Lightning Rod Gets The Zot

The Poet's Eye ^ | Lightning Rod

[Lrod]

A character like Christine O'Donnell presents a unique problem for a humorist. Few elaborations are called for since the caricature is self-embodied. All that is needed is a dead-pan Jack Benny look. You know, the one where he just stares blankly at the audience without saying a word and eventually someone titters and before you know it the whole place is in hysterics? Her very existence as a major party candidate for US Senate is the kind of comedy which arrives ready-written and would only be spoiled by embellishment. I mean, what can you add to rabidantimasturbationtarianism, rats with fully-functioning human brains and her famous Witches of Eastwick campaign ad that looks like it was produced by Tim Burton? I had fully intended to leave Ms. O'Donnell to the other comedians and the pundits who were wearing her out on cable TV. But then came the most recent revelation that she has claimed that her father was Bozo the Clown. Here I had to break my silence, not in the name of humor, but in the cause of veracity. This is a subject I happen to know something about.

Long ago, for one magic season, I was related by marriage to Bozo the Clown. I'm not making this up. My father was a semi-notorious lothario in the television and advertising business. Sometime after he turned 50, he married the 17 year-old daughter of one of his professional colleagues, Larry Harmon, the guy who owned the franchise to Bozo, the Most Famous Clown in the World. He was Bozo Primero, not one of the many FauxZos who were franchised in every major media market. I was much closer to the power center of the Bozo world than Ms. O'Donnell ever dreamed of being. It gave me an intimate glimpse into the backstage life of clowns. I knew little of the inside workings of the clown business in those days. Like a naive child, I had assumed that, you know, Bozo was Bozo. It never occurred to me that there was a school, like a Bozo boot-camp, where imposters went to learn how to walk like a Bozo and talk like a Bozo and draw the red rictus of a smile on their faces with greasepaint. It was like learning a dirty family secret and it was a big disappointment. When you go to see Bozo, you want it to really be Bozo, not some guy dressed up in a Bozo costume.

I hadn't thought about my brief inclusion in greasepaint royalty for years until Ms. O'D surfaced with her claims of actually being a blood relative of Bozo the Clown. The marriage between my father and Princess Bozo, which was chronologically challenged to begin with, barely outlasted the honeymoon. They had about as much in common as Christine would have in common with the 99 other US Senators. Suddenly the whole subject bubbled from my subconscious and made me wonder about franchises and politicians and the authenticity of clowns.

Since John Quincy Adams carried forth his father's political legacy, American politicians have campaigned on the richness of their family's past public service. Roosevelt and Kennedy and Bush all represent minor dynasties and it is entirely in keeping with this tradition for Ms. O'D to claim descent from Bozo. Clowning is as present in the current of American politics as populism, liberalism or conservatism. But in light of Ms. O'D's penchant for resume enhancement, she fibbed about her college career and has downplayed her wiccan studies, her claims to clownly ancestry are also suspect. While she seems like a natural and can certainly get a laugh and works well in the side-shows, one has to wonder if she is really ready for the Big Top, the center ring.

The US Senate is the Big League of Buffoonery. Even pros like Colbert have trouble hanging there. It's a tough room. Notice that Al Franken, even with all his years of practical comic experience, has been keeping mum in deference to the mime-masters of the Senate. These clowns can juggle, ride unicycles, do pratfalls and get shot from cannons, all with the perfect dead-pan of their painted-on media faces. They are consummate clowns adept with all the tricks, the seltzer bottle, the pie-in-the-face, the filibuster. I don't want to get all Stephen King on you but these aren't nice clowns. Ms. O'D should think twice before she alienates her witch constituency, she may need some strong juju to avoid the dunking stool. They'll make her the senator-punk-clown. Every troupe of clowns has one, the smallest clown, bottom of the pecking order, the one who all the other clowns slap and when there is no smaller clown for her to slap, she turns to the audience with her out-turned palms and pitiful Emmett Kelly frown and says, "I am you."

Two of the greatest Senatorial Clowns, Lloyd Bentson and Dan Quayle, in their famous vice-presidential debate in 1988 demonstrated the type of cut-throat comedy these jokers are capable of. When Quayle set the joke up by comparing his inexperience to the inexperience of Jack Kennedy, Bentson spiked it with this punch-line, "Senator," he said, "I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy."

The Poet's Eye would like to say to Christine O'Donnell in this same spirit, "Ms. O'Donnell, you say your father is Bozo. Well, I knew Bozo. Bozo was briefly my step-grand-father-in-law. Christine, your father was no Bozo."

