Freedom's just another word for ...

... being rude about Mexicans on 'Top Gear'. Meanwhile, teen sexscenes in the US version of 'Skins' have caused alarm The bottomline Freedom of thought Unsolicited advice Heads in the sand Howmodern censorship works

All week long, in the wake of the Sky Sports sexism row, the airhas been thick with the cries of middle-aged to elderly media mennervously justifying their right to freedom of speech. There hasbeen talk of "banter" and its inherent salubrity. Jeremy Clarkson,speaking backstage at that altogether desperate affair, the NationalTelevision Awards, struck an almost Miltonic note, when he warned ofthe dangers of people being punished for "heresy of thought ... youshould be allowed to think what you think" Mr Clarkson grandlyconcluded.

Appropriately enough, Clarkson was implicated in last week'sbroadcasting row, when it was disclosed that the Mexican ambassadorhad filed a complaint over an edition of Top Gear in which itsgallant presenters ascribed to a Mexican sports car variouscharacteristics thought also to apply to the national psyche.According to Clarkson's colleague, Richard Hammond: "Mexican carsare just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight, leaningagainst a fence asleep looking at a cactus, with a blanket with ahole in the middle on as a coat." Not to be outdone, James May thendescribed Mexican cuisine as "re-fried sick".

The really depressing thing about this little exercise inxenophobia is not that it deals in stereotypes that a child of 10might hesitate to invoke, but the fundamental laziness of the mentalattitudes involved. Is this the best that Hammond, with hisprestigious education, his fabulous salary, and the resources of amighty corporation at his elbow, can do? As for the idea that "youshould be allowed to think what you think", well, it rather dependswhat you mean by thought.

Still with stereotypes, one of the great idees fixes of themodern age is the assumption that any right-wing politician islikely to be a dyed-in-the-wool Philistine for whom books, films andtheatre are a poor substitute for the serious business of cuttingwelfare benefit and ordering people about. If the merest glance atrecent British political history is enough to puncture this myth -Edward Heath conducting his choirs, Margaret Thatcher quoting PhilipLarkin's poems to him when they met - there is still somethingcomforting to the liberal literatteur in the thought that, whilepolitical power may be denied him, he can claim the moralsuperiority of a well-stocked mind.

This seemed the only conclusion worth drawing from lastWednesday's revelation that Yann Martel, Canadian author of theBooker-winning Life of Pi, below, has spent the last four yearssending his favourite books to his Prime Minister, Stephen Harper,in the hope of enriching an apparently culture-free life. Havingdespatched a round hundred of these items, Mr Martel has given up,irked by the fact that Mr Harper appears neither to have read themor troubled to reply. "I can't understand how a man who seems neverto read imaginative writing of any kind can understand life, people,the world," he told The Independent, adding that he was keen forpeople who had power over him to read because "their limited,impoverished dreams may become my nightmares".

It is this kind of snootiness that gives highbrows a bad name.Virginia Woolf herself could not have been so patronising. Whyshould a disinclination to read debar you from understanding life,people and the world? And who is to say that Mr Harper's dreams areimpoverished because he doesn't fancy Mr Martel's reading list?Curiously enough, all one's sympathies here are with the CanadianPrime Minister, whose aides probably have better things to do thandeal with the latest paper dart winging in from Yann's library ofthe soul.

One of the oddest things about last week's news from Egypt wasthe British media's split reaction to it. Here, plainly, was anevent of world significance, whose dramatic unravelling hadcaptivated the TV and internet audience - not quite a Berlin Wallmoment, but one with almost limitless implications for the MiddleEast and the world beyond.

Over on the news stands, alas, traditional demarcations applied,which is to say that the covers of the "quality" papers were aflamewith reports from Tahrir Square, while the red tops ignored alloverseas news. On Monday, the Daily Express was chuntering on aboutan EU plot to "hammer" the nation's pensioners, while the Mirrorclaimed that anarchists were targeting April's Royal Wedding. ComeWednesday, the talk was of raised petrol prices, Katie Price'sdivorce and some film she might or might not be appearing in.

Taxed with purblind indifference to "the real issues", a red-topeditor would no doubt reply that his (or her) job was to give thepeople what they want. On the other hand, this did feel rather likefilling the sports pages on the day after the FA Cup Final withreports from the World Trick Cycling Championships in LlandrindodWells. And if the Middle East really does go up in flames, thenthose fuel prices that the Express worries about so much, will risehigher still.

Several commentators have noted the corking irony that attendsAmerica's outburst of moral panic over the racy young person's TVimport Skins, and wondered why a country that nurtures the world'slargest pornography industry can turn so fastidious over the sightof a teenage bottom or two going skinny-dipping. The toning down ofSkins, for the benefit of shocked viewers in Nowhere, Nevada, is afine example of that modern media double-think which allowsgargantuan levels of licence in some areas while, in others, fallsover itself to ensure interest groups, whose very existence isunproven, won't be offended.

In the second category, I recently filed a review of JulianBarnes's latest short story collection for the Financial Times. Thisbegan with an account of watching the late Beryl Bainbridge inconversation with Barnes at a literary festival, and included areference to her having "perhaps taken a glass of wine ...." Thiswas edited out. But who would have been offended had it stayed in?Dame Beryl's family? The organisers of the literary festival? Infact, Dame Beryl, as she confessed to me, had previously downed halfa bottle of whisky in her hotel room. Curious to relate, you can saythat the Archbishop of Canterbury is a credulous halfwit invirtually every newspaper in the land, but not that a distinguishednovelist was drunk. But now, alas, I am sounding like JeremyClarkson.