Former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson wrote a hate article about Meghan and Prince Harry for The Sun that horrified even the die-hard British audience.
The Netflix documentary about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle culminates in a media showdown of hate.
Prince Harry is a finger puppet played at will by his wife, wrote one of England’s most well-known media figures, TV presenter and journalist Jeremy Clarkson. Grinding his teeth and sleepless, he lies in his bed at night and thinks about Meghan Markle, it said in the tabloid “The Sun”. He dreams of the day when roaring crowds chased them naked through the streets of the kingdom and pelted them with excrement.
The reason for these publicly laid down fantasies of violence was the Netflix series in which Harry and Meghan accuse the royal family of racism, emotional coldness and hostility and present themselves as the standard-bearers of a new world of sensitive victim consciousness and love.
As a journalist, Jeremy Clarkson represents a diametrically opposed type. In a down-to-earth, often rowdy style, he ostentatiously demonstrates a robust attitude of strength and ruthlessness. Clarkson, who was a victim of brutal, long-term bullying as a schoolboy, turned into a seemingly unassailable attacker. Today, casually to the point of rudeness, he says what others hardly dare to think, following a principle to which Donald Trump also owes part of his success.
Presenter Jeremy Clarkson.
Uproar in the public and in politics
It is his specialty – with audience appeal and often not without humor and intelligence – to stretch the dividing line between provocation and hate speech. In the eyes of the British public, the well-connected man who was a friend of former Prime Minister David Cameron has gone too far this time.
David Cameron’s sister-in-law, journalist Emily Sheffield, has firmly distanced herself from Clarkson. His own daughter also clearly distances himself from the statements. Author Philip Pullman (His Dark Materials) blamed Sun publisher Rupert Murdoch for allowing the article to be published.
The case also takes on political dimensions. Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who casually attacked Clarkson in the same text, described his comments as “beyond the pain point” and “profoundly misogynistic”. London Mayor Sadiq Khan condemned Clarkson’s attacks as “dangerous and inexcusable”. Even Prime Minister Rishi Sunak felt compelled to emphasize that the UK is not a racist country. The “Sun” removed the text published on Saturday from its website on Monday evening. The author himself apologized in an embarrassingly trivializing tweet for the gaffe.
The text attracted attention not only because of its content, but also because of the great prominence of its protagonist. The British know Jeremy Clarkson as one of the three presenters of the car show “Top Gear”, whose fame as one of the most popular BBC shows spans the globe. In 2015, the BBC fired Jeremy Clarkson after he got violent in an argument with his producer Oisin Tymon over a trifle: Clarkson had ordered a steak that was not available locally.
Like everything concerning the loudmouthed Clarkson, the media and audiences reacted with great intensity. The sacked presenter quickly found another location for a new car show on Amazon and successfully expanded his portfolio with a TV series and articles about a new life as a farmer. Jeremy Clarkson also found time for a society column for the Sunday Times and articles in the Sun. From there, whenever the opportunity arose, he would berate Harry and Meghan.
Showdown of Hate
The tirades from the press became more vicious the more Harry and Meghan criticized the royal family. The impression is created that Clarkson, with his inhuman accusations, is actually making true what the two of them only claimed for a long time: the English tabloid press wanted to destroy them. In their Netflix series, they take on the royal family as well as the British media, which has haunted them for years.
The Sussexes, as the couple is called in England, keep the same circle going with their series, however, whose evil excesses they criticized. Those who want peace and quiet, as the two have repeatedly claimed, do not flaunt their private and spiritual lives in front of the whole world. But the calculation is transparent. According to media reports, they collect around 100 million dollars for the series.
This is exactly how the journalistic diatribes of the Netflix documentary series by Harry and Meghan behave: Because the tabloids and also some of the reputable newspapers like “Sunday Times” and “Spectator” take the six-part Netflix documentary of Harry and Meghan as an opportunity to To judge the series devastatingly and to outdo each other. At the same time, however, they produce countless articles that meticulously pick up on the content of the series and use its content.
The great showdown of hate now culminates in Clarkson’s article. The question is whether this competition for attention from Prince Harry’s forthcoming book, Replacement, can be increased. It is no longer about right or wrong, lies and truth, honor or shame. Both sides, the newspapers, the broadcasters and the spectacle couple, make one thing above all else – a lot of money.