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Samizdata quote of the day Supercars are supposed to run over Arthur Scargill and then run over him again for good measure. They are designed to melt ice caps, kill the poor, poison the water table, destroy the ozone layer, decimate indigenous wildlife, recapture the Falkland Islands and turn the entire third world into a huge uninhabitable desert, all that before they nicked all the oil in the world.
– Sage and raconteur Jeremy Clarkson. I cannot count the ways we love him.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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Top Gear is one of my unashamed pleasures. Jeremy Clarkson is trying to get an American version of the show to catch on, but I just can’t watch it–it is a sad little step-brother to the 100-proof BBC original.
They tried cloning ‘top Gear’ here, in Australia, but it never gained any popularity, because they only cloned the format, not the stars!
Top Gear is unabashed love of automotive excellence, presented in entertaining and bite-sized chunks. I know I am on to something when my wife takes one look and says, ‘oh, you are watching that again,’ and flees the TV room.
A libertarian themed pearl in the fecal soup of statist programming. How the heck did the BBC ever allow such a thing?
The American version died a quick death because it shared the name but not the concept, or the stars, or the philosophy or the writers.
K. I wouldn’t want to knock it but I have the feeling that Jeremy is allowed on in much the same way that the MSM Telegraph had columns like Peter Simple back in the 1970s, or Jeff Jacoby is allowed a column in the Boston Globe – to try and establish a credibility of being even handed.
My problem with Jeremy is that he is, behind it all, a bit PC.
It is hard to escape one’s programming!
I can understand liking him as an entertainer (because he’s entertaining, and I’m a compulsive viewer), but I’m not sure he’s a great advert for libertarianism. The quote from above is funny with a serious undertone, but for a lot of people it will reinforce everything bad they think libertarianism represents. Plus the extent to which he lies is unimpressive.
@PaulH: I’ve read the Clarkson quote over and over, and I really cannot see what it has to do with libertarianism.
Can you enlighten us all?
…and once they’ve done all this, supercars are supposed to be forgiven (and thanked, for the Scargill thing) by the motoring masses for the simple virtue of being so ****ing beautiful.
Fortunately, some are :-).
US Top Gear fails because they licenced the name and format, but forgot the idea: as Clarkson himself put it when “new” Top Gear started, “blokes talking about cars”. Someone should have put PJ O’Rourke and Jay Leno in Jay’s garage and just let them ramble for an hour, not even pretending to be the same show. I’d pay good money to see that.
And what PaulH said. Clarkson is libertarian compared to the rest of the BBC, but that’s not saying much.
Andrew – I don’t think it does have a great deal to do with libertarianism, but it is a decent caricature of what many people think libertarianism implies. That’s why I think he’s a poor advocate for libertarianism. That and the lying, of course.
To be honest I am past caring what many people think of libertarianism. These days I am happy to let events grind their world views into their faces whilst I watch with mounting indifference.
Besides, libertarian is a direction, away from central government, not a rigid philosophy. I think of myself as a minarchist, or a ‘Pro-owner’, now. Ideally, owner = ruler, though we are far from that ideal now.
Indeed.
I couldn’t give a stuff about cars, but I do enjoy Top Gear. Watching people get enthusiastic about things they enjoy is always a perplexing pleasure (I enjoy the Fred Dibnah shows too, when they’re repeated) and the daft challenges are a treat.
I’ve never decided if Clarkson’s politics are just that, or supposed to be a caricature..?
I’d put the first season of the US Top Gear at about the same level of awful as the first season of “New” Top Gear. They’ve started to get better in season 2 of USTG, but they’ve still got a long way to go.