The Circus comes to town

Every so often, something breaks in the media which is so calculated in order to cause outrage and anger that i can't believe there is so much in depth analysis of the happening because it is so damn obvious that the whole incident is a gratuitous show to sell newspapers, promote a person or event or just generally make money.

The recent Top Gear "incident" where Jeremy Clarkson and Richard Hammond roundly laid in to the Mexicans as a race was clearly the "moment" for this series which was engineered to get massive press and wider media coverage and thus higher ratings and raised profiles for the personnel involved. There is a moment like this in every series of Top Gear, perhaps it'll be Jeremy Clarkson saying that all murders are committed by truck drivers or alledging an electric car has broken down when it in fact didn't. You know the sort of thing - it'll wind up the left wing press something rotten and spark the sort of outrage that is normally reserved for pension mismanagement. The right wing red top press will have a field day as it is precisely the sort of thing their readership will love because they are the people to whom Jeremy Clarkson is the holiest cow.

Now lets take a moment to look at the evidence to this theory: Richard Hammond is normally the giggling child in the background of all the dumb schemes come up with by ringleader Clarkson and rarely has anything deeply offensive the say, yet in this particular segment of the programme he went completely overboard and crucially out of character. He simply doesn't do rants of that length in the previous episodes, which leads me to believe the whole thing was closely scripted, if not word for word.

What amazes me is the sheer level of gullible idiots who are taken in by the circus coming to town and will head out into their newspapers casting utter damnation upon the perpetrators of the controversy. Steve Coogan wrong a long diatribe in the Observer about how offensive his chums at Top Gear are to ultimately gain nothing except people all over the country reading about how he had written a long diatribe in the Observer. It barely added anything to Coogan's fairly low profile, but it did keep Clarkson et al in the media spotlight for another couple of days.

The incident and associated playground chattering also found comment from other lazy journalists such as the awful Julie Burchill in the Independent (and offshoot i), who managed to turn it all around to how its fine to make jokes about women and the disabled.

It wouldn't surprise me if the Coogan article had been organised by Clarkson and Top Gear producer Andy Milman to gain some media coverage for the both of them.

So in summary, look forward to the next controversy next time Top Gear is on. It'll be a couple or three episodes into the series and it'll gain coverage in every newspaper because ultimately it benefits everyone - the newspapers will sell more copies with "CLARKSON'S NEW CONTROVERSY" teased on the front and Top Gear will get more viewers. Everyones a winner, eh?