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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   15620 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of December 19, 2022

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Okay. Let's move into some light culture war. So Jeremy Clarkson seems to be going soft in his old age - he apologized for a column in the Sun newspaper in which he is less than gentle on Meghan Markle. The column is taken down but wayback machine remembers.

https://web.archive.org/web/20221217031028/https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/20782114/harry-meghan-netflix-series-truth/

Imo - it is pretty tame even if colorful stuff. And if you are a British citizen with attachment to the monarchy - I think the sentiment is understandable.

And his apology is here.

Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.

So it is non apology. Of course the mob is not appeased. At least he didn't try to be more apologetic afterwards.

Man, that article is over the top. I get that it's venting and intended to be read in the spirit of unseriousness over-the-topness, but the level of spite seems a bit too strong. His level of apology seems about right for that, from my perspective - "OK, I was venting and making fun of her, but I probably did get a bit too mean and hateful, sorry about that" is fine. That's not going to satisfy people that disagree with the core sentiment, but they're probably not the target audience for the apology anyway.

I'm not sure that Markle gets more spite than anyone else. "I hate her. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her on a cellular level" casually implies that being a Scottish Nationalist is about as bad as being a child murdering paedophile, although I suppose it does suggest Markle is worse. It's later suggested that Argentina winning the world cup would be grounds for declaring war. The level of spite here seems appropriately calibrated and well on-brand for Clarkson. Complaints here fall in the same category as complaining about South Park being too offensive - it's a feature, not a bug - and Clarkson's audience will take such complaints as being a sign that he's doing something right.

It also seems you've missed that the apology is as unserious as the original article. Responding to "the way you're bullying this woman is offensive" with "I understand how making a reference to a TV show whose final season wasn't as good as we all hoped could be offensive" communicates that his critics' points are less important than Reddit comments about a fictional problem.

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