Perhaps not actually being Scottish is preventing clarity in seeing this remark as being racist.
I am not alone in my opinion as you can read from this extract on Jeremy Clarkson's racist comments about Gordon Brown:-
The Scottish Unionist Feb 2009.
BBC is now complicit in Clarkson’s racial insult.
Yesterday I argued that Jeremy Clarkson’s apology for his gratuitous reference to Gordon Brown’s visual disability was inadequate. He has not apologised for associating Scottishness with idiocy.
It seems that I’m far from alone in that view. Today’s Scotsman is running an editorial entitled “Clarkson apology does not go far enough” and a report that Labour MSP George Foulkes has denounced the supposed apology as “half-hearted” and “mealy-mouthed”, calling for the BBC to “take swift action to deal with these kind of racist remarks”.
The SNP’s Christine Grahame, someone with whom I rarely agree, also hits the nail on the head:
“It is just abuse. It plays to the lowest, lowest denominators of society. You cannot make these racist remarks. If you were to substitute the phrase with ‘one-eyed black idiot’ or ‘one-eyed Muslim idiot’, I’m sure things would be different.”Alex Salmond’s spokesman spectacularly misses the point, calling Clarkson a “clown” (fair enough) but saying that “at least now he is an apologetic clown”. Not in my book, he isn’t!
But worse than that predictable failure to appreciate the actual issue is the BBC’s reaction. When challenged over the nature of the so-called apology, a spokeswoman for the corporation said:
“Jeremy was aware what part of his comments were offensive and that’s what he has apologised for, and the BBC has accepted that apology.”
Clearly that’s untrue. Worse, can he really be unaware that he has offended Scots? And asked if this meant that the BBC condones Clarkson’s use of the pejorative term “Scottish idiot”, she said:
“He has apologised in full, and we have got no further comment to make.”
Again, entirely untrue. Hence my post title: the BBC is now complicit in Clarkson’s racial insult.
Anna Smith of The Mirror said on the same subject:-
Boorish Jeremy Clarkson is the posh version of an English knuckle-trailing football thug.
The only difference is he can string a sentence together.
His unbelievably cruel jibe about Gordon Brown being a 'one eyed Scottish idiot' come has to be the most offensive remark ever made in television history.
It’s not just crass. It’s cruel and vicious, and a direct insult to blind people or anyone else with a physical disability.
And it’s racist and insulting to Scottish people.
I could go on and on but don't feel I should have to. The comment was racist and that's the end of it.