"If you’re still stuck on the broken comparison ingrained in our national dialogue, here’s an alternative: Try 'buffoon.'"
Writes Tim Cunningham, the board president of Clowns Without Borders, which is, we're told, "a nonprofit that performs clown shows for communities facing hardship."
I'm just waiting for a professional organizer of buffoons to take umbrage.
What are we to make of the clown/buffoon distinction? I see that back in 1584, Samuel Johnson defined "clown" as "A rustick; a country fellow; a churl" or "A coarse ill-bred man."
And that doesn't sound like Trump. He's a city boy.
"... with frivolous lawsuits, character assassination, and outright lies designed to prevent No Labels from exercising our constitutional right to get ballot access. If you are wondering why Americans are losing faith in our democracy and so many of our country’s self-anointed elites, this is Exhibit A."
The headline fails to specify that the "opponents" in question were Democrats, but it's in the text of the piece: "Leaders of the centrist group No Labels abandoned a planned third-party presidential bid in April after a successful campaign by Democratic allies of President Joe Biden damaged their public appeal and undermined their ability to recruit electable candidates."
The "mobile billboards" connected the leaders of No Labels to Donald Trump using the slogan: "There is no place for MAGA hate in Georgetown."
Think what you will about this movie, but here's my description: A woman marries a man because he looks like her father, and though she's incredibly beautiful, the new husband would rather sit around typing novels and go swimming with his much younger brother and sing folk songs with the hired man than have sex with his wife. It's not a comedy.
"... either masochism or self-love. Instead, fat stigma is toyed with, embodied, and satirized, sometimes through sexualized caricatures of gluttony. 'Good Morning' shows her—with her underpants pulled down and stuffed with a loaf (or more) of sliced white bread—holding a knife and a jar of Nutella.... A fat woman is by cultural default already an object of ridicule; inviting laughter by clenching a baguette between her legs, or ironing a pizza to her chest, could easily spin out of her control. Perhaps Susiraja’s blank affect is the key to her peculiar power to retain the upper hand. Indifference is one of the purest forms of defiance, but her disciplined impassivity, her refusal to cue the viewers’ reaction, is more than that. Her unwillingness to feed us meaning is more provocative, and disquieting, than an obvious dare, and it leaves a more lasting impression."
Wait. How do we know "she is not a clown"? It can't be the "blank affect." One of the prime ways of clowning is to do ridiculous things while maintaining a flat facial expression. There's a special and well-known word for it: deadpan.
The OED tips me off that "pan" was once American slang for "face" or "mouth." To quote "Great Comics" (1924): "Open yer pan afterwards about this and you'll be in stir for the next thousand years."
"Feld Entertainment, which owns the [Ringling Brothers] circus, discovered today’s audiences did not want to see animals performing. And today’s kids do not laugh at corny clown acts.... Now the plan is to up the game with human feats that dazzle, astonish, bewilder, while, at the same time, engaging audiences with interactive social media. At times, even during the show....The producers who are bringing the Ringling back to this stage is also the same group of producers who do Disney On Ice, Monster Jam, Sesame Street Live. So they kind of think that they’ve figured the audience out.... And it will not be our parent’s circus. It’ll very different, guys."
Some people say, "Give the customers what they want." But that's not my approach. Our job is to figure out what they're going to want before they do. I think Henry Ford once said, "If I'd asked customers what they wanted, they would have told me, 'A faster horse!'" People don't know what they want until you show it to them. That's why I never rely on market research. Our task is to read things that are not yet on the page.
"... posted a video on Instagram of his own face with a big red nose upon it. The refusal to act like a grownup infuriated Zelensky’s opponents as much as Groucho Marx infuriated his political opponents in Fredonia, in 'Duck Soup,' with his unseriousness.... [W]atching Zelensky now, one does not think, Oh, wow, he once was a comedian! One thinks, This is what a comedian looks like in power.... The one willing to degrade oneself knowingly, as a clown does, is the one afterward most able to act with dignity....
In interviews with the French philosopher and writer Bernard-Henri Lévy in 2019, Zelensky made it clear that he was quite aware of the interconnection between his place as a clown and his role as a leader. When Lévy asked him if he could make even Vladimir Putin laugh 'just as he had made all Russians laugh,' Zelensky insisted that he could. Though, he then added, 'This man does not see; he has eyes, but does not see; or, if he does look, it’s with an icy stare, devoid of all expression.... Laughter is a weapon that is fatal to men of marble'...."
