It's been a normal and yet unusual week here at Bloody Nib Manor. But considering the location and the shire in which the Manor is located the unusual is normal. One of the local yokels decided to shoot at another yokel and actually hit the target of his aim. Of course, the local constabulary were called and the enforcers of law and order showed up about twenty minutes later despite the fact that the local cop shop is a ten minute walk away. But one supposes that it takes about ten minutes to figure out what the dispatcher is calling out on the police radio, and another five minutes for the officers of the law to decide to bother with dealing with a Hatfield/McCoy, or in this case, a Lopez/Garcia feud.
The result of the shooting was just this: a bunch of deputies running around the neighborhood shining bright lights, knocking on doors and pretending to do something while they accomplished nothing except to assure the inhabitants of the neighborhood that the shooting victim would live despite the fact the no law-abiding person in the area really cared much if the victim was going to be pushing up daisies. To most of the neighborhood it was like a fight between two mad dogs -- one finds one's self half hoping for the worst between the two currs.
But on to better things:
Deadspin is a website that has specialized in sports news and sports opinion pieces. As many Internet based "news/opinion" websites, many of the writers working for Deadspin decided that it was their purview to start coloring outside the lines of the original model of Deadspin. Remember, it was founded to be a sports website. The writers for Deadspin, for some reason or another, decided that they should venture into politics (both in reportage and opinion). The reason is probably that they are young and they know that sports is the toy store of life. Sports, in the big picture, really mean nothing despite the fact that sports are important parts of many peoples lives. But many people find unimportant things to be important as a hobby or topic of conversation. The Game of Thrones is an example. It's a silly and stupid program, but if the series does not proceed in the way that they want they act as if the Nazis had invaded Poland. Some Astros fans believe that the Nationals winning the World Series is a second Dien Bien Phu. And some people get into fisticuffs of the Oxford comma. Every person has their line that they will not be allowed to be crossed.
The new owners of Deadspin, G/O Media, recently put out the word to the writers who have been employed by Deadspin to stick to sports and give the politics and opinion pieces a pass. The result was that the "staff" writers decided that they were being denied their "rights" to write what they wanted despite the fact that they were being paid to write about sports. Let us be clear about this. The writers were being to write about sports. Not politics and not culture. They were hired to write about sports.
But as many writers who whore themselves out to organs as staff writers instead of being writers who write because they have to write while having real jobs, they thought that they could make their employer into their image instead of honoring the conditions of their contracts. In other words, because of their time in journalism school or in university they believed that they were exempt from the conditions of their employment because they were, to use the popular word, "woke", and beyond criticism and restriction.
G/O Media stood it's ground and informed the writers that the Deadspin website is a sports only website and not a "woke" website. The writers employed by Deadspin quit to a man and woman because they felt that they knew what was best. And G/O Media replies with, "See ya, wouldn't want to be ya." And the former Deadspin writers started crying "unfair!"
Let us face the fact that writers are pretty much a dime a dozen these days. And there is no shortage of free-lance writers who are interested in sports. There are a lot of blog writers who are paid nothing at all who are better writers and better thinkers (this writer being excluded) than Internet writers who have been to J-School or university. And let's us keep in mind that most of us have, or have had. jobs/careers that demand a certain narrowness of attention at our places of employment. A machinist in the defense/aerospace industry cannot except to spend part of his or her working life developing super-chargers for double A fuel altered dragsters, and a sales person in the liquor industry cannot expect to be paid for writing article for the Woman's Temperance Union.
When you get a job you are expected to do the job for which you have been hired to do. And that's makes sense. But among the self-declared "elite" there is no sense except a sense of one's self importance.
This writer has complained about this before, but he is old enough to remember when the BBC was consider one of the most objective news organizations in the world. It had, of course, a bit of a British establishment tilt, but whenever a world even took place people would tune their short wave receivers to the BBC to get the best news reported by a reporter, and news reader, using the old Received British Pronunciation. To hear, at the beginning of an hour the words, "This is London" meant that one would get the straightest story at the time. Nowadays (how your friend hates that world -- it sounds like something say by a snuff dipping hillbilly) the reporters and the news readers sound like Cockney thugs pronouncing the word "the" as "fee", and spend half their time in interviews arguing with the interviewee instead of letting the interviewee state their position. It used to be the golden rule of the interviewer that the interviewer be the invisible person -- the interviewer let the interviewee speak state his or her case and let them self make a fool of him or her self or show him or her self to be a modern Solon. Instead the contemporary BBC interviewer is trying to lay traps for the conservative and give a boost to the liberal. Apparently the BBC is in the business of trapping foxes and raising rabbits.
This past summer there was a new filmed version of Stephen King's novel "It." the novel is about some sort of supernatural killer clown. Which reminds one of the old movie "The Killer Clowns From Outer Space" and John Wayne Gacy, aka the Killer Clown.
But it known that this writer has not for a very long time been a fan of clowns. But this man=y be because the role of clowns has changed over the years
As a child this writer grew up with such clowns as Lou Jacobs of Ringling Brothers, Red Skelton, Chucko the Clown (not Chuckles as referred to on several episodes of the Rockford Files), the awful Bozo the Clown, Hobo Kelly and Emmet Kelly. And at no time did he think that these clowns were evil or creepy. At the worst, as he grew from adolescence he thought that some of them silly i.e. Bozo. Chucko and Jacobs, but Jacobs could always be a funny when given the chance outside of the circus. Red Skelton and Emmet Kelly were, on the other hand, always funny and/or touching in their acts. Hobo Kelly ( a woman who played an Irish hobo on a kid's show) was always sweet.
And note that this writer's favored clowns are of the hobo/tramp type and not the Auguste or white-face type. The hobo/tramp/bum type of clown is a particularly American type. But this is not to say that the European Auguste or white-face clown is not of value. It's just a matter of "sophistication." If one is a Europhile one sees the Auguste or white-face clown as the plus non ultra, but if one is an awful Yankee or hillbilly the hobo type clown is pretty funny because the bum clown shows what one is or what one can become.
And in the U.S. the Auguste or white face clown is pretty foreign despite two hundred years of there being being Auguste or white face clowns starting with Joseph Grimaldi in the 18th century. But that type of clown has been popular despite, according to the American preference for the hobo/tramp clown.
In the past the clown was a distorted mirror of society. The clown showed the best and worst of society in a funny way. And a real clown, not just some idiot painting his or her face with white paint and putting on a wig and big shoes, worked to reflect the silliness of the world. All one has to do is look at old videos of Red Skelton.
To quote Red Skelton:
"A clown goes out and fits people right on. A clown uses pathos. He can be funny, then turn right around and reach people and touch them with what life is like."
The modern party clown doesn't do those things. He or she, almost always is wearing an Auguste or white-face make up, shows up at a kid's party to blow up balloons and laugh a lot and expect to be funny without any work except putting on white face make-up. That's what Gacy was and that's what It is. Both are pretenders. They both pretended to be clowns of a type -- the Auguste - white face type,
A lot of kids have found clowns creepy from day one, but few of them thought clowns dangerous before It and Gacy. And that's a pretty damn sad thing. It would be better if they thought of their school teachers as dangerous simply because more school teachers ruin them in one way or another than do clowns.
Clowning is an art. It's an old art. And we really don't appreciate the art as much as we should. The American society has ditched the art, and, if things goes as they are now going, we'll be ditching a lot more things that make us a unified nation.
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