Yes I’m stuck in the middle with you, and I’m wondering what it is I should do. It’s so hard to keep this smile from my face. Losing control yeah I'm all over the place.

Clowns to the left of me! Jokers to the right! Here I am stuck in the middle with you. ---Joe Egan and Gerry Rafferty

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[sionnsar]

Lastly in the Apostles’ Creed the line about the quick and the dead. That really wasn’t about crossing the street.

Unless you lived in Detroit in the '50s. If you were on the lines you were safe. No doubt inspiration for "Frogger."

[Monkey Face]

Heh!

With that, I’m off to bed. Be good!

[Darksheare]

I’d have been knocking my forehead against the wall.

[sionnsar]

LOLOL, I think....

I've been annoyed in recent years by industry magazine vendors who want to keep me on their subscription lists even though I no longer work in their industries. I Do Not Need To Know About New Integrated Circuits -- my last electronic circuit design of ANY significance was in the 90s, for example. And it kind of bugs me to receive glossy clay-laden paper journals that only go into the trash.

But I'm getting through to them slowly.

Though the electronics "newspaper" I received almost weekly at the beginning of my career I am now receiving again, in thin (glossy clay-laden paper) journal format. It will be interesting to see how it's changed...

[sionnsar]

G'night!

Not sure of my schedule forward. Might check in from airport tomorrow, but not sure of anything after that until Sunday and maybe not then.

The conference hotel is Expensive, which means Internet will be expensive, and I won't have much time anyway.

Besides, between now and Friday evening I have to learn to play poker again -- last time I played was when I was taught matchstick poker by my grandfather in Mexico ca 1964. Most of the folks at the conference weren't even born then.

Am I "or what"?

[Tax-chick]

It would be “what,” I think. You can get “How to Win at Poker” from the Dover Press catalog. Also useful is “How to Not Lose at Poker,” a course taught by my father for many years.

[sionnsar]

Interesting. Don’t have much time to re-learn, but it’s purely a social event. If there’s money on it (don’t think so), I’m outtathere.

[LibreOuMort]

Yes, I sure wish he didn’t travel so much - especially when I can’t go with him. But, one of us has to mind the home fires.

[Tax-chick]

Good morning. How are things in the drippy northwest? It’s supposed to be sunny and 72 at my casa today.

[Tax-chick]

[NicknamedBob]

It used to be ...

... that in unheated upstairs bedrooms of old houses, you’d have a pitcher of water and a washbasin beside the bed.

When you woke up, you’d pour some water into the basin and wash your face. A bit of cold water in the face to get you awake!

But frequently, there would be a skim of ice over the water in the pitcher. The water wouldn’t pour!

So on days like that, the first thing you’d need to do is “break the ice”.

And that’s where that phrase came from.

.

Good Morning!

[Tax-chick]

Good morning! It is not that cold here. 37, says my weather-beeber.

[Monkey Face]

“They also serve who only stand and wait.”

Not sure if that’s correct, or even who said it, but I recall it as something said to me when I was a brand-new navy bride.

Your waiting counts, and while my prayers are with him while he travels, they are also with you while you wait.

*HUG*

[Monkey Face]

No body ever gave ME a pancake (said in a Red Buttons roasting voice.)

40 degrees here, with a high of 50. ERK!!

[Monkey Face]

Ah. But. If one was lucky, across the room from the basin and pitcher was a pot-bellied stove, still warm from the coal it was fed the night before. :o]

[Tax-chick]

You have to fight the kittehs (or the Ash) for your pancake.

[Monkey Face]

That must be the reason. I would suspect the Ash would be more formidable. I mean, she can almost look you in the eyes when you sit at the table, and there is no one who can resist. She gets that hangdog look, and you’re wasted. Pancakes up!!

[Tax-chick]

And she has those enormous teeth.

I have vacuumed upstairs, mostly. The debris is too deep in Bill’s room to clean up much. All these people and petz and their debris ...

[Tax-chick]

My Walmart has the $2.97 wine marked down to $1.97. You might want to check at yours!

[Monkey Face]

I woke up at 4:00 this morning, so I washed a couple of loads of clothes.

They are hanging to dry. I would hang them outside but I can’t sit and watch them. Folks would steal them if I left them unattended.

I’ll check Walmart when I get done with everything this morning. With luck I’ll be home before 10:00. I’m such an early riser, I just hate having to wait for stores of any kind to open.

The Walmart here is now open 24 hours, but only since they finished the remodeling last year. I like it!