In our politically correct climate, there seems to be three groups of people it's still OK to mock and malign - fat people, people dressed like mascots or cartoon characters (except on this forum of course)...and clowns.
One of my best friends is a professional circus clown and is one of the curators of a Clown Hall of Fame Museum. He works incredibly hard to write, choreograph and produce elaborate physical comedy routines; it's not all throwing buckets of confetti and making balloon animals for most of these guys who work in circuses for a living. He also does hospital visits, entertaining kids who want to be distracted. Or he'll just sit and watch TV or read or talk to kids who don't want to be entertained, or who could use a friend more than a distraction. Hell, he married his wife - an accountant who has nothing to do with the circus industry or clowning - before a Ringling Brothers show at Madison Square Garden, in the center ring. Fellow clowns were his ushers, all of them in their costumes. He was a clown college graduate, has made invaluable contacts, worked with legends like Bill Irwin. And nothing makes him angrier and sadder than people who make blanket "oh, I don't like clowns, they're creepy" statements. He's reached the point where he often doesn't use makeup; just elaborate costumes and wacky hair and a red nose. He works hard to read his audience when he's doing crowd interaction - he's there to make them happy, not to make himself an intrusion. He's good at loosening people up one-on-one, but he can only do so much of that in a day, a week, a year.
Look, some clowns suck, just like some cable installers suck, and some doctors need their malpractice insurance more than others. and some lawyers' win-loss ratio is nothing to brag about. Especially because so many people who can juggle or make a balloon animal set themselves up as birthday clowns or tour schools as "Flame-oh, the Fire Safety Clown," because they don't want a 9-to-5 job or want to make extra money on the weekend, and they have precious little skill interacting with a crowd, working with them and for them to be genuinely entertaining.
But to write off that entire art form of incredibly hard-working professionals - and to assume that the rest of the nation feels the same way - is flat-out asinine. The reason people think everyone hates clowns is, as I half-jokingly wrote above, clowns and mascots and fat people are easy butts of jokes. Movies and television shows have made plenty of jokes about a clown who is actually morose, or evil, or perverted. It's an easy laugh. Just as it's an easy laugh in a movie to punch an annoying person who is dressed like a team mascot in a stadium, or a cartoon character in a theme park, but when someone punches a Disney character, or accuses a Disney character pf punching them, these pages are filled with support for the CM in the costume, casting aspersions on the person throwing the punch or making the charge of assault. But clowns? Oh, they're creepy, all of them. No good comes from clowns. Write 'em off. Don't sully my precious Magic Kingdom with their presence.
I say, bring 'em on.
