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Tuesday, 26 August 2014

Blog 98 Clarkson is a contemporary illness.

Far more hilarious than jokes made by any of the white blokes gurning out of the identikit posters for comedy at this year’s Edinburgh fringe was the comment made by Danny Cohen – head of TV. The one liner was made in relation to the sack of offal we know as Jeremy Clarkson.
“No one person is bigger than the BBC”.
Boy the testosterone must have been pumping when he made that statement.

I bet the genuinely witty Tim Vine is wishing he’d thought of that rather than his vacuum cleaner joke.

Despite a litany of offensive remarks that a 15 year old wouldn't stoop to, I see no sign of Clarkson being expunged from the TV gravy train.

Yes he is popular but so is smoking and eating crap.

The Clarkson illness is the same one that allowed Saville to thrive. And no, before you get hysterical, I am not accusing Mr. Offal of child abuse. I’m talking about the sycophancy that blinds people to what is decent or not, what is genuinely worth air time and what should be relegated to pay2view. It is a wilful blindness but it is a complete blindness. The BBC has – since the influx of multiple channelling - hurtled itself ever downward in the race to the bottom and we all know what’s waiting there.

The idea that no one is bigger than the BBC – which I interpret to mean the BBC ideals – is so utterly laughable that it has to be put in the same category as ‘rich people aren’t above the law’. Do we need reminding that a certain formula 1 oldie recently dipped into his small change and bought himself out of a court case for £60 million? Are the gaols bursting at the seams with the bankers who wrecked the economy with their criminal activities?

Claiming we are all equal in terms of expected standards of behaviour – which is the flip side of Cohen’s comment - is like saying the tax system is fair. Look around at who pays tax and the massively profitable companies that don’t. Yet the press barons and politicians spend eye watering amounts of time and effort vilifying those at the other end of the scale be they migrants or the disabled or generally those on the lowest rungs of society’s increasingly rickety ladder.

I have had good, bad, reasonable and indifferent experiences with the BBC but -organisations /institutions – even countries that become too large or powerful to be assailed from outside – that become too established to be part of the general laws of society or moral equilibrium destroy themselves from within.

Clarkson is just a manifestation of internal rot.

This week’s recommended blog from the archives is

26 Library Love