Martin Luther King & Winston Churchill’s iconic speeches would be wasted on today’s TikTok generation, Clarkson says
JEREMY Clarkson has slammed today’s TikTok generation, saying Martin Luther King and Winston Churchill’s iconic speeches would be wasted on them.
The 66-year-old praised the famous moments in history and how they had a real impact on the world today.
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Jeremy Clarkson has called out the new generation, saying that famous speeches would be wasted on them Credit: Getty Images
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Jeremy said that Martin Luther King would have been told to start ‘picking cotton’ if he made his I had a dream speech today Credit: Alamy Stock Photo
But given the many distractions of young people, he said they would not be able to appreciate such moments if they happened today, in his column for The Times.
He said: “After he finished explaining his dream, people sat back in their wingback chairs and stroked their chins and wondered if they shared the same dream.
“Today, he wouldn’t even get to the edge of the stage before someone started saying he should stick to picking cotton.
“Our mind is made up immediately about every single thing and there isn’t the time to have it changed.”
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The Top Gear star added that Churchill would have been labelled a ‘racist’ if today’s generation heard his on the beach speech Credit: Alamy
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He pointed to time being the problem, with everyone so distracted and busy to listen Credit: WireImage
The former Top Gear star pointed to “time” being the problem.
With so many distractions in people’s day-to-day lives, they do not get a moment to think, plan, or consider what is in front of them.
He said that if Zack Polanski made a great speech today, someone may decide that they would not want to listen to it because they do not like the look of his face.
Reminiscing about the past, Jeremy added that the “on the beaches” speech from Churchill in the Commons would emotionally move people listening to it in the 1940s.
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But if the same speech was done today, he said people would probably have called Churchill a racist or a “warmongering pig”.
He said that people do not listen to speeches to become informed or to have their minds changed.
Instead, listeners get their content through four-second edited excerpts on TikTok.
Pointing to the King’s speech to the US Congress last week, he said that it was the best one he had ever heard from a member of the Royal Family.
But Jeremy questioned if it, or any other speeches now, had really achieved much in this “day and age”.
When people listened to King, Kennedy, and even Reagan’s speeches in the past, they would listen silently and learn new things.
But Jeremy said that that “doesn’t happen any more”, with people uninterested in being informed or changing their minds.
