Clarkson - Getting Away With It

 And so it came to pass that severely adverse comment was passed on Jeremy Clarkson’s viciously misogynistic attack on the Duchess of Sussex. Colour me not even slightly surprised, and even less surprised that, ultimately, the SOB has got away with it. Ah, the cancel culture that, for so many of those in the favoured part of our media class, does not exist.

Clarkson has friends. He is sufficiently protected from the kinds of sanctions that might be expected to befall those in The Real World. He merely needed to tell the world that he was “horrified”, belatedly get his pals at the Super Soaraway Currant Bun to discreetly take the offending column offline, keep Schtum for a while, and that would be that. No need to even apologise.

That Jezza was going to have his arse wiped, and very few questions asked, became apparent last Sunday morning when Sun editor Victoria Newton was on the panel of the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg show. The host would have had to have been beyond irretrievably inept not to know about the Clarkson column, but did not mention it. Not even a peep.

Instead, Ms Newton was given unchallenged prime time to tell viewers how nice her paper had been to Haz’n’Megs. Whether it is fear of retribution from the Murdoch mafiosi, or part of the Beeb seeing serious investigative journalism in the distance and moving in the direction of away, it’s not good enough.

And spare me the drivel about calling out Ms Kuenssberg being sexist or an attempt to start a pile on. It was a craven and unforgivable failure of her duty to speak truth to power. And she was not alone in this regard.

A five-figure number of   plaints about Jezza’s column was submitted to press non-regulator IPSO. That’s a lot of hopeful souls, all of whom will be disappointed at the eventual result: IPSO will “consider” them all, decide that it’s just an “opinion column”, like all those Littlejohn rants full of incitement and untruth, and dismiss the lot.

More than 60 MPs, from across the political spectrum, have voiced concern about the Clarkson piece; they, too, will be disappointed. We know this as the top brass at ITV has already said that, whatever their opinion of Jezza’s, er, opinion, he will remain as host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? So many willing arse-wipers, so much circling of the wagons.

Like Littlejohn over Lucy Meadows, like Giles Coren mocking Dawn Foster after she died, and, let us never forget, like the Sun over Hillsborough for so many years until the Cosa Rupra fancied their chances getting back those sales on Merseyside, the media class will close ranks. Clarkson effectively incited not just hatred, but also humiliation and violence, against a well-known woman, and he has now got away with it.

Did anyone expect any other outcome? After all, Jezza got away with using the N-word while still at the BBC; he only got sacked after violently assaulting and racially abusing a member of the Top Gear production staff. And the Sun ran an unrelenting and vicious campaign against the show and his successor.

Anyone still not sure that our free and fearless press is out of control, and that Haz was right when he said that the campaign against Megs would only end when she was dead?

It is, and it won’t. Power without responsibility, as ever.