Okay, fair enough. I have now seen the quote in full (and note in passing it was the BBC who quoted the offensive part out of context) and one thing I notice is that the "two views" he provided don't actually conflict. The seventies were another time when worker's rights were under threat and strikes and disruption to essential public services were frequent, and there were people back then who also advocated shooting the strikers. And they weren't joking. That's how Thatcher got in.

How much of the fallout from this was intended is something one has to make up one's own mind about. My problem with him is mainly that "Jeremy Clarkson" is not a character that he puts on and takes off, like Alf Garnett or Al Murray's Pub Landlord; as far as I can tell, he believes these things, and if I am to read in a subtext then I need a few more clues.

One thing this has been, as someone pointed out on Facebook, is a huge distraction from anything else that might be going on, such as the Leveson inquiry into the phone-hacking scandal. If it seems unfair to flip between thinking he was sincere in advocating the shooting and thinking he just did it to create a furore and take people's minds off what the government is doing, then perhaps I could point out that I'm just presenting two views here. And again, they don't actually conflict. :)