As if this crazy season of identity politics wasn’t screwed up enough, somebody in the Carolinas decided to send in the clowns. You may have missed the New York Times’ exceptional coverage of this alarming clown crisis. After all, it’s barely been 24 hours since Apple revealed its decision to omit the headphone jack from the iPhone 7. A person can take on only so much emotional trauma at one time. So here’s a recap:
It started two weeks ago in Greenville County, S.C. with multiple sightings of “creepy clowns”. Depending on the report, the clowns either offered children money to go into the woods with them or simply stood under a late-night streetlight and waved. Once, the Times reported, a clown jumped out of nowhere and stared at a woman as she left a laundromat. Then the action moved to North Carolina where Winston-Salem police responded to a number of calls complaining of clowns offering treats to children. No arrests have been made, and the Times described the situation in both states as one of “panic.” It noted local news reports from Greensboro, N.C. of a man with a machete who chased a clown into the woods but did not catch him.
(As an aside, the male pronoun is being used here because eye witnesses described the clowns as men wearing white overalls, white gloves, large red shoes with a white face, bushy red hair with a matching red nose. With that disguise, however, there is enough gender ambiguity that these clowns need to be very careful in choosing a public restroom in North Carolina. It is a crime there to enter a loo not designated for your birth sex. A wise clown would do well to tape a birth certificate to his seltzer bottle; an even wiser clown would stay the hell out of North Carolina.)
It took less than 36 hours for this bozo calamity to evolve into a political issue. Enter one Michael Becvar, with the clown name of Sir Toony Van Dukes. He runs the website Just For Clowns and he told the Times that his people are being unfairly profiled and persecuted. He wondered aloud to a Times reporter what would have happened “if instead of clowns, people were dressing up as aliens, witches, zombies or doctors? What if they were wearing hospital scrubs, lab coats and a stethoscope around their neck? Would the news report that doctors were hiding in the woods trying to lure kids with candy?” Mark my words: Sir Toony will have a “Clown Lives Matter” sign on his clown car before the end of the week.
This must be driving the pollsters crazy. North Carolina is a swing state where Clinton and Trump are running neck and neck, but nobody has been measuring the clown/anti-clown vote. Given the white face description of the suspects, along with the speculation that they are men, it would be easy to assume that the clown vote will break for Trump, particularly if they never graduated from clown college. Then again, we have no way of knowing what is under that disguise. Peel off the white face paint and you might find a female Latino with an advanced degree in theology. But it is highly unlikely.
Of course, this election is not just about identity politics. It’s also about fear. The demographic of people who are afraid of the Great Other – anyone who doesn’t look, talk or act like them – is breaking big for Trump. He might just tap into that constituency by promising, within 30 days of taking office, to round up all the clowns and send them back to wherever they came from. “Make America Clown Free Again!” would fit well on a red baseball cap. In other words, Trump could end up with both the clown and anti-clown vote. Where does that leave Hillary? Right back on Saturday Night Live, singing the chorus from that old Stealers Wheel tune:
“There’s clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am
Stuck in the Middle with you.”