Jeremy Clarkson Is A Monument To Hypocrisy - Our Own.

 For anyone who's had their head under a rock at the bottom of the ocean on another planet, Jeremy Clarkson is currently accused of mumbling "nigger" during an un-aired clip from Top Gear. It's an unpleasant word and one that I'm just going to bite the bullet and use a few times, here, because we're all grown ups and it's childish and patronising when people obscure words with asterisks.

I should probably start by saying that I like Jeremy Clarkson.

 I understand that he's opinionated, confrontational and arrogant. These are all qualities I've been accused of, and maybe it's an underlying narcissism that makes me like these qualities in others. I'd rather have an interesting argument with someone for five minutes than an hour of polite small talk.

 So I'm going to be defending Clarkson here, at least a little.

 First and foremost, I don't think he's a racist. Not a genuine one. I don't think he has any actual problem with people of other races or nationalities.

 I actually buy Clarkson's excuse that, whilst playing "Eenie-Meenie" with two very similar cars, he was just mumbling non-words to himself in an attempt to avoid saying something untoward. I'm also aware that if I were to recite that rhyme to myself, the word "nigger" would be in the back of my mind.

 Generally speaking, I don't have to play "eenie-meenie" very often, if at all. But if I do, here's what's going through my head:

 [Aloud] "Eenie-meenie-mynie-moe..."

[Thinking] "Jesus, can you believe racism used to be so widespread that they used to say "nigger" in this rhyme without a second thought?! That line's coming up, by the way. Better replace it with one of the substitutes, even though they don't make any sense. We used to say "Tiger" at school, I think, before we worked out what the word obviously used to be. I mean, it's impossible to catch a tiger by the toe. Do tigers even have toes?! You could catch one by the tail, maybe, like the Buck Owens song, but even if you did that, a tiger doesn't so much 'holler' as claw your throat out. I'm over thinking this. Maybe I should just pick another rhyme in future..."

 Clarkson, for his part, mumbles the line but does start the word with a hard "N", which I genuinely think might be subconscious. It's on his mind because that IS what the line used to be, and it's a fairly standout word. Like I say, it'd be in the back of my mind, as well.

 So I'm giving him a pass on this one. I don't think he did anything deliberately wrong, and I certainly don't think that in his private moments he calls black people niggers.

 This isn't to say he's entirely guilt-free, however. The controversy a few years ago over Top Gear's comments on Mexico was deserved. In that particular instance, Clarkson came in for a lot of flak despite the fact that Richard Hammond was the one who made the offensive and unfunny remarks about Mexicans. It's actually resulted in my having a lower opinion of Hammond ever since, and I suspect that people only took aim at Jeremy Clarkson over the incident because he is still the face of Top Gear and it's somehow taboo to be nasty to Richard Hammond since he survived an horrendous brain injury.

 If anything, the brain injury is the only thing that excuses Hammond's comments about Mexico, but nobody seemed willing to join those particular dots. I digress.

 So far I think Clarkson is (mostly) innocent on the recent scandal, and that the Mexico controversy was unpleasant and Richard Hammond should feel ashamed about it. The interesting one for me is the other incident that gets trotted out.

 In the greatest hits reel of Top Gear scandals, the other biggee is the recent Burma special in which Clarkson made a play on the word "slope." For non-fans, the Top Gear crew built a bridge over the river Kwai and, when it was completed, a Burmese worker walked across, leading Clarkson to comment that although the bridge looked sturdy, there was "a slope on it."

 That was childish and racist, although once again I suspect that the media has the knives out for Clarkson in that many articles I read had to explain that "slope" was a derogatory term for a person of South East Asian descent. Generally speaking, it's an antiquated and largely American term that I've only previously heard used in Christopher Walken's blistering, comedic monologue in "Pulp Fiction." A quick scan of an online slang dictionary reveals that the most common reaction to "slope" as an insult is "I've never heard of it."

 I'd heard of it, and I admit, it's racist.

 It's also the sort of joke I might make among close friends - people who would know I'm not a racist. The sort of smirky, giggly joke that I'm pretty sure everyone makes among friends in a "look how naughty I'm being!" tone. It's not bad as a piece of wordplay, although it's dicey because of the race connection, but it is still primarily a joke about the word itself. It's not unpleasant to the locals - it's not saying that people from Burma et al are bad or stupid or anything negative. It just acknowledges a rude word for them and transplants it to an architectural context.

 The fact that Top Gear broadcast that joke is where the real debate lies.

 I'm willing to bet that most of us make off-colour jokes. They might be about women. They might be about other ethnicities. This is absolutely not limited to white males, incidentally. I'm sure black people make jokes about Asian people, and Asian people about white people, women make jokes about blondes, or about black people or Asians, even if they are themselves black or Asian, and so on and so forth. This isn't to say that everyone is racist - just that everyone likes making jokes, and sometimes at the expense of others. The great Shaun Micallef once perceptively framed the question as "Should we laugh at racist jokes?" When scolded with a firm "Of course not!" he asked "But what if they're funny?"

 So Top Gear occasionally broadcast jokes that people would normally only make in a corner of a pub.

 Does that mean they're doing something wrong, or does it mean they're honest? They're not "saying what we're all thinking" so much as "saying what we're all privately saying." The fact that the media then engineers a storm of controversy is, to my mind, a sign that the media is disingenuous and two-faced. How many reporters have made or laughed at crude or unpleasant jokes in their private time?

 The real issue here is that, if we're honest and grown up about things, most people still make racist jokes. Does this mean most people are racist? No. From a strictly evolutionary standpoint, we're a tribal species and will always maintain at least some awareness of people from groups that are "different". It's therefore all but impossible to ever have people stop making jokes about these differences.If a program with black presenters - and I think Lenny Henry is right, in that minorities are under-represented on TV - featured a scene with a white guy using a horn and someone did a joke about "honky honky", I imagine it would be taken as light-hearted. Yes, I'm aware that it's a little different in that white people have traditionally treated black people appallingly, and we therefore deserve any abuse we get, but again: I don't think Jeremy Clarkson treats black people appallingly. I know I don't. So I think in the spirit of fun rather than malice it's sometimes okay to take the piss out of people for their differences. I have several friends of various colours and nationalities who make short jokes at my expense, but I know they're not actively trying to offend me, so I take it with good humour, and possibly mock them in return for things that are beyond their control.

 When it comes to jokes deemed offensive, I tend to side with Billy Connolly, who said "funny's good, and not funny's not good, and nothing else matters." By definition, nothing malicious can be funny. Genuine racism is repugnant and spiteful. Nonetheless, I'm sure we've all made jokes or comments in private that we wouldn't want broadcast to the nation. There's a difference between a joke and an attack, and whilst few of us would ever launch a verbal attack on someone based on ethnicity, most of us have probably made a joke now and again.

 Is Jeremy Clarkson a bit of a dickhead? Yes. Does he occasionally make jokes that aren't PC? Yes.

 Would you describe yourself any differently? Do you behave any differently? I doubt it, if you're honest.