[lmorris84]

It'll be interesting to see how Amazon respond to the inevitable complaints when Clarkson does a "Clarkson". The BBC used to fall over themselves to apologise and give him another final warning - you'd have to assume this was discussed by both parties. Personally I hope Amazon just stay out of their way and let them get on with it.

[yokohama11]

If he wasn't on BBC (which as a state broadcaster has far more political sensitivity) it probably wouldn't have been so much of an issue in the UK.

Most of his "controversies" would not even be news in the US. A person on a humorous show cracking a racial/ethnic joke is on TV every night.

We have nothing like OFCOM where you could actually get in trouble with the government for being highly offensive either.

And celebrities behaving badly is typical, so assaulting someone probably wouldn't lead to any major public outcry for his firing. It's not as though Sean Penn has trouble finding work.

[foldr]

How do you square these claims with the public outcry over a brief glimpse of Jannet Jackson's tit? There are plenty of examples of similar controversies in the U.S. media.

[freehunter]

If we happen to see Jeremy's gentleman's sausage, we can worry about it then. Doesn't change the fact that South Park and Family Guy are two extremely popular shows in the US. And one of them is on network television. I mean, Game of Thrones has plenty of full-frontal nudity and lewd acts, and no one cares. Because it's not network television.

My opinion? The people who care about such things aren't likely to be watching shows on Amazon anyway, so they would never even see them. Compare to the BBC where someone could be flipping through a channel and find it accidentally.

[foldr]

South Park was shown on Channel 4 in the UK, where someone certainly could have found it accidentally.

[ptaipale]

South Park is mostly controversial in the correct (perhaps we could call it left-wing) way, which Clarkson isn't.

[foldr]

Not really. Pseudo-ironic racism is a pretty significant source of humor in South Park.

[Shish2k]

> How do you square these claims with the public outcry over a brief glimpse of Jannet Jackson's tit?

"America", perhaps? Clarkson is racist and violent; Jackson is a human being with human body parts - the latter crime is far more severe.

[rtkwe]

We're (pretty much) fine with violence, it's sexuality that makes some parts of the US go wonky and revert to a puritanical default.

[foldr]

It's not violence that's the real issue with Clarkson, it's racism. Yes, he ultimately got fired for doing something violent, but not on TV. If you say something (that could be interpreted as) racist on a mainstream US TV show there is also a backlash. E.g.:

http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/mar/13/univisio...

[yokohama11]

There's a huge difference between being considered a "serious" TV personality and an "unserious" one, and what your public image is.

And even then, it depends on audience. FOX News personalities express far worse sentiments daily and mean them than Clarkson ever has. Their audience is fine with that.

Paula Deen was supposed to be a nice upstanding older woman showing people cooking. Even the claim that she might have used a racial slur in the past torpedoed her career.

Clarkson's public image, and one that he intentionally curates, is one of being bombastic and politically incorrect. He can crack whatever jokes he wants without it going to hurt his career in the US. In some respects, Howard Stern might be a good comparison of someone with a fairly similar type of image.

[foldr]

There is no comparable mainstream show in the US with a presenter as openly racist and offensive as Clarkson. Nor could there be, because they would be fired (as my and your examples show). I wouldn't necessarily say that the US is "less racist" than the UK on the whole, but to the credit of the former, it is hard to imagine a US show about cars being presented exclusively by openly bigoted white dudes.

[nonameface]

I suppose it depends on the show. The Superbowl is widely considered to be a family friendly event with lots of children watching. I can see a nip slip being more of an issue with that audience.

[theorique]

One hopes its something reasonable like: "If you don't like the show, don't watch it."

[ptaipale]

"This show was tested on animals. They didn't understand it."

[surge]

I don't know, they stopped selling the confederate flag stuff, but they used to be renowned for selling books regardless of controversy of the content. So it could fall down either way.

Both incidents the BBC have him for he was coerced into situations (singing a song he didn't want to sing because he only knew the racist version from when he grew up and didn't want to say the word, then being kept up for 24 hours, and made to drink profusely as part of a show stunt) he wasn't comfortable with. They were looking for reasons to cancel such a popular show because it had such a disparate budget from the rest of their shows and that was upsetting parties within the BBC.

[darkr]

> singing a song he didn't want to sing

The scripts are written by the cast & the script editor (Richard Porter).

> made to drink profusely as part of a show stunt

It's well known that Clarkson is a fan of the booze to the point where you could reasonably categorise him as a functioning alcoholic. He recently publicly announced after the death of Charlie Kennedy that he was giving up. So I'm pretty sure that no-one was making him drink..

He likes to paint himself as the last bastion of free speech, innocent victim of the facist Big Brother Corporation, and a lot of other things inbetween; but the reality is that he's just that embarrassing Uncle who you have fond memories of when he used to let you smoke his cigarettes and drive his car around the block when you were 10, but now you're all grown up, going through your contacts, deciding who to invite to your wedding; you just skip past because you just know he'd end up shitting in the font and asking anyone with a tan what weddings are like where they're from.

[SmellyGeekBoy]

He assaulted a co-worker. I'm sorry but he only has himself to blame.

I genuinely don't understand why people think his sacking was part of some grand BBC conspiracy. He was good for ratings, they paid him well, it was in both parties' interests to keep him around as long as possible. Remember we're talking about the most popular TV show in the world here.

Unfortunately he put them in a situation where they really had no other choice.

[DanBC]

> Both incidents the BBC have him for he was coerced into situations

There are many more than two incidents!

> They were looking for reasons to cancel such a popular show because it had such a disparate budget from the rest of their shows and that was upsetting parties within the BBC.

Surely they could have just pointed to the money it made back? "We give it huge budget because it earns more money for us than anything else we produce".

The BBC has a history of poor management of talent. See eg Chris Evans getting sacked from the Breakfast Show after making demands.