I can do no better than to quote the first few paragraphs verbatim from the September 18th edition of The Washington Post:
An Ohio man who tried to discipline his 6-year-old daughter by chasing her around in a clown mask has been charged after she ran screaming to a stranger’s apartment — prompting that neighbor to fire a gunshot into the air, police say.
The incident occurred just before 10 p.m. Saturday, when 25-year-old Vernon Barrett Jr. donned a clown mask and began chasing his young daughter outside their apartment in Boardman Township, a suburb of Youngstown, Ohio.
It was supposed to be a prank, Barrett later told police, a way to get the child to behave without resorting to spanking. A police report did not specify why he was trying to discipline his daughter that day.
Instead, the frightened child ran to a female stranger’s car nearby, jumped inside and said she was being chased by a clown, police said. That woman later told police that the man wearing the clown mask pulled the child out of her car. Unsure of what was happening, the woman called 911. (“I don’t want to be named,” the witness told The Washington Post on Monday when reached by phone, “but I can tell you it scared the bejeezus out of me.”)
It’s idiots like Barrett Junior who give clowns a bad name (to say nothing of those in Congress).
It’s just not safe to show up anywhere unannounced as a clown. In the good old days you could don the motley and stroll about spreading cheer without much fear of being tossed in the hoosegow.
I did my last professional clown gig back in 2013, and it nearly resulted in a trip to Devil’s Island thanks to Homeland Security. Here’s how it went down:
The year 2013 started out on a sour note when I had to leave Thailand suddenly, due to a visa snafu. I made arrangements to rent a room from my daughter just outside of Washington D.C., and settled down to teaching English online through my former employer back in Thailand. But that job went kerflooey after a few months and I had to find another gig, pronto.
It came to me that I might as well put on the old clown costume and do some street performing, as I had done a few years earlier back in Minneapolis. That had garnered me the grubstake that took me to Thailand in the first place.
And what better place for a little street theater than Capitol Hill? So one bright spring morning I took the VRE into Grand Central Train Station in downtown Washington, used the Men’s Room to put on my makeup and costume, and marched over to the Senate Rotunda bearing a placard that read: ‘UNEMPLOYED CIRCUS CLOWN. PLEASE PUT ME IN CONGRESS WHERE I BELONG!’
I planted myself under one of the expansive plane trees on the promenade and began a little pantomime show with juggling and my musical saw. All went well for about an hour, with little knots of tourists stopping to take a photo with me and my sign and then dropping a few bucks into my hat.
Then all hell broke loose when a detail of Homeland Security guards, guns drawn, surrounded me. Their leader, a tall, slim blonde in a dull black uniform, sporting reflective sunglasses, yelled at me through a bullhorn to drop the weapon. What weapon? Oh, she meant my musical saw! I gingerly put it down, and the circle drew in tighter. In the meantime, I had lost my mind with fear, so when Blondie began questioning me about who I was and where I came from I fell back on my old pantomime training, gesturing and mouthing words but unable to actually say anything. I think that may have saved my skin, because Blondie became intrigued with my frantic body language and actually smiled.
“Doesn’t your clown character talk, Bozo?” she finally asked me, after looking through my wallet.
I nodded like a demented bobblehead.
“I guess he’s okay, boys” she said to her coterie of gun-totting minions. “Just don’t ask for money” she said sternly to me. I mimed an eloquent affirmation that I would never do such a heinous thing. The Homeland Security thugs dispersed, and, after using the donniker over at the Botanical Gardens, I resumed my performance -- careful not to overtly ask for any money. But my sign made it clear that I wouldn’t turn down any donations to my campaign fund, so I continued to do okay while keeping to the letter of the law as laid down by Blondie.
I became a fixture there at Capitol Hill that summer. A few Senators and Representatives even stopped by to have their pictures taken with me, and the local cops started addressing me as “Senator Dusty.”
There were other nutjobs who also inhabited Capitol Hill along with me, carrying various signs about their imaginary grievances. One gentleman I remember very well; his sign ran into several hundred words -- the gist of it was that the CIA had stolen his wife, and he wanted her back. Another guy dressed up like Uncle Sam and passed out cheap copies of the Constitution while cheerfully warning everyone that fluoride was a terrorist plot.
I made out pretty well, especially when a group of school kids came by and their teacher stiffly warned them against stopping to read my sign or interact with me. That just spurred them on, and they emptied their pockets for me. The Chinese tourist groups, usually about fifty in a pack, all demanded photographs with me, and then loaded me down with quarters. I never broke my silence, but carried a pad and pen so I could write down whatever I couldn’t convey via pantomime. Most of the questions revolved around if I was a real circus clown, so I always wrote down “Ringling Brothers, starting in 1971!”
It was a sad day in my professional life as a clown when Blondie showed up again that fall to tell me: “Sorry, Bozo, but the rules have been tightened. You can’t loiter around here anymore unless you can prove you’re on official business. I’ve gotta ask you to leave.” So much for free speech in America.
But she did give me a five dollar bill prior to sending me away. Some of those people are all right.
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