If you didn’t make it to this year’s installment of the annual Missouri State Fair in Sedalia, there’s always next year. And in 2014, if you’re a rodeo fan, you won’t be running into any controversial activities at the bull-riding contest, nothing that might embarrass the Show-Me State in front of the entire nation.
I don’t know about you, but I am embarrassed and ashamed that the entire world got to see good old Missourah dragging race relations through the mud at this year’s fair.
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Didn’t it make you cringe when the story of that insensitive Obama-masked rodeo clown became fodder on all the 24-hour news networks and the late-night talk shows? The clown’s choice of masks surely might lead the cultured, harmony-hungry world to develop an ugly impression about Missouri’s brand of civility. I’d like to announce right here that our fair state does not support a class of clowns on the arena grounds (and in the stands) who think masquerading in an Obama mask is the height of hilarity.
If you thought the stunt was a harmless piece of bullfoolery, you probably didn’t take note of the full costume. Did you see that there was a broomstick hooked to the back seat of the clown’s britches to simulate an animal’s tail?
Among the straws in that broom might have been the straw that broke the comic’s act.
The good, clean, family fun of the fair was further tarnished by the announcer’s bullhorn, which fueled the fan frenzy. The spectators’ dander was whipped up when the announcer asked the rowdy crowd how many of them wanted to see a bull trample Obama. How about you, kiddies? That would be a fine lesson in presidential assassinations, wouldn’t it?
It could become the entire nation’s notion that folks from Missourah hold their raucous KKK rallies as a regular part of the fair’s rodeo festivities. But there were some observers and participants who swore on a stack of funnel cakes—between their hearty laughter, hoots, hollers, squeals, cuss words, and rebel yells—that the idea of having a bull take the Obama impersonator out had absolutely nothing to do with race.
They say they’ve seen masks of other presidents used as fronts for humor and even as disguises for crime. That might be true, but it misses the point.
Ironically, President William McKinley died of complications from an assassin’s bullet the day after the first-ever Missouri State Fair closed in 1901. And I’ll bet you corn dogs to cotton candy that we could run through every chief executive from McKinley to Obama and find not a single commander in chief lampooned by a rodeo clown at a Missouri State Fair. Name three reasons President Obama made such an easy target for those clowns at the rodeo. If you’re truthful, you can probably stop at your first reason.
In fact, I think the clown’s Obama mask transported some of the folks in the stands back to the era of the minstrel in blackface, from its emergence in the late 1830s, through the Civil War, into Vaudeville, and up to the Civil Rights Movement in the ’60s. An act built on shtick like blackface automatically conjures up impressions of African-Americans as dumb, lazy, shiftless malingerers. And, yes, a few popular minstrel characters have displayed quick wit with a wink and certain craftiness, but even those clowns usually relied on foils of stupid blacks to put their humor on stilts.
Even though the Missouri State Fair Commission fired the Obama impersonator and the rodeo association president stepped down, the damage was already done to our state’s image. Are we a state that has no respect for either the man or the office of president?
As an attempt at remedy, the Missouri State Fair Commission ordered all rodeo clowns to attend sensitivity training. That should be more fun than a barrel of monkeys. Or a clown car packed with craziness. Maybe Comedy Central would like to cover those sensitivity rehab sessions live on cable.
Maybe you don’t see what the fuss is all about. Maybe you agree with U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, a Republican from the great state of Texas, who says the “rodeo clown was a harmless gag.” Stockman is rolling out the red carpet in his red state for the clown Obama to perform in Texas.
Yay for Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill. who notes that the Missouri State Fair is “supposed to be a place where we can all bring our families and celebrate the state that we love.” And an across-the-aisle shout-out to Peter Kinder, Missouri’s Republican lieutenant governor, who tweeted: “We are better than this.”
What inspires a ragged rodeo clown to don a mask disguise of a sitting U.S. president—especially if the lampooning demeans a black Harvard-educated president elected to office twice?
The Texas State Fair—to which our Obama-mask-wearing clown has an official invitation—runs from September 27 through October 20. Keep your eyes peeled for a clown on the highway thumbing a ride to the Lone Star State. If he’s still showing disrespect for the nation’s 44th President, there are a number of ways you can express your opinion with your horn or the display of a certain middle digit. This clown is fair game, but we want absolutely none of the violence suggested at the rodeo. No bull.
Commentary by Julius K. Hunter
