Democracy dies in darkness… or clown noises; The Washington Post isn’t quite sure which. On Thursday, the Post welcomed president of the board of Clowns Without Borders Tim Cunningham to their op-ed section to write a column insisting that people refer to President Trump as a fascist, not a clown.
In the pages that PBS talking head David Brooks warned owner Jeff Bezos was helping Trump “dismantle the idea of the press,” Cunningham began with a series of liberal quotes referring to Trump as a “clown” or his administration as a “clown show.”
Yet, he was not happy, “But none of this qualifies Trump for such a title. I am a clown and board president of the nonprofit, Clowns Without Borders. I’m here to set the record straight.”
According to this clown, “All Clown shares the common values of healing, empathy and reflection. Our work touches people in need of joy everywhere. I’ve witnessed the smiles that clowns bring to the faces of people in hospitals, war zones, refugee camps and homeless shelters.”
Cunningham laments, “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.”
He then suggests that people should “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.”
Finally, Cunningham concludes, “For centuries clowns have been uniting people in laughter, levity and creativity. That’s what real clowns have to offer. If you’re still stuck on the broken comparison ingrained in our national dialogue, here’s an alternative: Try ‘buffoon.’”
Okay, fine. The Washington Post is full of buffoons, and all the people who thought Bezos’s decision to forbid the paper from endorsing Kamala Harris was evidence that Bezos would turn the paper into a Trump-friendly publication are also buffoons.
