This piece by Deborah Orr absolutely skewers Clarkson.
It’s not enough for Jeremy Clarkson to say he’s not racist – he must act like it
The BBC has given Jeremy Clarkson a pass over accusations of racism. But will he now start to take responsibility for his own words and their meanings and ditch the martyr routine?…When you’re in the public eye, dealing in language, it is not enough to insist that you’re not a racist. You’ve also got to achieve a level of intellectual maturity that brings you to the understanding that racism isn’t funny, and that anti-racism isn’t funny either. Clarkson is in his mid-50s. He should have got there by now.…Clarkson styles himself as a libertarian, yet he shows contempt for his own autonomy by refusing to take responsibility for his own words – and mutterings – and their meanings. He invites others to do the job for him, because he’s too lazy and too arrogant to do it for himself. Then he insists that they are the problem, not him.
I can’t shake the mental image of Clarkson as a toddler, throwing his toys out of the pram and screaming “it’s not fair” when he has nothing left to play with.