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
*sigh*
I miss George.
AY
George Carlin on white people
“Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”
― George Carlin
And I give the NAACP a pass on this one. They have to have had it….five years of flinging poo at our president because he is the same color as they are. I’d break, too.
AY,
I did not vote for Obama in the presidential primary in my state in 2008. I didn’t think he was the most qualified candidate. He has been a big disappointment. I won’t go into all the reasons why I have been disappointed with him now.
I don’t think wearing an Obama mask proves one is racist. That said, I’ll speak out when I think people are ridiculing our president because he’s black.
Ozzie,
What I want has nothing to do with it. Everyone is ultimately the arbiter of their own truth. Some people believe in leprechauns. Some prefer empirical evidence with a dose of skepticism. Free speech is free speech. That the democratization of journalism is an ancillary and unintended consequence of networked computing is simply the law of unintended consequences in action. Yellow journalism existed when mass communication was strictly the province of privately owned distribution networks. That it continues in an era of democratized journalism is hardly shocking. Knowing how to vet evidence is a skill. Knowing the difference between good journalism and yellow journalism is a skill and a not unmanageable knowledge base about the process of investigative reporting.
Do I expect people to think for themselves?
You’re damn right I do.
That not everyone is as capable of it or willing to do so is another matter.
Jeezus! Some fool above says Obama is “thin-skinned”. What world does the commenter live on?
Here’s a heads-up. OBAMA is not calling this a hate-crime. Nor is he doing the banning. It’s a bunch of other assorted fools. Read up on it.
The president should handle this crap like all the other crap they have flung at him and Mrs. Obama. As for us? We should be ashamed.
nick,
I didn’t say all ridicule of Obama was race based. That’s not what Nal said either. There are those who have criticized/ridiculed Obama for some of the things he has done/not done/said. I don’t have a problem with that. I do think ridicule of him is racist when people picture him as a cannibal, with a bone through his nose, eating watermelons, etc. I listened to and read some of the news reports about this incident. I will say I think the stunt was totally inappropriate considering the venue in which it occurred–a state fair funded by tax payers.
Nick,
You know you gotta problem when some black folks don’t even like the man….. Are they racist?
Mike A.,
You can always be counted on to put it out there straight….
The stunt was racist and in bad taste. The reaction by the NAACP is absurd and dangerous.
I understand that, Smom.
Totally different fact pattern than the rodeo clown episode.
But ask yourself this question: Has Obama been good for race relations? With his disastrous policies, refusal to hold Washington and Wall Street criminals accountable, and steady expansion of the Imperial Presidency all while trampling upon the Constitution? Or has he simply provided ammo for the racists claiming a black man should have never been President in the first place? The argument that he’s damaged race relations by his piss poor performance in office – if only by exacerbating and giving a thin veneer of being able to claim “they were right” to racists – has some merit. He may not have created new racists or new racial tensions, but he has arguably aggravated what was there to start with.
There are plenty of groups that protest Obama that don’t resort to racist chants……Code Pink, OWS, other anti-war groups. They don’t use racist rhetoric and slogans. Unfortunately, most of the protestors these days come from tea party groups that care more about repealing Obamacare than they do about the overreaching national security state.
AY, Here’s the irony. Many, probably most, black folk don’t see “racism” as much as some white folk do.
“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.”
Ditto to that Seamus.
Hope… Schmope… .
Sorry for being off-track, but I hope Gene expecially will see this update on the Hastings “reporting”.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/michael-hastings-conspiracy-theories-kim-dvorak
I believe this is what we get with the democritization of journalism. Notice who pays her. They care nothing for truth. They only want “eyes”…with a good dose of fear.
Additionally, more than a few on this blog (and not just the dumb-as-rocks ones) were/are caught up in this “conspiracy”. And Gene wants to depend on Americans to discern the good from the bad.
I saw a cartoon that shows a President being depicted as an ape posted in response to this event. No, it was not Chimpy McBush, it was Abe Lincoln during his tenure. People are commenting that this shows how weak President Obama is. And it is no secret that the man is thin-skinned.
If I understand the logic here: Some men who criticize the President are racist. Socrates is a man. So if Socrates criticizes the President, Socrates is a racist.
Of course, any protest against Obama isn’t racist but the fact is the majority of the protests are organized by tea partyers and they have a racist slant. The OWS protesters while they were not anti-Obama per se were not racist and neither are the anti war protestors that gather in front of the whitehouse.
“A raucous crowd of supporters and protesters from both ends of the political spectrum showed up outside President Barack Obama’s appearance in Phoenix, Ariz. on Tuesday, with some of his detractors turning to racially charged attacks to express their opposition.
From the Arizona Republic:
Obama foes at one point sang, “Bye Bye Black Sheep,” a derogatory reference to the president’s skin color, while protesters like Deanne Bartram raised a sign saying, “Impeach the Half-White Muslim!”
The Republic reported that hundreds of people gathered outside Desert Vista High School as Obama unveiled a plan to overhaul the nation’s mortgage finance system. Some protesters came from Obama’s left, urging him to reject the Keystone XL oil pipeline and take other actions on climate change. But a prevailing theme among many in the protest appeared to be issues of race. Some even suggested that Obama himself was to blame for racial tensions.
“We have gone back so many years,” Judy Burris told the Republic, arguing Obama had taken the nation back to pre-Civil Rights era levels of racism. “He’s divided all the races. I hate him for that.” This is the incident that nal referred to.
Elaine,
Hence the clarification. I know David doesn’t think any protest against Obama is prime facie racist.