Harry & Meghan is a glorified-if-inoffensive commercial for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, but based on how the Brits are reacting to the Netflix docu-series, you’d think it was a snuff film — and Paddington is the one getting snuffed. Piers Morgan had a freaking meltdown, but his over-the-top reaction was nothing compared to Jeremy Clarkson’s. The radio broadcaster and Top Gear creator, who refers to himself as a “small voice of calm and reason” in his Twitter bio (spoken like the worst guy at every dinner party you’ve been to), wrote an op-ed for The Sun that is not going over well.
“I actually feel rather sorry for [Harry] because today he’s just a glove puppet with no more control over what he says or does than Basil Brush. Meghan, though, is a different story. I hate her,” Clarkson wrote. “I hate her on a cellular level. At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement… Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way.”
First off, no they don’t. Second, someone needs to chill out by 40 percent. At least.
The column has received over 6,000 complaints, especially the passage comparing Markle to Cersei Lannister from Game of Thrones. Even Clarkson’s daughter, Emily, publicly opposed her dad’s manifesto, writing, “I want to make it very clear that I stand against everything my dad wrote about Meghan Markle.” In response to the backlash, Clarkson tweeted, “Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.” The column, with the Thrones reference, is still up.
And no one is buying his apology tweet.
Oh dear. What a 'clumsy' Tweet. Forgot the actual apology. https://t.co/wF4h1wwySS
— Davood Ghadami (@DavoodGhadami) December 19, 2022
I too am extremely clumsy but I don’t go around accidentally saying I want a woman I’ve never met to be stripped naked & paraded through the streets so I can throw literal shit at her just to humiliate & defile her
(I’m all for apologies for genuine mistakes but this isn’t that) https://t.co/SGDDW407KO
— Lucia Osborne-Crowley (@LuciaOC_) December 19, 2022
Jeremy Clarkson is a nasty misogynist (who also doesn’t seem to understand that the shame scene in Game of Thrones actually makes us LIKE Circe for a bit)
— Francesca Steele (@francescasteele) December 18, 2022
Jeremy Clarkson is such a vile human being. Simply having such thoughts ‘keeping him awake’ is a huge red flag over the state of his mental health / illness, let alone to think it’s ok to even say something like this about anyone, then have it printed! This isn’t game of thrones! https://t.co/21I5Mm9QdG
— 'Fia (@foodie_fia) December 18, 2022
Jeremy Clarkson’s bullshit Game of Thrones reference is as ridiculous as Depp saying that his fantasy of drowning and burning his wife was a Monty Python reference. If you’re going to be a ‘big man’ and speak about women this way, at least own it. #stopprofittingfrommisogyny
— anna wharton (@whartonswords) December 19, 2022
https://twitter.com/simonharris_mbd/status/1604774405447491587
So somebody clearly needs to confiscate Jeremy Clarkson’s Game of Thrones box set.
— Rebel💔 (they/them/iel) 😷 🇵🇸 🏳️🌈 (@RebelHeart529) December 18, 2022
https://twitter.com/jayrayner1/status/1604845345816682497
https://twitter.com/BCDreyer/status/1604845282390413313
Taken him until now to think up a tenuous excuse… and still no direct apology for the misogyny.
Nice try.
Won’t wash. https://t.co/TFoy1Pnv6o— Reece Dinsdale 👀 (@reece_dinsdale) December 19, 2022
Can it be classed as a ‘clumsy reference’ if you carefully write a sentence and then it gets edited and sub edited before being published in a major tabloid? https://t.co/LYYBc9GxG0
— Elle Rudd (@ElleRudd_) December 19, 2022
(Via the Sun)