

Lessons from a clown act

Urging mock violence against a president isn't funny

4:16 PM, Aug. 16, 2013  |  Comments
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Children, children.

Here we are in the midst of a bloody clash in Egypt, more than 100,000 slaughtered in Syria, another looming debt crisis at home, and we're consumed with angst over a rodeo clown who wore an Obama mask and invited the crowd to cheer for the bulls.



A word about my own biases: I don't like rodeos and I don't like clowns. The former involve animals performing involuntarily and the latter are creepy. (I don't like zoos and circuses, either.)

But clowns are ... clowns! It's their job to poke the precious and touch the untouchable. They are inherently rude, irreverent, insulting, insensitive and sometimes salacious. Presidents, obviously, are fair game and every modern president's face has been made into a mask.

Still. There's something wrong with this clown act. It isn't a hate crime, which is a ridiculous charge, but it is something we need to wrap our minds around. First, let's correct a popular mischaracterization. Wearing an Obama mask is not tantamount to "blackface," which is implicitly racist. When the president's face is "black," then the president's mask is necessarily "black."




Just as N-jokes are no longer funny to almost anyone, placing a black man in the arena like an unarmed gladiator isn't amusing. As much as we aspire to racial harmony, we have centuries of history to overcome, including the mob-inspired lynching of black men, and this is what so many saw in the clown skit. Memory conquers humor.

To be honest, my first reaction was: What a lot of bull. But then, as one must, I put myself in the other's shoes. How would I feel if my face were on the clown's mask and the arena were filled with men who cheered the beast who would trample and destroy me?

This is where political commentary becomes something else. Frightening. We all know what happens when the mob is empowered, especially when further emboldened by the excuse of humor. Few statements are more dishonest than "It's just a joke."

I am the last person who would suggest that irreverence be censored or punished - or that clowns be sensitized. The excessively reverent are far scarier to me than those who would die laughing. Political satire is, in fact, a public service inasmuch as it channels aggression that otherwise might find bloody expression.




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