I can't imagine why anyone who doesn't love JK Rowling would want to play this game, which looks perfectly idiotic without that love. These people are holding messy, ragged brooms between their legs. Take away the author's magical aura and you've got to think, what the hell are we doing?!
“For the last year or so, both leagues have been quietly collecting research to prepare for the move and been in extensive discussions with each other and trademark lawyers regarding how we can work together to make the name change as seamless as possible,” Major League Quidditch Commissioner Amanda Dallas said in the release.
Oh! So they stole the intellectual property?
The leagues say there are a few reasons for the name change. Among them is that the name "quidditch" is trademarked by Warner Bros., which produced the "Harry Potter" movies, and as a result the sport's expansion has been limited in its sponsorship and broadcast opportunities....
They just took the name, appropriated the author's reputation, and now they'd like to look virtuous as the drop it, but they need to drop it because they never legitimately acquired it in the first place. Just give up, people.
This must have started as lighthearted fun, but it's all over now. Take your silly brooms and sweep yourselves off the public stage.
If this escalates further America should offer Taiwanese the same visa deal Britain offered Hong Kong: those who love freedom can come here and let China have the land. https://t.co/T4kFhsAaIX
— ☄ marquis de posade 🥂 LOOT CREW 🏖 (@acczibit) January 23, 2021
A new character is born into the political world. It's a costume, easily patched together, humorous and scary. We'll see how widespread that becomes. I remember some Wisconsin characters — in the 2011 Wisconsin protests — who tried something similar. Here's a photograph I took back then:
The reason I'm checking out McArdle's Twitter feed is that I'm reading her WaPo column, "It’s time for major institutions to make their employees get off of Twitter." She's reacting to the Will Wilkinson story. We talked about it yesterday — here. He got fired from his job at a left-liberal think tank because he tweeted "If Biden really wanted unity, he’d lynch Mike Pence."
McArdle is friends with Wilkinson and she "admires" the Niskanen Center. She writes:
"The event, choreographed to present an image of power and unity, skirted the accidental downing of a Ukrainian passenger plane on Jan. 8 by Iranian forces that killed all 176 people on board. A lone banner featuring an airplane hung between huge pictures of General Suleimani."
If you're skeptical of the NYT, your first question was probably: How were they hurt?
The answer is that there were 11 Americans "treated for concussion symptoms from the blast" who "are still being assessed."
Those articles are at the top of the page at the NYT, where I went to search for "Iran" after getting the feeling that we'd stopped talking about Iran. I was thinking that absence was a sign that things are going well (compared to the recent uproar and anxiety about WW3 and the return of the military draft). When things go well for Trump (or the U.S.), the next bad story gains prominence. I was thinking that impeachment got moved to the front-burner precisely because the conflict with Iran had gone well.
But here's the Iran story back again. The Ayatollah is speaking, bucking up the crowd for support he doesn't deserve. "God's backing" enabled Iran to give the U.S. that "slap in the face"? Did God help Iran shoot down a passenger plane? Was it God's preference to dole out 11 concussions in retaliation for the killing of Soleimani? Not a very good argument for the purported greatness of God! Khamenei's propaganda is patently ridiculous. Given that he had nothing persuasive to say, he must have felt desperate pressure to speak.
[W]hen the students discuss what inspires them about clowning, many use terms that I’ve heard from other clowns in recent weeks: innocence, freedom, vulnerability. Nicola believes clowning offers something deeper than other forms of comedy. “Standup is about your ideas and how clever you are,” she says. “And this is about who you are as a human being.”...
"... who make no attempt to pass as actual women, and don’t necessarily want to be women, but dress up as a caricature of a woman. Sure, some have bawdy names, and in the context of a late night gay bar, they can say some bawdy things. But they’re not really about sex at all. They’re about costume and play; their clothes and hair are exaggerated, over-the-top parodies of women’s appearance; their makeup is often cray-cray, their wigs absurd. They also reinforce, rather than undermine, gender norms in a weird, over-the-top way...."
Writes Andrew Sullivan, opposing the opposition to the Drag Queen Story Hour some libraries have for children.
