A controversy (contra-vasy) has occurred that should surprise no one: Jeremy Clarkson (automotive journalist and beloved blowhard) has landed himself in some trouble by criticizing Meghan Markle (schismatic non-royal and podcast host). Writing for the Sun, Clarkson requests the public shaming of the limelight-addicted Markle, similar to what the townsfolk did to Cersei, as vividly depicted in HBO’s Game of Thrones.
Clarkson wastes little time:
Meghan, though, is a different story. I hate her.
Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. 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 at her.
Everyone who’s my age thinks the same way.
But what makes me despair is that younger people, especially girls, think she’s pretty cool.
They think she was a prisoner of Buckingham Palace, forced to talk about nothing but embroidery and kittens.
For those unfamiliar with Clarkson, your reaction might very well be, “Gadzooks! That’s a bit much!” I’m inclined to agree with you. Fast-pitch excrement tournaments are a net loss all-round.
Clarkson’s point is an imaginatively potent observation of social pressure’s ability to efficiently enforce pre-existing societal norms — quick-like, without an act of parliament. Is it a researched, combed, and refined proposal? No, of course not. Clarkson, despite his wealth, has ever been an everyman. He became wealthy precisely because of his ability to distill ridiculous car jargon into the sort of presentation that any and all can appreciate — employing hilariously lewd imagery and absurd metaphors.
Unfortunately, some targets are reduced by feculent invective, while others only grow stronger. With Meghan and Harry, the more they’re targeted by the establishment English, the more powerful their grievance pitch becomes — evinced by the Independent‘s Harriet Williamson’s response. Maddie Kearns wrote a few weeks ago about an impolitic exchange between a palace lady-in-waiting and a “black domestic-abuse campaigner.” An awkward conversation became a national outrage and further proof that the palace was irredeemably racist; an accusation that Markle has weaponized in the past.
So, while everything Clarkson writes is bombastic good fun, his standing within the engine bay of this debate armed only with his trusty hammer and applying it to all surfaces with the force of a miffed orangutan may not be the effective means of repairing the royal rift.