Silly old Jeremy Clarkson, where would the chattering classes be without him? The Top Gear presenter has landed himself in hot water by saying that yesterday’s public sectors strikers should be lined up against a wall and shot — or words to that effect. He made the comments live on the One Show last night.
To my mind, the outraged reaction to this latest Clarksonboob — demands for apologies, the prospect of legal action and so forth — is more intersting than Clarkson’s apparent heartlessness. It reveals how prevailing social mores demand that figurative language be replaced by bland literalism. Was the libertarian Clarkson really advocating state-led reprisals against public sector workers exercising their right to strike? Or was he expressing his distaste for those strikers’ motives by using the blustering colloquialism: ‘they should all be shot’?
No doubt the coming days will yield innumerable sermons about free speech and political correctness. But this episode has a social context too. English expression is being limited by the stupefying importance of being earnest at all times. The fashion is to our detriment. English (as spoken by the English) will forfeit much of its character, range and nuance if everyone has to speak alike and everything they say must be taken literally. It would, for instance, be tragic to lose the unintended ironies created by loose, emotive speech — such as that Jeremy Clarkson is kept in part by the Licence Fee.
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