Children love drag queens the way they love clowns or circuses or Halloween or live Disney characters in Disney World. It’s dress-up fun.... And yes, Dave Chappelle, the sanest man in America at the moment, is right. Men dressed obviously as women are first and foremost funny.... These clowns read children’s stories to kids and their parents, and encourage young children to read books. This is the work of the devil? Please.
Anyway... bypassing most of that controversy (which I've passed on blogging many times), I just want to cherry-pick one issue out of that: Is it good to "reinforce, rather than undermine, gender norms"? And by good, I mean not anti-feminist.
“They’re retiring left and right,” [said David Simmons, a dunk tank clown]. “They’re being run out of town.”...
At the Erie County Fair... [p]eople sat on the metal benches, trying to guess which person Mr. Simmons would pick on next, an open-air comedy show in the vein of Don Rickles or Richard Pryor.
“We just came to sit and listen,” said Zenaida Piotrowicz, 62, who was laughing along with her husband, Bob. “He mostly says the things you’re thinking in your head.”
“Ha, you know you’re trailer park trash if you wear a T-shirt with your cigarette brand on the chest,” Mr. Simmons, 33, yelled to one man, who kept on walking. “I’m probably paying child support for you, kid,” he barked to a teen jawing back at him....
[For] the Champlain Valley Fair in Essex Junction, Vt. Mr. Simmons thought that would be a good place to wear the red Make America Great Again hat he keeps in his cage.....
One place I go for modern-day insulting is the subreddit r/RoastMe. You have to volunteer to be insulted, so the enjoyment of the insultee is factored in. The same is (sort of) true with the old-time dunk tank clown. Don't go near him if you don't want to be insulted. He's not circulating. He's at a fixed point (and he's subject to the punishment of dunking). But some people go near because they like hearing him insult somebody else. With RoastMe, you can read it all you want, and the insults don't come to you unless you ask for it. There's also ToastMe, where people ask to be boosted and complimented. And I like this guy, who posted at RoastMe, "I posted on r/ToastMe and But balance is necessary so here I am. Give it your best shot 👏👏."
Was it the clown suit per se or did the person who happened to be wearing a clown suit do something?
Let me read:
“One witness, part of a group involved in the trouble, explained to staff that things kicked off when another passenger appeared dressed as a clown. This upset one of their party because they’d specifically booked a cruise with no fancy dress. It led to a violent confrontation,” [wrote Richard Gaisford of ITV’s Good Morning Britain].
He added: “Britannia left Bergen at 14.30 on Thursday, the violence occurred 12 hours later after a black-tie evening. It followed an afternoon of ‘patriotic’ partying on deck, with large amounts of alcohol being consumed by many guests. The buffet area was immediately sealed off as medical teams went to help the injured. Staff told me they’d never experienced anything like it and those behind the violence were confined to a cabin for the last day of the cruise, waiting for police here in Southampton.”
So it was the clown suit per se! But it doesn't sound like clown suit guy "prompted" the brawl. I'd say the brawl was prompted by the ridiculous person who attributed so much meaning to having specifically booked a cruise with no fancy dress.
Seems like "fancy dress" has a special British meaning. Ah, yes: "Fancy dress is clothing that you wear for a party at which everyone tries to look like a famous person or a person from a story, from history, or from a particular profession." Well, was clown guy dressed as a particular clown? Pennywise or Bozo or something?
This story has a lot about specificity.
ADDED: From the OED:
fancy dress, n.
1. A costume arranged according to the wearer's fancy, usually representing some fictitious or historical character. Also attributive in fancy dress ball. Also figurative.
1770 F. Burney Early Jrnls. & Lett. (1988) I. 101 I was soon found out by Miss Lalause who..had on a fancy Dress..much in the style of mine....
1844 G. W. Kendall Narr. Santa Fé Exped. II. 51 Such variety of costume..would put to the blush..any..fancy-dress procession ever invented....
"Why Trump Fears the Secret British Memo Calling Him a Clown" — a column by Jonathan Chait — is a big disappointment to me because it does not discuss the fear of clowns — "coulrophobia" — or even have anything at all in it about clowns or the word "clown."
The story of the British ambassador calling Trump "inept" had been too boring to blog, as far as I was concerned, even when I saw the potential to say that the ambassador himself was, ironically, inept, since he's the one who lost his job. But the notion of Trump suffering from the cliché phobia of clowns amused me. Didn't happen though. Fake news! "Clown" is just a standard media epithet for Trump, inserted by the headline writer for cheap titillation. Worked on me. How irksome!
