(CNN) — It was a sad day in the clown world when a “clown” at the Missouri State Fair put on a mask in the likeness of President Barack Obama and wore a broomstick attached to his behind to perform in a rodeo in America’s Heartland.
The broomstick is a big part of the joke, as you’ll see below. Odd that a professional clown doesn’t get it.
Some would ask: How this is different from late-night pundits making mocking comments about every political person alive? It is different in that it goes against everything a clown stands for and makes fun of our president in a way that is truly offensive on so many levels.
As someone who has performed as a “real” clown for 32 years and has taught the craft to hundreds of clowns, I would like the world to know that we have a code of ethics that we adhere to so that our life of making the world smile goes on without hurting people. Among the ethics is a ban on “blue humor.”
That’s someone named Judy Quest, board member and past president of the Clowns of America International, according to the bio posted along with her article on CNN.com. For a clown, she isn’t very funny.
This mean no sexual or racial humor. The joke always needs to be on us and never on an audience member.
Obama wasn’t in the audience. He was on the golf course.
If someone is offended or made the “victim” of a joke, it is totally against what the clown community would consider funny.
There’s a “clown community” apart from the DNC and MSNBC? Who knew?
One of the main international clown organizations based in the United States is Clowns of America, International. We are 3,000 members strong and are organized into clown “alleys,” groups that perform together.
Heaven help us, there’s a clown bureaucracy apart from Kathleen Sebelius’ apparatchiks running Obamacare.
As part of our training, and really the training of most clowns, we have a strict code of ethics covering such things as drinking while clowning, cleanliness and remaining in character. We take offense at the actions of the rodeo “clown” because we are strictly trained not to offend anyone while “in clown.”
Really — everyone in the clown community is united in offense at what one clown did in Missouri? Were they similarly offended in 1994 when a rodeo clown mocked George Bush in an almost identical fashion to the way Obama was?
Cue the Wayne’s World dream segue and read this piece about a long ago rodeo in Woodstown, PA, when a mean bull named Jalapeno helped some clowns put on a show.
The big white gate flew open. The bull came out bucking. The rider flopped from side to side and the bullfighters held back, letting the bull make his moves until the rider dropped off. Licciardello crouched in a heavily padded barrel, a human target should the bull decide to charge. Hawkins waited near the barrel, holding his big inner tube. A dummy with a George Bush mask stood beside the clown, propped up by a broomstick.
Doesn’t that sound familiar? I guess America was just a terrible place in 1994. We allowed rodeos to go around naming bulls “Jalapeno” (way to offend the Hispanic population, rodeo people!) and we allowed clowns to make fun of a recently defeated president.
The broomstick is a big part of the joke, by the way. It isn’t there to make it look like the clown has a tail. It’s there to prop him up and make him look like a dummy, so that when he runs from the charging bull, everyone laughs. That’s the joke.
The dummy here is the clown making sad face for CNN.
Thank heavens we’re better than that now. We have a clown bureaucracy to come along, not get the joke, and denounce free speech.
They’re mainly in the media and the Obama administration, but they’re also getting an assist from Judy Quest and her Clown International Posse.
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