American TV shows).

What absolute rot. We are all products of it upbringing and there is no such thing as a person who is free from the terrible crime of grouping other human beings into stereotypes. It's what we do, we're human. If you don't accept that the. You have a lot of diversity training to do. My ethics training taught us to accept our backgrounds and that they made us see the world in a certain way. When we meet a new person we make judgements about then based on everything, clothes, hair, smell, ethnicity, speech. You can't not. The mature thing to do is to understand these and then be able to dismiss them as your preconceptions. Your husband sounds like he is doing that nomama

Agree SoFishy. Of course he's media savvy. And as a representative of a service we pay for which is meant, or so its remit would have it,.to engage and educate, he should know better.

You have all married men who never ever act, or have ever acted, in a remotely blokish manner?

NoMama, it might just be the case that stereotypically 'blokey' men aren't my type but neither my DH nor my dad nor any male friend I could think of would be casually racist. DH's dad says racist stuff all the time, he was brought up around it. DH doesn't because he knows this is the 21st century and he's not bloody stupid.

And he knows that kind of shit would disgust me. The fact that anyone can chortle over Clarkson alluding to the N word just sums up the rottenness that's still lurking in this imperialist, tiny little island which feels its wonderful and can teach the restof the world a lesson, with its 'traditions' and royals and good olde ways. And you can see these attitudes creeping back into the mainstream with the social media of so many UKIP members becoming public.

I am fourty and learnt the verse as catch a baby by its toe which is,nt great either I didn't know the original verse used the n word until I was an adult.

I had no idea about that word either, but now I know, I will try to be sensitive about it obviously. As its a very normal English word I imagine it would be ok to use it to mean an incline, but not in any context that could be offensive. (but open to being corrected).

Also the "joke" described is clearly very deliberately meant to be racist, and to have a "comedy" double meaning . How anyone can talk like that and think its ok I don't know, let alone for broadcast! As has been said, breathtaking.

Tuscon you're right about the Elvis Costello song too.

My DH is actually pretty blokey; football season ticket holder, biker, successful, glad handing businessman.

However, despite being over 50, working class and, get this, northern, he manages to never come anywhere remotely near using the word n***.

Because, amazingly, "blokey" is not a synonym for "racist dickhead".

These threads always sadden me. The amount of people who just dismiss racist/inappropriate comments is staggering. Just because you don't think it's offensive does't mean it isn't.
My DH loves top gear but even he thinks JC is being a complete deliberately rude, offensive and provocative idiot.

We love Top Gear here at Chez Martina, but I think Clarchson gets away with too many thinbgs, sometimes Im at the things he says.

I'm not arguing about whether or not it should have been said - just pointing out it was scripted (unless Clarkson routinely presents unscripted monologues to camera which I very much doubt) so I think the issue should be a BBC/Top Gear one - they're the people who should be challenged, rather than Clarkson alone. Very different than if he'd just said it off the cuff in conversation.

If you watch the clip he was probably reading off an autocue

It doesn't matter that 90% of people may not have heard of the word Slope referring to an Asian person.

And of course if you're using it purely in reference to an incline then that's fine.

What does matter is that JC knew it could mean an Asian person. He said it as a joke referring to an Asian person which he admits to. He just says he didnt know it was offensive. Personally I think that's bollocks, they'd have known it was close to the mark. I think he thought that most people wouldn't know what it meant and the ones who did wouldn't complain so they'd get away with it. I'm surprised he didn't say that he didnt know it could also mean an Asian person. I wouldn't have believed him for a second but how could you prove it? But he's admitted he did know it was a slang term. Unbelievable.

Even if he didnt know it was offensive (which I don't believe) surely as an intelligent person he'd have checked before broadcasting it. Seeing as 99% of other slang terms for ethnic minorities are offensive to some I can't see how he wouldn't have known.

Blimey I've seen someone bollocked on here for referring to their local takeaway as a Chinky on here but its ok for JC to call someone a slope???

Saintly, Clarkson is part of the scriptwriting team though, and apparently also improvises a lot of stuff.

jimJams - you do know Clarkson writes the scripts?

He and Andy Wilman his best mate/producer of TG own the majority of the company which make TopGear. Its not made by the bbc as such.

Or wasn't. I think they might recently have sold the production company, or shares in it, to the bbc. But they still write and produce it.

He's an odious man,prone to outbursts.his public sector one was appalling

It won't be him just sitting there writing whatever he likes though - that's not how it works for an institution like the BBC. Someone as well as Clarkson made an error of judgment - it wasn't just him - there were three takes for starters. Presumably at some stage someone saw sense and that particular clip was cut.

I do think that whenever they discussed using eenie meenie & he/someone else/whoever suggested it would be funny to include a mumbly bit where everyone knew what he wasn't saying, someone in charge should have said 'er no, offensive, poor taste' - but complaints should be aimed wider than just him.

Andy Wilman is the producer so surely that would be his job? He's been mates with JC since they were at boarding school together and appparantly has input into the scripts. Sounds like they're both as bad as each other.

Nobody has the inalienable right not to be offended! Top Gear is watched by many millions of people around the world, I believe it is the BBCs most successful export.

I would say the job of the director/producer so yes Andy Wilman should be in the firing line as well.

Maybe they were the ones who had the sense to cut the clip. But the scripted parts will have been approved beforehand. And that bit of the show was very scripted - think it would have been different if it was in a conversationy bit - then yes I'm sure Clarkson may just have thought of it at the time - but this was three takes using exactly the same (learned/autocued) words.

Topseyt, you plead that we should "Just see things in context."

Yet by discussing your 70s childhood and Tom Sawyer, you are obfuscating the context, not revealing it. Because the context is:

• it was 2012, and
• a man who has become very rich through his dexterity with words and
• who has a reputation for sailing close to the line in the use of offensive language
• deliberately chose to use his dexterity with words to mumble-voice a racist version of a poem, creating a pretence of safe space for him and his "top bants" mates to both laugh at people they have deliberately insulted through racist language and claim with big innocent eyes that it wasn't on purpose

Pleading the 70s is irrelevant. It isn't the 70s any more. He knows what he's doing.

Pleading Tom Sawyer is irrelevant. It isn't the Deep South nineteenth century any more, and whereas Mark Twain was motivated by deep compassion in his stories, it is patently obvious that Clarkson is motivated by deep contempt.