America is not 'an extraordinarily racist country'

“Obviously, America’s an extraordinarily racist country.” So says Gary Lineker, a successful soccer player in the 1980s who went on to become a $2 million-per-year BBC sports presenter. That’s not a bad wage when you consider that the BBC is taxpayer-funded. He made his remarks in the context of saying that, whatever Qatar’s human rights record, the United States as the next World Cup host had problems of its own.

Lineker articulates most of the standard liberal prejudices that sustain the BBC: EU good, Tories bad, yada, yada. Had he expressed his opinions privately, he would have remained hugely popular. He was a fine footballer, and his commentary combines razor-sharp perspicacity with easygoing amiability. But like so many broadcasters, he was fatally tempted into political commentary by Twitter — almost always a process that takes people on a downward spiral of increasingly outrageous statements.

The shocking thing here is the “obviously.” In the circles in which Lineker moves, the idea that the U.S. is peculiarly racist, almost as bad as Britain, goes without saying.