By the way he didn't "call Trump a 'clown.'" He suggested the nickname, "Clown."
"When he says these ridiculous things he says, I mean this, I put my hand up and say, ‘everybody knows who you are’ because they do know."
I think he's trying to say I know you are but what am I?
Maybe Biden does talk with Margaret Thatcher. I remember when Hillary, in the 1990s, talked to Eleanor Roosevelt. According to a book by Bob Woodward, Hillary had sessions with Jean Houston, co-director of the Foundation for Mind Research, which "studies the psychic experience and altered and expanded consciousness."
Woodward says anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, daughter of famed anthropologist Margaret Mead, joined her in sessions of imaginary conversations.... Mrs. Clinton herself wrote about her imaginary conversations with Eleanor Roosevelt in her June 10 column.... "She usually responds by telling me to buck up, or at least to grow skin as thick as a rhinoceros," Mrs. Clinton wrote....
What do you think of the "Gipsy" origin of "hocus pocus" and the alternative explanation that it's a mockery of the Eucharist? Etymonline buys into the "sham-Latin" explanation, but the OED says "The notion that hocus pocus was a parody of the Latin words used in the Eucharist, rests merely on a conjecture...."
I like these other words. "Hodge" as a clown, "hocus" as drugging a person to rob him, "hocks" as feet," and "hob and nob" as opposed to our "hob-nob." The OED has the oldest definition of "hob-nob" as drinking together, with the oldest example from 1763: "Do I go to hob or nob in white-wine, I am probably told red, is better for my nerves." Wait. That doesn't close it up into the simple "hob-nob." The OED's oldest example of "hob-nob" is from 1828: "I have frequently heard one gentleman, in company, say to another, will you hob-nob with me? When this challenge was accepted, the glasses were instantly filled, and then they made the glasses touch or kiss each other. This gentle striking of the drinking vessels I always supposed explained the term hob-nob." That's interesting, too, because it suggests that clinking glasses was a new thing.
I've never thought about why people clink glasses or how that originated. I see that there was a theory that it had to do with worries the drinks could be poisoned, but Snopes has ruled that false. In the old days, people drank from the same bowl. Having your own drinking vessel is pretty recent, and clinking glasses is — per Snopes! — a way "to compensate for the sense of unity lost"... and maybe people just like the sound of clinked glasses.
John Stuart Mill, in his book Considerations on Representative Government, refers to Hobson's choice: "When the individuals composing the majority would no longer be reduced to Hobson's choice, of either voting for the person brought forward by their local leaders, or not voting at all.'
In another of his books, The Subjection of Women, Mill discusses marriage: "Those who attempt to force women into marriage by closing all other doors against them, lay themselves open to a similar retort. If they mean what they say, their opinion must evidently be, that men do not render the married condition so desirable to women, as to induce them to accept it for its own recommendations. It is not a sign of one's thinking the boon one offers very attractive, when one allows only Hobson's choice, 'that or none'.... And if men are determined that the law of marriage shall be a law of despotism, they are quite right in point of mere policy, in leaving to women only Hobson's choice. But, in that case, all that has been done in the modern world to relax the chain on the minds of women, has been a mistake. They should have never been allowed to receive a literary education."
This isn't tonight's café, so don't go off track. There are a lot of topics here... but not infinite topics.
Which competitor newspaper took down Bezos? According to TMZ, it was The National Enquirer:
[T]he tabloid published alleged text messages between Bezos and GF Lauren Sanchez after he announced he and MacKenzie Bezos were getting a divorce. Trump seems to be implying that the paper forced Jeff's hand.
Trump's nicknames are so out-and-proud childish. "Jeff Bozo." It's like the first thing a 10-year-old kid would think of reading the name. I'm assuming "Bozo" is a current character in American culture. Why wouldn't he be? I don't keep up with the rising and falling popularity of these fictional characters. Clowns come and go. But if you told me there was a summer blockbuster movie, "Bozo, The Movie," I'd believe it long enough to check.
