For the first time ever, a clown has amused me.
Like most normal adult male Americans, I harbor a deep-seated loathing of clowns. Clowns were always mildly off-putting to me as a child; they became even more so once I learned about the exploits of John Wayne Gacy and the fiction of Stephen King. Now, in my maturity, I recognize them as the omens of ill fortune they invariably are. (I just assume that in the Old World, peasant superstition holds that to encounter a clown randomly in the wild is to experience a sudden vision of one’s own mortality.)
Other people are into weird scenes, though, which brings us to Tim Cunningham, the president of Clowns Without Borders, “a nonprofit that performs clown shows for communities facing hardship.” Truly this is God’s work, although I’m not exactly sure what kind of hardship it is intended to relieve. (Imagine suffering in a third world country from a desperate lack of medical attention, and then instead of Doctors Without Borders they announce they’re sending in the Clowns.)
Tim takes his calling very seriously — he insists on describing his vocation as the art of capital-C “Clown,” not the demotic term “clowning.” And he wants us to know — in an op-ed that I still cannot quite believe was published today in the Washington Post — that labeling Donald Trump a “clown” is an insult to the artistry of Clown:
Clown demands years, if not a lifetime, of study. . . . What’s more, Clown is not an invention of the modern era; several ancient Indigenous cultures revere a sacred clown figure. For example, the Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Sioux) people celebrate the heyoka, an honorable community member who uses humor to shed light on societal problems. . . .
Yet, our joyful work has been diminished into an insult. Every election season, the word “clown” resurfaces to compare tumultuous Washington politics to a circus. Political commentators and social media users are not the only ones who wrongfully sling this jibe. “Clown” is used by almost everyone to belittle those seen as foolish or incompetent. The more we mistreat the word, the more we lose understanding of a sacred art form.
Let’s find a better metaphor to despise and depose fascism. Keep Clown out of Trumpian comparisons, and for that matter, all politics. Offer Clown the respect it deserves and invoke us for good: in alliance with other artists, activists and humans who believe in a better, happier world.
Today marks an unexpected milestone: For the first time ever, a clown has amused me. I am also, as a professional, unsure whether to be impressed or agog with the Post’s editorial staff and its decision-making process. You mad lads, did you actually commission this, or did you just stand back and allow the guy to set himself ablaze with his own submission? What a terribly cruel thing to do! But, on the other hand, at least it made me smile, which is something clowns (or “Clown”) never do.