Missouri Fair clown draws criticism for Obama mask

LAUGH NOW CRY LATER

 

This photo provided by Jameson Hsieh shows a clown wearing a mask intended to look like President Obama at the Missouri State Fair. The announcer asked the crowd if anyone wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull,” according to a spectator. “So then everybody screamed. ... They just went wild,” said Perry Beam, who attended the rodeo at the State Fair in Sedalia on Saturday Aug. 10, 2013. State Fair officials apologized calling the display inappropriate and disrespectful. (AP Photo/Jameson Hsieh)

MARIA SUDEKUM 11 hours ago

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — A clown wearing a President Barack Obama mask appeared at a Missouri State Fair rodeo this weekend and the announcer asked the enthusiastic spectators if they wanted to see "Obama run down by a bull."

The antics led the state's second highest-ranking official, Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, to denounce the performance in a tweet Sunday. He said it was "disrespectful" to the president.

"We are better than this," the Republican tweeted.

State Fair officials said the show in Sedalia was "inappropriate" and "does not reflect the opinions or standards" of the fair. "We strive to be a family friendly event and regret that Saturday's rodeo badly missed that mark," they said in a statement Sunday.

It wasn't clear if any action will be taken against the performers.

Perry Beam, who was among the spectators, said "everybody screamed" and "just went wild" as the announcer talked about having the bull run down the clown with the Obama mask.

"It was at that point I began to feel a sense of fear. It was that level of enthusiasm," Beam, a 48-year-old musician from Higginsville, said Sunday, referring to the reaction from the crowd that filled the fair's grandstand.

He said another clown ran up to the one wearing the Obama mask, pretended to tickle him and played with the lips on the mask. About 15 minutes into the performance, the masked clown had to leave after a bull got too close, Beam said.

Beam was at the rodeo with his wife and a student they were hosting from Taiwan. He said they were having a good time until the end of the rodeo.

"It was the usual until the very end at bull riding," he said. "As they were bringing the bulls into the chute and prepping them ... they bring out what looks like a dummy. The announcer says 'Here's our Obama dummy, or our dummy of Obama.

"They mentioned the president's name, I don't know, 100 times. It was sickening," Beam said. "It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you'd see on TV."

Officials with the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, the organization that coordinated the rodeo, did not return phone calls seeking comment Sunday.

After Beam and his family returned home, he posted a photo of the clown in the Obama mask on his Facebook page. The photo and the posting were then promoted online by a blog, Showmeprogress.com, which elicited a huge response Sunday on Twitter.

Scott Holste, spokesman for Missouri's Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon, said Sunday in an email that Nixon "agrees that the performance was disrespectful and offensive, and does not reflect the values of Missourians or the State Fair."

Beam, who grew up attending the State Fair and attends the fair just about every year, said he has never seen anything like the Obama mask display, which he felt was inappropriate for a state-sanctioned event that receives state funding.

"This isn't the Republican Missouri State Fair," Beam said. "It was cruel. It was disturbing. I'm still sick to my stomach over it. ... I'm standing here with a mixed-race family. My wife's from Taiwan, and so was the student (his family was hosting). I've never seen anything so blatantly racist in my life.

"If an old country boy picks up on something like that, imagine what a person of color would think."



 

Many would think this is funny, and many want even care one way or the other because they didn’t vote for him and some of them that have, would say he has been a disappointment.  Yet at the end of the day, he’s just a man doing a job that many didn’t want and the rest not even qualified to sit at the same table.  As one black man to another it should matter deeply because when they disrespected President Obama it was a mark against us all as a race and as a nation that clearly proves to the world beyond that we will always remain divided because of their hatred and ignorance.  Jesus preached, “Love one another as you love yourself”, Martin claimed to have had a dream of what could be accomplished if we loved each other and both were killed because of their vision.  Today in 2013 after more than 500 years of slavery past and present we still haven’t found away to the mountain top and never will. We have the power to love and to hate.  THINKING OUT LOUD THIS FALL