Wednesday 13 July 2011

Everybody needs a hero

Written by

This to me seems equivalent to being "disappointed" by the plot twist in a Steven Seagal movie.

Just what did you expect?

My literary inspiration to "disappoint" is from one of England's greatest writers. He inspires me to tell it like it is, only he does it so much better than me. Is it Chaucer? Shakespeare? J.K. Rowling?

No, it's an overweight, middle-aged, bombastic bloke named Jeremy Clarkson. I think I like Clarkson so much because he once got in a fistfight with Piers Morgan - and won. But the other reason I like him is that he has no "political correctness" filter.

Clarkson is a presenter on my favorite show, BBC's "Top Gear," and an automobile reviewer for the London Times. He has managed to offend at one time or another almost every group in Britain and every nation on Earth.

He called British Prime Minister Gordon Brown "a one-eyed Scottish idiot" (he later apologized for the comments about Brown's personal appearance), he described a car built in Malaysia as "the worst car in the world, built by people who wear leaves for shoes," and he once said the designer of a Hyundai had probably "eaten a spaniel for lunch."

He thinks the Japanese and Germans build cars that are technically good but lack soul, and the basis for this is that they as a group lack passion, a sense of humor and any romantic abilities whatsoever.

The Italians he says are "passion filled" (if you know what I mean) but are incapable of building anything that won't break after two trips around a track.

The U.S.? Well with the exception of the Corvette ZR-1, the Cadillac CTS-V and the Ford GT, he pretty much thinks our cars are junk as we are too busy worrying about eating to care.

He pulls no punches when discussing Britain and its car companies.

He wrote once that the Brits haven't really achieved anything since the height of British Navy power in the 1830s, and that the now-defunct British Leyland built the worst cars ever made (He described their cars as "never in the field of human endeavor has so much been done, so badly, by so many").

He is, though, a great admirer of human achievement, be it NASA's space shuttle, the F-16 Jet Fighter or a 260 mph Bugatti Veyron. Adventurers like astronaut Neil Armstrong and test pilot Chuck Yeager are his heroes. In homage to his heroes, Clarkson was the first to drive a specially modified pickup truck to the North Pole. He drove old junk cars across the spine of Africa and through the Amazon Jungle. He has even driven a tractor-trailer truck through a brick wall.

So, as I soldier on in my comments about the highs and lows of human endeavors, don't expect too much. I am not Jeremy Clarkson, and I am certainly not as interesting as a Steven Seagal movie.

Dr. Joe Campbell is chairman of anesthesiology and a chief medical officer at Forrest General Hospital. Email: joehand1@ bellsouth.net.

NEWS SOURCE

No comments: