I sort of swore off writing about clowns earlier this summer, but I’ve continued to hear their shuffling feet and their muffled laughs. A couple of weeks ago, former Texas Rangers infielder Michael Young almost coldcocked an ex-teammate who was wearing a clown mask. (Young: “Clowns are a bad thing, you want nothing to do with them.”) A few days later, a clown holding four black balloons (and quickly dubbed “Gags”) was spotted wandering around Green Bay, Wisconsin. Predictable expressions of alarm followed; several friends sent me links to the story. For clown chroniclers, there’s no off-season.
Alas, the Gags sightings turned out to be a marketing ploy for an upcoming film—but, anyway, you can’t be too vigilant. I’m teaching my class on clowns again this fall, and I’ve been preparing for it by reading David Carlyon’s The Education of a Circus Clown. Carlyon went to college at the University of Michigan, where I teach; after stops in the Army and at Berkeley Law, he wound up in Clown College. I’ll write more about the book another time, but I’ll say now that Carlyon dismisses coulrophobia, the fear of clowns, as a largely media-created phenomenon (Michael Young’s reaction notwithstanding). He sides, to some extent, with Green Bay police captain Kevin Warych: “At the end of the day, it’s just a person walking around in clown costume.”
But then we’re all in clown costume, at least some of the time. Last week, at a hotel in the Hudson Valley, I saw a cabaret show featuring “Broadway super couple” Sue Anderson and Cris Groenendaal. Midway through the show, Groenendaal sang “Send in the Clowns” and my heart leapt up. What a weird, weird song, I thought. Almost “MacArthur Park”-level weird.
Isn’t it bliss?
Don’t you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can’t move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Later that evening I read what I could about Stephen Sondheim’s small masterwork. The lyricist says he didn’t have circus clowns in mind when he wrote the song. In a 2008 New York Times article, he reflects, “As I think of it now, the song could have been called ‘Send In the Fools.’ I knew I was writing a song in which Desirée is saying, aren’t we foolish, or aren’t we fools? Well, a synonym for fools is clowns.”
So it is. A few minutes before starting this post, I opened up the December 7, 2015 issue of The Nation—the Fall Books issue, which I hadn’t yet read—and quickly happened upon Eric Alterman’s piece on the Republican presidential candidates. Its title (of course): “Send in the Clowns.” A sidebar shows Trump, Carson, Rubio, and Cruz, all dressed in motley. “The crazier these guys sound,” Alterman writes, “the more popular they become.”
We call Trump a clown; he calls Clinton a monster and a devil. Here’s Weekend Edition Saturday’s Scott Simon, the day after the Green Bay clown sighting:
I have no idea who the clown is or why he prowls Green Bay.
Perhaps it’s some kind of performance art, although you’d think the streets of Brooklyn or Portland at 2 a.m. might have a few more spectators than Green Bay. Or it’s a student from St. Norbert’s College nearby, who’s writing a psych paper on how people react to seeing a glowering clown with black balloons. Or, maybe most likely, it’s a prank by someone who craves the kind of attention we’re giving him right now.
But I wonder about another possibility: Gags, the Green Bay Clown, is saddened by the current presidential campaign. Every other day, there seems to be some new insult or outrage.
It’s been a strange summer; fall promises to be stranger still. Send in the clowns, the fools, the attention-cravers. Don’t bother, they’re here.