There was a national controversy created recently when a rodeo clown, Tuffy Gessling, put together an act involving a President Barack Obama mask at the Missouri State Fair. The announcer reportedly called out “This bull’s going to get’cha, Obama! He’s gonna get’cha!” The reaction was fierce. Gessling was given a lifetime ban and the announcer, Mark Ficken, resigned. All clowns will now have to go through a “sensitivity training” course after the incident. However, The President of the Missouri Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) Mary Radliff is calling for the prosecution of the key players for a hate crime. Radliff’s statements shows how broad this controversial crime has become and how it can now threaten free speech principles.
The criticism of this act is certainly understandable. It was stupid and disrespectful. However, some have questioned the need for the lifetime ban as opposed to an apology or being dismissed from this rodeo. I have seen presidents mocked and portrayed at many fairs and rodeos. I saw one fair where clowns chased around a guy in a Reagan mask during his presidency. I recall various events with people in Clinton masks. Presidents are public figures and people love to make fun of those in high places. I am not dismissing the fact that some have a deep hatred or racist view of the President. Clearly, many in the audience were hostile to Obama and loved the notion of his being chased by a bull. I am not sure what the sensitivity training will convey. Is it a lesson not to use presidents or politicians as clown-like characters. That has been done in circuses since ancient Rome. Is it not to use African-American celebrities?
We can disagree on what is the appropriate level of punishment. (I do feel that the display had an overtly political and disrespectful character that should be the subject of discipline). However, calling this a hate crime reaffirms the long-criticism of this criminal provision as a threat to free speech. As noted in a prior columns, free speech appears to be dying in the West with the increasing criminalization of speech under discrimination, hate, and blasphemy laws. To understand this threat to free speech, you need only read the interview with Ms. Radliff: “I think that a hate crime occurred,” Ratliff told KXNT Radio in Las Vegas Thursday. ”I think a hate crime occurs when you use a person’s race to depict who they are and to make degrading comments, gestures, et cetera, against them.”
So that is the crime now? Making degrading comments or gestures about a person’s race? That would criminalize a huge array of speech in the United States. In this case, Radliff objects to an act of being “disrespectful to our president, whether he be black, white, Hispanic, Latina.” She has called for the Justice Department and Secret Service to go after the rodeo clowns for their “discriminatory practices against our sitting African-American president.”
I fail to see the need to round up our rodeo clowns or criminalize parody. I do not like the use of actual people — whether presidents or not — in such acts because I feel it is mean-spirited and disrespectful. However it is not a crime. Moronic, yes but criminal, no. They are rodeo clowns which are by definition rather moronic.
What do you think? Should this be a crime? Do you believe a lifetime ban is appropriate for this type of display?
Source: CBS
SWM, I will again ask, what was racial about this?
who the hell cares what the NAACP thinks anymore. They ceased being relevant about 20 years ago. Anyone dragging race into this issue is an idiot.
“A rodeo clown wearing an Obama mask made a stir at the Missouri State Fair rodeo Saturday night as the announcer got the crowd roaring asking if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull.” The state’s Republican Lt. Gov quickly denounced the spectacle.
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.
…
“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.” Talking Points Memo
Reblogged this on The Promiscuous Writer and commented:
Oh please. Absolutely ridiculous. Just because the President happens to be mixed (he’s not just black, yall…if that’s the case then Zimmerman IS Mexican and not mixed with anything else…and I am Spanish without being mixed with anything else) doesn’t mean a political joke is the product of a hate crime. What about the Halloween masks sold at places like Spirit? Is that hateful, too?
Freedom of speech includes speech you don’t necessarily like.
Nick, What I said in an earlier post is that while I don’t think it is illegal, it demonstrates the very ugly disappointing racial divide in this country Just read the responses to Mike A.’s blog on the weekend…..
And, what was the “racial stereotype” alluded to by the person quoted?
What it shows is that we still have people in possession of only one brain cell, and I’m not talking rodeo clowns…I talking about the same people who used to call GWB the filthiest names in the English language and ran around in “KILL BUSH” t-shirts. Anyone up for a nuisance law suit against Radliff for gross stupidity in a public forum.
SWM, You have told us what others think. I’m interested in what you think.
