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Comment by yokohama11 | Hacker News Reader

If he wasn't on BBC (which as a state broadcaster has far more political sensitivity) it probably wouldn't have been so much of an issue in the UK.

Most of his "controversies" would not even be news in the US. A person on a humorous show cracking a racial/ethnic joke is on TV every night.

We have nothing like OFCOM where you could actually get in trouble with the government for being highly offensive either.

And celebrities behaving badly is typical, so assaulting someone probably wouldn't lead to any major public outcry for his firing. It's not as though Sean Penn has trouble finding work.

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How do you square these claims with the public outcry over a brief glimpse of Jannet Jackson's tit? There are plenty of examples of similar controversies in the U.S. media.

We're (pretty much) fine with violence, it's sexuality that makes some parts of the US go wonky and revert to a puritanical default.

It's not violence that's the real issue with Clarkson, it's racism. Yes, he ultimately got fired for doing something violent, but not on TV. If you say something (that could be interpreted as) racist on a mainstream US TV show there is also a backlash. E.g.:

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/mar/13/univisio...

There's a huge difference between being considered a "serious" TV personality and an "unserious" one, and what your public image is.

And even then, it depends on audience. FOX News personalities express far worse sentiments daily and mean them than Clarkson ever has. Their audience is fine with that.

Paula Deen was supposed to be a nice upstanding older woman showing people cooking. Even the claim that she might have used a racial slur in the past torpedoed her career.

Clarkson's public image, and one that he intentionally curates, is one of being bombastic and politically incorrect. He can crack whatever jokes he wants without it going to hurt his career in the US. In some respects, Howard Stern might be a good comparison of someone with a fairly similar type of image.

There is no comparable mainstream show in the US with a presenter as openly racist and offensive as Clarkson. Nor could there be, because they would be fired (as my and your examples show). I wouldn't necessarily say that the US is "less racist" than the UK on the whole, but to the credit of the former, it is hard to imagine a US show about cars being presented exclusively by openly bigoted white dudes.

I've yet to hear an actual propf of him being openely racist. There was that outtake never shown on tv when he said thw n word as part of an old rymhe that was what it was.

Can't find much more beyond that. Some wanton racism on their trips, played on stereotipes and misunderstanding, but critiquing vietnamese cousine or italian way of driving doesn't sound openly racist.

>I've yet to hear an actual propf of him being openely racist

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/9247835/J...

oh because it's fine and dandy if you call it 'profiling'

suddenly one point out what other airport are doing calling it by its name and he's racist.

Clarkson acknowledges that racial profiling at airports is racist, and says that we should do it anyway. If that isn't advocating racism, then what is? You are defending the indefensible at this point:

> ...the only possible solution is to introduce a bit of racism. Nobody likes a racist. Nobody likes prejudice. It has no place at work, at play, or in government. But at Heathrow airport? Hmmm.

By the way, you are mistaken if you think that a large number of other airports systematically engage in racial profiling as a matter of policy.

just because TSA doesn't collect data doesn't mean it hasn't been all over the news for being stricter in searching people of particular ethnicity

moreover if the main smoking gun is a quote by Clarkson himself I'm not really impressed, I mean, what Clarkson DID matters. He's a comedian and you hear far worse things coming out; I mean Colbert said far worse thing and I don't see people screaming and kicking at his door.

at the end of the day one has to distinguish what's fiction and what's reality. can you blame Clarkson for being in character on it's own satirical column? it's not like it happened in an interview.

> it hasn't been all over the news for being stricter in searching people of particular ethnicity

This is not the policy of the TSA. The only people who advocate such a policy are racists like Clarkson.

>can you blame Clarkson for being in character on it's own satirical column?

It's not a satirical column. If you think that Clarkson is doing a Colbert-like performance, you've just got the wrong end of the stick.

>moreover if the main smoking gun is a quote by Clarkson himself I'm not really impressed,

What kind of backwards logic is this? Clarkson's own words are (obviously) the most reliable source of information regarding his beliefs.

I suppose it depends on the show. The Superbowl is widely considered to be a family friendly event with lots of children watching. I can see a nip slip being more of an issue with that audience.

> How do you square these claims with the public outcry over a brief glimpse of Jannet Jackson's tit?

"America", perhaps? Clarkson is racist and violent; Jackson is a human being with human body parts - the latter crime is far more severe.

If we happen to see Jeremy's gentleman's sausage, we can worry about it then. Doesn't change the fact that South Park and Family Guy are two extremely popular shows in the US. And one of them is on network television. I mean, Game of Thrones has plenty of full-frontal nudity and lewd acts, and no one cares. Because it's not network television.

My opinion? The people who care about such things aren't likely to be watching shows on Amazon anyway, so they would never even see them. Compare to the BBC where someone could be flipping through a channel and find it accidentally.

South Park was shown on Channel 4 in the UK, where someone certainly could have found it accidentally.

South Park is mostly controversial in the correct (perhaps we could call it left-wing) way, which Clarkson isn't.

Not really. Pseudo-ironic racism is a pretty significant source of humor in South Park.

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