Media personality Jeremy Clarkson is under fire after penning an article forThe Sunabout his “hate” forMeghan Markle.
More than 6,000 complaints have been made to press regulator Ipso about Clarkson’s piece, according to theBBC. The article was taken down fromThe Sun’s website on Monday with the message: “In light of Jeremy Clarkson’s tweet he has asked us to take last week’s column down.”
“At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her,” he wrote, referencing the famous scene fromGame of Thrones.
Clarkson also wrote that he hated Meghan more than Rose West, referencing the notorious English serial killer who — with her husband, Fred West — tortured and murdered numerous young women as well as her stepdaughter in the 1970s and 1980s.
Nick England/Getty; Chris Jackson/Getty
First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon, who was also named in the article as someone that Clarkson “hates,” called what the presenter said “deeply misogynist and just downright awful and horrible.”
Mayor of London Sadiq Khancondemned the articlevia Twitter, writing: “As Jeremy Clarkson should well know - words have consequences. The words in his piece are no joke - they’re dangerous and inexcusable. We are in an epidemic of violence against women and girls and men with powerful voices must do better than this.”
Clarkson responded on Twitter Monday, saying he was “horrified to have caused so much hurt.”
“Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it,” he wrote. “In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene inGame of Thronesand this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.”
A spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex declined to comment.
Clarkson’s article came amid the release of Meghan andPrince Harry’s Netflix docuseries, in which the couple detailed their struggles with press intrusion andsocial media threats.
“I think for people to really understand, you know, when you plant a seed that is so hateful, what it can grow into,” the Duchess of Sussex said in an emotional moment of the show.
Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.DANIEL LEAL/AFP
“Just a couple of days ago, I was going through the manual for our security team at home, and on one of the pages that I happened to flip to, it was about online monitoring,” she continued. “And they’re like: ‘If you see a tweet like this, please report it to the head of security immediately.’ And it just said: ‘Meghan just needs to die. Someone needs to kill her. Maybe it should be me.’ "
“And I was just like, ‘Okay.’ That’s, like, what’s actually out in the world because of people creating hate,” Meghan said.
source: people.com
