Jalopnik is one of my most read RSS feeds, and for good reason: while they are on an entirely different wavelength that I am, they are just as geeked about cars as I am. I don’t agree on everything they write but some things, they are dead nuts-on. This is one of them.
Neil Lyndon is a columnist for The Telegraph, a paper in England, and he, for one, cannot wait for an autonomous vehicle, so that Top Gear can be killed off, automotive fascination can become gender-neutral and therefore irrelevant, and that Clarkson can drown in tears of sorrowful failure. No, really. In his article “How Men Fell Out Of Love With The Car”, Lyndon goes on one of the most oddball tirades I’ve ever seen. Here’s his reasons verbatim for the advance of a driverless car:
“One: the subject of cars might again be allowed in mixed company and in the same breath as books, music, films, restaurants, sports, politics, houses, schools, travel – any of the topics in which men and women might both be equally interested.
Two: by the same token, it might finally mark the end of Top Gear and the tedious, trying, belittling picture of masculinity communicated by that Cub camp carnival.”
Are you kidding me? That’s his reason for the driverless car?! He pisses and moans about Jeremy Clarkson and Crew as if he was the runt of the schoolyard whose ass they just kicked. He whines about how the BBC won’t really do anything about Top Gear and specifically Clarkson. Reading it, I didn’t know if he was against cars in general, Top Gear and Clarkson’s career, or masculinity more. At the end of the article, as if to prove some kind of point, takes one of Clarkson’s quotes (“Nobody cool could be called Keith”) and then paints a golden image of Keith Miller, an Australian cricketeer and footballer who was a pilot in World War II. He finishes with this line: “Perhaps if the driverless car sees off Top Gear, such a fully rounded grown-up might be given space to thrive again.”
I read the article in full. I pushed away from the desk, drank a glass of water, and read it once again, to be sure that I was correct in analyzing what Lyndon had written. Jeremy Clarkson and Top Gear have had their fair share of controversies, but if Lyndon is writing them off unilaterally as a one-trick schtick, he’s wrong: Clarkson has engineering and political backgrounds; Richard Hammond is an author and children’s show presenter, and James May is a musician and has had the privilege of flying in a U-2 spy plane at the edge of the atmosphere. He also was fired from Autocar magazine for creating a hidden message with the bold first letter of each story, so he has a sense of humor as well. (“So you think it’s really good, yeah? You should try making the bloody thing up. It’s a pain in the arse.”) So, how are they not well-rounded men? Probably because he didn’t watch Clarkson on the telly before his mother came in and thrashed him for watching men at play. Just a guess. And I’m only scratching the surface…read the article for yourself and see if you don’t end up pissed off.
Lyndon needs to hire some friends to grab him by the shoulders and pull until there is a loud popping noise. Maybe then he can take a look around and see the world for what it is, and not just what little sunlight filters down from his sinus cavities into his GI tract. And maybe then he will think twice about riding in an autonomous car, as I sit on a park bench nearby, hacked into it’s system, locking it’s doors and mapping out a never-ending circle around the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. Bon voyage, you self-indulgent waste of oxygen.
Cars can’t be discussed in mixed company?
Without cars and Mel Brooks movies, I have nothing to talk about!
I’m guessing Mr. Lyndon is still feeling sick from trying to copy Top Gear’s “Manly Smoothy” recipe. Perhaps he put too many bricks in it, or the raw meat was a bit off.
McTaggart, let me know when you plan to fly over there and I will join you in hunting down this a-hole and kicking his butt. Sounds like he has more of a problem with Clarkson & crew than with cars in general. Clarkson, May and Hammond are three of my favorite people on this planet and I will defend them to the end!
p.s. – at the risk of sounding like someone who’s initial’s are GS, the US version of Top Gear sucks!
What a pompous twit he can take a remote controlled prius and shove it up his ass and still have room for his ego and inflated head. All preceding words said with monty python Cleese accent.
I fully agree, Neil Lyddon is a waste of column inches and is trying ingratiate himself with the sort of elitist faux-intelligencia who think liking cars is a sub-human activity. Personally I think if you don’t like the hearty throb of an idling big block or the howl of a V12 at full throttle, if you can’t be moved by the lithe beauty of a 250 GTO or the brash elegance of a Corvette Stingray or if you’re not excited by a flaming burnout then you’re not really living an exciting life. But that’s just me! People could not understand why I got excited by the fact I found that one of my neighbours has a 1970 ‘Cuda body on a dolly in his garage exciting (I am English and in England this is a big deal f
One thing thoug, Clarkson has an honourary
Dammit! It posted before I was finished!
I was going to add that Clarkson has an honorary doctorate in Engineering but is no engineer, he started out as a local newspaper journalist in Rotherham in Yorkshire then moved into motoring publications before starting on Top Gear in the early 90s. Old Top Gear was very different to the current show. It was a serious car show that reviewed sensible family motoring and rarely featured power sliding super cars or transcontinental adventures.
I didn’t mention the degree for that express purpose. The “engineering background” reference was meant to include his works studying inventors and inventions.
I am possibly the biggest Top Gear fan on the planet. (The BBC version that is.) I love Clarkson’s wit, his humor, I even agree with a few of his opinions. IMHO… Those 3 guys are about the best team ever assembled on TV. The day it goes off the air… Will be a truely sad day for me.
“And on that note… GOODNIGHT!!!”
I Agree, Lyddon is a knob, although is you ask anyone who met Clarkson during his Bonneville adventure, they might feel the same way.
I certainly wouldn’t be knocking Keith Miller if you don’t know anything about him
He was once asked by a journalist about the pressure after a cricket match
His reply. “Pressure is when you have a Messerschmit 109 on your ass, cricket’s not pressure”
It was also said there were 1000 rumors about him, all mostly true
Keith Miller, cricketer, footballer, WWII pilot
On the cool wall
G