Radliff needs to get a life.
“I do feel that the display had an overtly political and disrespectful character that should be the subject of discipline” Wow. I work for myself (hence my ability to waste time on the interwebs) but unless there is some sort of blanket ban on political content at the state fair, even this seems extreme. Free speech and political satire are bedrocks of or society. Professional martyrdom and manufactured victimhood for the sake of a sound-bite and/or political black mail should not be.
I see nothing wrong with mocking our politicians, including those I voted for such as President Obama. I suspect my dislike of the man took a very different route than many who have always despised him. A growing police state, a healthcare system actually developed by the ultra-conservatives at the Heritage Foundation, a pass for our most rapacious corporate criminals are a few reasons I’ve come to the conclusion I don’t like this president.
Ms. Radiff would seem to equate and dislike of Obama as proof perfect of racism. By her apparent support of the president I will then assume she is in favor of the executive’s stated authority to assassinate our own citizens, our secret torture programs, our internal domestic spying machine, and a continuing blind eye to the criminal activities of our commercial banks. Of course I don’t really think Ms. Radiff holds those beliefs. I just think she’s and idiot, and a racist.
Randy Newman had a song called Rednecks. The lyrics are appropriate to the situation out in my home state. Particularly the State Fair at my home state. The opening lines are all ya need to know.
[music]
We’re Rednecks, REDNECKs,
We don’t know our arse from a hole in the ground….
But, Randy never got prosecuted for singing the song. He was making fun of the Rednecks but at the same time singing like he was one. Kind of like the clown at the State Fair who twenty years ago had on a Ronnie RayGun mask. One year there was one clown of Clinton and one of Monika. The bull chased Clinton, not Monika. Hillary would not have a chance.
“There is a long history of mocking politicians at rodeos, and clowns have donned masks of other presidents as part of their acts. But James Staab, a political science professor at the University of Central Missouri, said last week’s incident “goes beyond the pale — they’re talking about physical injury and racial stereotypes.” From the Washington Post article above
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obama-rodeo-clown-incident-illustrates-nations-continued-racial-divide/2013/08/15/8da23cf0-05b8-11e3-88d6-d5795fab4637_story.html I don’t know that the clown did anything illegal but the crowd’s reaction demonstrated the continuing racial divide in this country.
Someone post the statute of the so called hate crime which the nutty lady referred to. The NAACP is preaching for Holden to prosecute Zimmerman on some hate crime charge. We need to discuss Double Jeopardy and the ridiculous notion of “separate sovereigns”. When Z is charged again by the Holder authorities this will be a topic to focus on. It is coming to a theatre near you.
There was no hate crime, or any other crime.
It was legit political speech.
http://wonkette.com/525756/texas-congresscritter-steve-stockman-invites-racist-rodeo-clown-to-sit-on-his-lap In issuing the invitation, Stockman continued the tradition of low-risk, high-profile publicity seeking that reached a peak earlier this year when he invited fellow rightwing attention whore Ted “suck on my machine gun” Nugent to be his guest at the State of the Union address. Yay, free speech is safe from the liberal crackdown on dissent, and it is once again safe for decent godfearing Americans to have a good clean laugh at a guy hoping Obama will get stomped by a bull.
Maskeptic, Witty and clever.
This call for a hare crime prosecution does indeed show the fundamental problem w/ hate crime laws. I have been reading many accounts of this incident. Having lived in Missouri I know the folks in that state. There is NO EVIDENCE that I have read or seen that even IMPLIES this was racial. As Mr. Turley has pointed out, there are many incidents of people wearing masks of Presidents in all manners of ridicule. There was a flick starring Keanu Reeves where bank robbers wore masks of Presidents[Nixon and Reagan I believe]. There should be NO sanctions, NO sensitivity training, but there should be training for all fools saying so. That training would be about the First Amendment. Our President has an opportunity for the stale phrase, “teachable moment.” He can use his professorial skills and tell these fools how wrong they are. He has not yet, and almost certainly will not. They may very well be useful fools.
I think these clowns should be fired, and if I were in charge of their employement at the NAACP they would be.
What has happened to my Country???? No one has a sense of humor any more!!!!