The Rodeo Clown

The cure for the evils of democracy is more democracy!

H. L. Mencken, Notes on Democracy, 1926

The founders and framers gave their new nation protections from an intrusive government, and the right to speak freely without fear of retribution from that government. The freedom of speech is one of the sacred foundations of this country.

Citizens have the right to openly criticize their elected leaders, to give voice to their dissatisfaction.

These facts are never in dispute, yet recent attacks on President Obama seem to be held by his supporters and political sycophants in the media as being beyond the pale and are demanding action to muzzle the people.

The event in question centers on a rodeo clown.

Yes, a rodeo clown who used a Pressddient Obama mask and had the rodeo announcer announce to the audience of they would like to see the clown, wearing the mask, get trampled by a bull.

The crowd roared its approval at the request.

This is a time honored tradition at ropdeos – to poke fum at elected officials.

Yet this free expression of speech is under assault.

Consider these posts from various media outlets covering the story about, yes, a rodeo clown and the accompanying reactions from the elected leaders who cannot balance a budget, but can weigh in on the matters surrounding the free speech of a rodeo clown.

Missouri State Fair officials have banned for life the rodeo clown who wore a President Obama mask while facing bulls at the event over the weekend.

The clown in question engaged in an “unconscionable stunt” and will never perform at the Show Me state venue again, the Missouri State Fair Commission said Monday, in a statement. Fair officials are also reviewing their contract with the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, the contractor responsible for hiring and overseeing bull ring clowns.

The performance was “inappropriate and not in keeping with the Fair’s standards," said the statement.

The fair did not reveal the clown’s identity.

During a bull riding contest on Sunday, the clown appeared wearing a rubber mask of the president with an upside down broomstick trailing from his backside, as if it were a tail. The audience was asked, over a public address system, if it wanted to see Mr. Obama “run down by a bull.” Many people present clapped and cheered, according to one witness, Perry Beam.

“It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally,” said Mr. Beam.

Others defended the act as within the mainstream of rodeo ring entertainment. The clown was meant to be imitating a dummy, another witness, Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association member David Berry, told the Associated Press. Bull ring clowns often dress as sitting presidents, Mr. Berry said.

“The joke is not that it was the president. They drag out this person dressed like a dummy and all of a sudden this dummy just takes off running. That’s what’s funny,” Berry told AP.

The public address announcer at the rodeo, Mark Ficken, is trying to distance himself from the fracas. Mr. Ficken, president of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association and superintendent of the Boonville School District, said the clown was wearing a wireless mike and made most of the comments heard by the audience. Ficken said through an attorney that he was “as surprised as anyone” at the appearance of an Obama mask.

The speed with which fair officials responded to the uproar may be indicative of both the seriousness with which they took the stunt.

Ficken became president of the Missouri Cowboy Rodeo Association Saturday morning, a post he resigned after just two days Monday.

Regardless of the resignation, St. Louis attorney Albert Watkins says Ficken wants to “set the story straight.” According to the lawyer, a “rogue rodeo clown” wearing the mask was not part of the scripted show and Ficken had no advance knowledge of it. Furthermore, the lawyer says audio heard in video of the event came from the clown himself, wearing a wireless microphone, not his client.

“Unfortunately, in this day of internet piling on, once an outlet published an incorrect statement of facts, the erroneous attribution to my client of comments made by a rogue rodeo clown went viral,” Watkins says in the statement Monday morning. “My client is now being inundated by responsive and retaliatory action, all of which is premised on a false recital of facts. It is respectfully suggested that the media needs to cut out the bull and get the facts straight.”

In a statement Monday, Missouri State Fair officials called on the Rodeo Cowboy Association to “hold all those responsible for this offensive stunt accountable.”

Also Monday, several statewide and congressional politicians weighed in on the controversy which has garnered national headlines.

