As unwarranted and deceitful character assassinations go, this from the Metro is truly appalling.
BBC's Jeremy Clarkson attacks 'black Muslim lesbians' on TV
This is the headline, and already there are problems. He did nothing of the sort, he attacked TV executives.
Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has ridiculed TV bosses for being obsessed with having "black Muslim lesbians" on shows to balance out the numbers of white heterosexual men.
Hang on, it gets worse.
Clarkson's comments follow the Strictly Come Dancing race row, which saw veteran presenter Bruce Forsyth forced to backtrack in a formal BBC statement after he said the nation should get a "sense of humour" over Anton Du Beke's "slip up" of referring to celebrity dance partner Laila Rouass as a "Paki".
Brucie's later statement, issued through the BBC, emphasised that "racially offensive language is never either funny or acceptable".
Err ... no it didn't follow the entirely unrelated Strictly incident. For the simple reason that Clarkson's piece was written before the Forsyth saga had occurred.
Clarkson made his comments in a column for the November issue of Top Gear magazine.
The publication of which was announced online at a minute past midnight on the 9th.
I've written for magazines much less sophisticated than Top Gear, and anyone who has any clue about deadlines would know that copy is required well in advance of the publication date.
It is quite inconceivable that Clarkson could have written his piece for publication on the 9th, when Forsyth's comments were only publicised the day before.
He was not referring to the Strictly row ...
Of course he wasn't, because that would be impossible, so why the implied smear in the preamble to reporting of the facts?
Metro may be entirely innocent of this, though. They just report what is fed to them by newswires, and as we well know, most of them merely copy and paste what they read.
MSN were amongst dozens of sites who carried the same story, word for condemnatory anti-Clarkson word, except that the Press Association web-site was accredited just above the article date.
Make of that what you will.
