Top Gear, the cheeky, testosterone-soaked BBC television show about cars and the men who love them, is on the hot seat once again. Hosts Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond and James May never spend much time out of the dog house, and now there’s a giant fuss in Mexico, of all places, over comments that two of the hosts made on a recent broadcast. How bad is it? When a major network has to officially apologize to someone who has “His Excellency” at the beginning of his title, that’s bad. From the Hollywood Reporter:
The British motoring show — now in its 16th season and famed for its macho irreverent tone — triggered a firestorm of controversy after anchor Richard Hammond described Mexicans as “lazy, feckless, flatulent and overweight” and said their vehicles mirrored the same characteristics.
Co-host James May then weighed in to add his view that Mexican food was like “sick with cheese on it,” to which Hammond quipped “refried sick.”
That’s great television … or was, until the BBC cut the comments from their latest episode. The edits came after Mexico’s ambassador to Britain, His Excellency Eduardo Medina-Mora Icaza, complained about the comments made in an episode broadcast Sunday. He demanded that Clarkson, May and Hammond make a public apology.
In the episode, Hammond joked that Mexican cars reflected its national characteristics and that a Mexican sports car would resemble “a lazy, feckless and flatulent oaf with a moustache, leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus with a blanket with a hole in the middle on as a coat.”
Clarkson predicted they would not get any complaints about the show because “at the Mexican embassy, the ambassador is going to be sitting there with a remote control, snoring.”
In his letter to the BBC, the ambassador wrote: “The presenters of the program resorted to outrageous, vulgar and inexcusable insults to stir bigoted feelings against the Mexican people, their culture as well as their official representative in the United Kingdom.
From Wikipedia: Other aspects of the programme have been underlined as unsuitable. Incidents and content ranging from (but not limited to) offensive remarks, promoting irresponsible driving, environmental issues, ridiculing Germans and Mexicans and homophobia have generated complaints from people, groups, and government.
And here’s a quote from Clarkson in a recent profile on the Top Gear web site:
“I love the sheer volume of Red Bull we get through, the vast quantities of cigarettes we smoke.”
Wow. What’s happened to Britain lately?
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BBC America to Edit ‘Lazy Mexicans’ Comment From Top Gear for U.S. Broadcast [The Hollywood Reporter]
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- cur68 - Feb 13, 2011 at 11:28 PM
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I love Top Gear. I saw that episode and other episodes with comments like that (they’ve slagged Italians, French, Germans, Americans, Swiss on and on and on over the years). Here’s the thing. The do not hesitate to slag themselves in exactly the same way. As someone who’s been the victim of many such comments I have to say I appreciate the way they go about it; even handed good natured humorous abuse dilutes the virulent crap that people actually intend to wound and harm others with. If the Mexican ambassador wants to get up in arms then he can have a go at the state of Arizona’s bigoted laws that directly harm people like us and leave Hammond, May, and Clarkson alone. The BBC are cocks for caving and apologizing.