"William Harder, who’s run Murder Auction from Fresno, California since 2005, says his customers aren’t just creepy murder fetishists. 'They’re regular people,' he says. 'I remember this contractor guy I sold to. He built houses and decks and stuff, and he came to me looking for something subtle. He told me, I thought about getting a Gacy, but I’m afraid that’s just going to attract too much attention. So he bought something by Charles Manson, but nothing you’d recognize as a Manson unless you looked closer and saw the signature.'... Murderabilia is in many ways a contradiction. The dealers and even the murderers themselves ask us to separate the art from the artist. Their creative ambitions aren’t an extension of their crimes; the two things, they insist, are unrelated."
I was looking for an image of an "anxiety clown," because I was speculating — at the end of the previous post — that the use of the epithet "clown" to describe your antagonists reveals your own anxiety. You may want to say that your opponent is stupid and ridiculous, but people are anxious about clowns, so you're saying — perhaps unwittingly — I am unnerved and scared of my opponent.
I really just wanted to add an image at the end of that other post, but I stumbled upon that picture of Joseph Grimaldi (18 December 1778 – 31 May 1837) — an English actor who "expanded the role of Clown in the harlequinade that formed part of British pantomimes." The Clown took on the name "Joey" (for Joseph) and "both the nickname and Grimaldi's whiteface make-up design were, and still are, used by other types of clowns."
Grimaldi became recognised as one of London's leading Clowns. Grimaldi originated the catchphrase "Here we are again!", which is still used in pantomime. He also was known for the mischievous catchphrase "Shall I?", which prompted audience members to respond "Yes!"
You know, Grimaldi's Clown was — according to the above-linked Wikipedia article — "the 'undisputed agent' of chaos." There's a lot of chaos in blogging. You have to love the chaos — and not be anxious about it — to blog (really blog). And if you're living in the chaos, when things match up — harmony strikes — it's a full-body thrill, like the "frisson" (or "aesthetic chills" that "roughly two-thirds" of us can get from music.
Do you get that? The frisson? From what? I'd read the articles on people who get it from music — it was a trending topic in May 2016 — and noticed that I hadn't been getting that from music lately. But just in these last few weeks, I've noticed myself getting chills from songs that, intellectually, I believe are below my actual, official taste level. Just yesterday, I got chills on repeated listenings to Richard Harris singing about Camelot, which I'd brought up in the comments here, after somebody had quoted an anti-Trumper's confession "I carry a little plastic Obama doll in my purse." And later that day, listening to the car radio as we drove out to Blue Mounds, I got chills over "Please Come To Boston" — a song I wasn't aware I especially admired. Back when it was a hit, in the 1970s, I probably turned off the radio if the song came on.
And isn't Trump a bit like that? He is for me. I don't particularly like him. I don't know why he should be assessed as any good at all. He seems like a ridiculous man who belongs in a past decade (the 80s). But in some confounding physical way, he hits a button.
I am reading the Wikipedia article on "Please Come to Boston," and I see it was the first single from [Dave Loggins's] album Apprentice (In a Musical Workshop)." The Apprentice! See? Random resonance, attainable through blogging. It's all only chaos, and coincidences are part of the randomness.
The three verses of the song are each a plea from the narrator to a woman he hopes will join him in, respectively, Boston, Denver, and Los Angeles, with each verse concluding: "She said 'No - boy would you come home to me'"; the woman's sentiment is elaborated on in the chorus which concludes with the line: "I'm the number one fan of the man from Tennessee." Tennessee is the home state of Dave Loggins, who has said of "Please Come to Boston" - "The story is almost true, except there wasn't anyone waiting so I made her up. In effect, making the longing for her stronger.... Some forty years later, I still vividly remember that night, and it was as if someone else was writing the song."
ADDED: My hope that "there really was a girl who holds the world in a paper cup" doesn't work as a hope. I assumed there was only one Loggins, but there are 2 — the Dave Loggins of "Please Come to Boston" and the Kenny Loggins of the girl who holds the world in a paper cup in "Danny's Song." So there was a girl like that, but she wasn't Dave's. She wasn't Kenny's either. Kenny wrote the song for his brother Danny. The line "think I'm going to have a son," didn't refer to a son of Kenny's named Danny. The son was Danny's boy Colin. Colin was also the inspiration for "House at Pooh Corner":
In other late-breaking Loggins family news (to me), Kenny and Dave are second cousins. They're both 70 now.
AND: I'm confused by too many Loggins and too many log ins.
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