U.S. Rep. William Lacy Clay, D-St. Louis, said he was “amazed that in 2013 such hatred, intolerance and disrespect towards the President of the United States could take place at the Missouri State Fair.”

“Our fair is supposed to showcase the best of Missouri, instead, it showed an ugly face of intolerance and ignorance to the world,” Clay added.

Gov. Jay Nixon was asked about the controversy while in Kirkwood Monday. He called on the Office of Administration to review the contracts of those who hosted Saturday’s rodeo.

“I think that’s a lot better and more reasonable approach to this than canceling events that Missouri families and others look forward to each year,” he said. “The Missouri State Fair is an important part of the traditions of our state and when people mess with that tradition, certainly it upsets us.”

Missouri Rep. Steve Webb, D-Florissant, said he was “incensed” by the incident.

“Sometimes apologies just won’t do. While I do not believe this represents all of rural Missouri, the racial undertones of a taunted rodeo clown dressed as our nation’s first black president is what the nation woke up to this morning,” Webb said. “It’s time for all of us, from both rural and urban areas, to fight this type of sentiment with a united front. Leaders of this state need to do more than accept a pressured apology.”

Webb called on Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon to cancel his annual State Fair ham breakfast Thursday in protest.

A day earlier, as word of the show spread on social media, politicians on both sides of the aisle spoke out in condemnation.

U.S. Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-MO, released a statement Sunday, calling the event “shameful” and “unacceptable.”

Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, tweeted late Sunday afternoon that the Missouri State Fair “celebrates Missouri and our people. I condemn the actions disrespectful to POTUS the other night. We are better than this.”

Missouri Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, D-Kansas City, wrote on Twitter that he would no longer attend Missouri State Fair events and Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis, called the event “racist and degrading.”

Rep. Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, tweeted “I don’t agree w/ this Prez on many things. But he is deserving of respect and shouldn’t be the object of political stunts. Out of line!”

Much of the controversy has centered on the fair’s status as a publicly funded event which is generally void of overt political pandering. Estimates differ on how many taxpayer dollars go to the fair each year, ranging from a few hundred thousand dollars to as many as $5 million.

Calls by the Missouri chapter of the NAACP for a federal investigation into a rodeo clown who donned a President Obama mask at the state fair last week are misguided and hypocritical, a Texas Republican congressman told FoxNews.com on Thursday.

U.S. Rep. Steve Stockman, who has invited the clown who wore the mask to perform in Texas, said the request for probes into the incident by the Justice Department and Secret Service are “silly” and should be ignored.

“A rodeo clown is really a nominal thing and it hurt no one,” Stockman told FoxNews.com. “They didn’t speak out when George Bush was being portrayed as a murderer. To become relevant again, they need to become more of an honest broker and not have contrived anger.”

Stockman said the NAACP would better serve its constituents by focusing on ways to decrease unemployment among the black community. He also noted that the national civil rights group was silent after a July incident on a Florida bus where three black teens beat a fellow white student. Though Gulfport Police Chief Robert Vincent told Fox News the attack did not appear to be racially motivated, former Florida Rep. Allen West, who is black, chided Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson, noting they condemned Florida's laws in the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting yet remained mum on the bus attack.

“We can’t get the Justice Department to look at Benghazi, so it would be ironic that the Justice Department would investigate a clown."

“It’s really patently false that they’re angry at this, but not angry at other issues,” Stockman continued. “There has to be some consistency.”

Still, the rodeo clown has been widely condemned for his off-color act.

On Wednesday, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said the rodeo clown incident was “not one of the finer moments” for The Show-Me State.

“I haven’t heard about the president’s reaction or if he had one,” Earnest told reporters. “I can tell you as a native Missourian, it was certainly not one of the finer moments for our state and not the way I like to see our state depicted in the news.”

Stockman said widespread reports of Saturday’s bull riding event at the Missouri State Fair in Sedalia was an example of what he calls “pop news,” distractions from serious issues facing the country.