Make no mistake, The Yorkshire Times disagrees with Clarkson as far as it is possible for people to do so without actually inserting sharp implements into each other. A man who opines that foxes should eat the remains of railway suicide victims rather than detaining public sector workers to do so is clearly deficient in the human qualities that we should all aspire to. But this is a man who evidently - albeit incoherently - is saying something that many people want to hear.
Sales of his books rise and rise. The world's largest book tracking service features two of his books in their 100 Top Selling Books 1998 - 2010, with The World According to Clarkson listed at number 20 with 1,447,188 copies sold, and I Know You Got Soul running at Number 93, with 658,274 copies shifted. Engage him at any public book signing and queues of dedicated fans are guaranteed.
Isn't it time we got wise to Mr Clarkson's game? He's no more than a reverse image of the politically correct mindset, who, as a shrewd operator, is simply playing a role we've allowed him by default, and trousering a considerable fortune in the process. In fairness to the man, he has claimed in both the Times and the Guardian that his comments about striking public sector workers were agreed in advance with BBC bosses, who presumably saw his coruscating remarks as somehow providing balance and showing what a wonderfully broad-minded and inclusive media outlet they are.
But all this sorry episode confirms is that the more hermetically sealed the pc mindset, and the less our intellectual presuppositions are opened to debate, the more people like Clarkson will thrive. The more the stranglehold of pc throttles reasoned public debate, the more vociferous, mean and unreasonable the backlash becomes.
Yet this whole controversy raises far more important issues than the fortunes of television personalities. At stake is the whole middle ground where impassioned but rational intellectual debate took place and where we settled on our most cherished values. Somewhere we lost this and gave it over to the diametrical opposites of 'right on' guardians of correct thought, unprepared to condescend to debate, and their mirror opposites, the apostles of unreason.
Well, we want our social space back. Take a look at the disaster of the American Republican Party, where for the first time in history it is now political suicide for any candidate to accept the conclusions of science, and you have some idea of where we may be headed. No one has the right to insult, to set out to cause offence or to harm, but the scale of the challenges in the world to come means we need to be break out of orthodoxies of thought, to talk openly to each other, and to let those who would control our thought know they're no longer welcome.
And then maybe Mr Clarkson will have performed a worthwhile service after all.
Jeremy Clarkson: a child of our PC times
