Is another clown.

By now everyone’s heard that a rodeo clown – whose job is to distract the bull – got banned for life by Missouri from practicing his craft in any rodeos because he donned a Barack Obama mask.  Being banned for life.  Just what I’d expect from an Obama jobs package.

Seems like the Missouri director of NAACP doesn’t like black jokes; or, is that half-black jokes.  In any event, Mary “Mary, quite contrary” Ratliff opines:

The President of the Missouri Chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) says a rodeo clown act depicting President Barack Obama at the Missouri State Fair Saturday night was a hate crime.

“I think that a hate crime occurred,” Mary 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.”

Ratliff says it’s an outrage that taxpayer dollars were used to disrespect the president.

“We are taxpayers in the state of Missouri,” Ratliff said, “and when taxpayer money is utilized to discredit and be disrespectful to our president, whether he be black, white, Hispanic, Latina… it is an outrage.”

Ratliff says that is why her organization is asking the Department of Justice to conduct an investigation. She has also asked the Secret Service to investigate the incident in Sedalia.

“With all of the hateful and mean things that are happening and happened in Missouri here at the rodeo, we believe that the Justice Department should look into the discriminatory practices against our sitting African-American president,” Ratliff added. “In this country, discrimination is still illegal.”

I guess the plethora of presidential mask-wearers (of the George Bush era, anyway) are but a distant memory.  And that was just political theater.

But I’d have to say that anyone – and I mean anyone – that would don black-face in this day and age ought to be investigated.  Like Mary says, “we believe that the Justice Department should look into the discriminatory practices against our sitting African-American president.”  It’s imperative that we find out who’s behind the clown mask.  Turns out, it might be another clown.

While the now unemployed chap in Missouri was just trying to distract the bull, turns out that the chap in the White House is just trying to distract us with bull.  In all fairness, it seems like he should be unemployed too.