Posted on 10/07/2014 7:12:22 AM PDT by TurboZamboni
The host of the popular BBC television program "Top Gear" and other members of the crew have fled Argentina after being pelted with rocks by people who believed one of their cars had a license plate alluding to the Falklands War.
Officials said a crowd of about 50 people began hurling rocks at the BBC group Thursday as they drove in a caravan under police escort to the Chilean border with Argentina's southernmost province of Tierra del Fuego.
Host Jeremy Clarkson and the others were forced to abandon the cars in an area between Tolhuin and Rio Grande. One minor injury was reported and images by local newspapers showed broken windows and other damage to the cars, which were taken into police custody.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
That is gonna be GREAT Tellie!
Stuff like that can happen in a Third World banana republic.
Ratings ploy?
The idiot producers were asking for it. That’s like driving through Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods in Northern Ireland making fun of the Troubles or wearing a white robe and hood in Harlem — you’re needlessly trying to provoke a fight just to get better TV ratings.
And it can happen in the First World too. There are lots of things some foreign tv producer could do to provoke an angry response from Americans - you could put a bumper sticker on your car praising Bin Laden, or maybe a bumper sticker praising General Sherman while you drive through Georgia. I'm sure if you try hard enough you can provoke a mob to throw crap at you. It's childish and stupid, but if your only goal is higher ratings, why not.
They somehow forgot Basil Fawlty’s classic advice. “Whatever you do, don’t mention the war”.
Argentina, once a glittering jewel of capitalism, is now a third world hellhole.
I like the show but Clarkson deliberately pokes his finger into the eyes of the host countries. There is no way that the license plate was a bizarre chance - they selected it as a provocation and frankly, even though I sided with the Brits on the Falklands War, this was a deliberate provocation at the port where the General Belgrano battleship sailed and was sunk with the loss of 300+ Argentinian young men. I have seen shows where Clarkson drove through the South and made the most astonishing insults of his hosts, deprecating their intelligence and religious beliefs; another time he was throwing verbal mud at Vietnam War veterans. When you want to run your mouth and say offensive things, particularly in someone’s home country where you are a guest, don’t expect the hosts not to take offense and then bawl for help when they strike back.
How were they asking for it?. it was a license plate.. H982 FLK.. as far as i can tell its not a vanity plate ..it just a number. . It a remote stretch to say in relates to that war
Well, when touring in the South a few years back, they wrote “NASCAR SUCKS” and “GAY LOVE IS BEST” on the sides of their cars! Being provocative is their shtick!
They tried to provoke the same response by painting pro-gay and pro-Hillary slogans on their cars and then driving through Alabama. They failed.
I think they should drive through Liberia, Sierra Lenone etc wearing biohazard suits.
Like when they drove through Vietnam with a motor scooter painted with an American flag. Or when they drove through some southern states with “NASCAR SUCKS” painted on a car.
Ok so can someone translate the insult carried in the letter/number combo in this plate?
I ws pretty funny to watch that episode.
It was a vanity plate. Argentines know their own license plates and can recognize a vanity plate, and anybody who watches the show knows that it is totally the kind of thing they would do.
I see from this thread this show has a long history of trying to provoke locals.. that said ..again...can someone translate the insult carried in the letter/number combo in this plate?
H is the letter before I. In a similar vein, there were those who said the computer HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey was one letter short of IBM.
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