When I was in 6th grade, there was a good-looking boy, let’s call him Greg, who decided to cultivate a pet. This boy was shorter than the rest of the class and, to put it politely, had neither the social skills nor appearance to make anyone else in the class do anything but avoid him, but for a while Greg seemed to take an interest in his welfare and took him under his wing. The class was amazed, the teachers were impressed, and Greg had more stature among us than ever. After a time though, it became apparent that Greg had a plans for the kid, who was not really called Ernie, but never mind. Ernie began to dress just like Greg, strut around in Greg’s wake in a parody of his cowboy swagger, and verbally abuse the less popular kids: the smart girls, the boys whose socks didn’t match, the poor kids who maybe didn’t get a shower every day. Greg had always seemed to be above this kind of behaviour, but Ernie made it plain where his heart lay.
The creepiest thing that Greg did was to toss pennies at Ernie. If Ernie caught them in his mouth, he got to keep them. Teachers would tell him to stop if they caught him, but they couldn’t be everywhere at once, Ernie kept catching pennies all the way through junior high and into high school, by which time Greg had grown extraordinarily handsome and an accomplished rodeo performer as well. Ernie continued to harass anyone he could get away with, but as time went on he just seemed more and more pathetic. Maybe there were certain others, people who were forced to do their own bullying, who secretly envied Greg, but when they walked down the hall, there was generally a good yard of empty space around the two of them.
I haven’t thought about them in years, but Suzanne Moore’s 2014 editorial on Jeremy Clarkson came up on my Facebook feed today, and brought them to mind. Clarkson has finally been suspended for punching out a producer, a point where the BBC finally drew the line after excusing blatant racism and bullying over the past several years. As a disclaimer, I have thought many past episodes of Top Gear were brilliant; the one where they attempted to launch a Reliant Robin into orbit was particularly funny. However, part of the shtick Top Gear has always relied on from the beginning, has been Jeremy and Richard Hammond’s bullying of James May, someone who seems to represent the decent, reasonable version of the Y gender. Unfortunately the scriptwriters have only been reflecting Clarkson’s own pathetic off screen personality, something that has become apparent as the show becomes progressively long in the tooth. I don’t know why I didn’t think of Greg and Ernie when watching Top Gear. I should have.
The problem is that Clarkson’s attitude has become mainstream in the intervening years, something Moore points out, and something proven when at least 700,000 Change.org petitioners and the Prime Minister objected to his suspension.
agree with Moore when she says:
The biggest con of all is that this coalition of "mavericks" is not seen for what it is. The establishment: in bullying, red-faced self-pitying mode. This is the rich and powerful deriding the powerless while pretending to be heroic victims. It is a revolting, sweaty lie. Let them slap each other's back into oblivion. Decent blokes do not monetise their ability to pick on those weaker than them, never mind make entire careers out if it.
A sad observation is that a man like Clarkson isn’t like Greg, much as he’d like to be, he’s Ernie, catching the pennies in his mouth that people like Cameron and Boris Johnson, who don’t dare say in public what Clarkson does on a daily basis, toss his way. The saddest observation is that the 7 million viewers of Top Gear don’t recognize themselves for the circus sideshow punters they are. Generally, once they’re out of 6th grade, even kids know better.