It’s all fun and games until you mock the President at the rodeo.
The show’s over for the rogue rodeo clowns who had mixed politics and entertainment when one clown wore a Barack Obama mask during a bull riding contest at the Missouri State Fair this weekend. Despite the crowd reportedly cheering on the clowns, the Missouri State Fair Commission has corralled the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association into sensitivity training classes before they will be contracted in the future.
While the Show-Me State showed the mask-wearing clown the door, banning him for life from ever participating or performing at the state fair again, the rest of the ‘politically incorrect’ clowns must paint on smiles and play nice from now on.
“In addition, before the Missouri State Fair considers contracting with this association again for future rodeos, they must provide evidence to the director of the Missouri State Fair that they have proof that all officials and subcontractors of the [Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association] have successfully participated in sensitivity training,” the Missouri State Fair Commission said in a press release.
The stunt that caused so much trouble for the rodeo involved a cowboy donning an Obama mask with a broomstick attached to his back to give the allusion that he was a dummy. Another clown ran around the dirt arena, pumping up the audience by asking if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull” and warning them that a bull was coming to get Obama. According to the Associated Press, the audience responded “enthusiastically.”
This isn’t the first time that presidents, Obama included, have been used as stunts in the rodeo. In 2011 a Morgan County Sheriff’s Rodeo in Decatur, Ala., used the President’s face in a stunt. And as the Washington Examiner reported, a bull tore into a dummy wearing a George H.W. Bush mask in 1994, much to the crowd’s delight again.
But despite the apparent tradition of using politicians in rodeo stunts, Mark Ficken, president and rodeo announcer of the Missouri Cowboy Association, resigned Tuesday to protest that the clown’s membership in the association has not been revoked. Ficken’s day job as the Boonville School District’s superintendent is also in jeopardy, and he’s attempting to distance himself from Saturday night’s events. His attorney is claiming that one of the clowns was doing the announcing during the act instead of Ficken and that he had not been informed about the Obama bit prior.
Not every cowboy is leaving the clown behind in the dust, however.
“The joke is not that it was the president,” David Berry, a Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association member and friend of the clown told the Associated Press. “They drag out this person dressed like a dummy and all of the sudden this dummy just takes off running. That’s what’s funny.”
The rodeo incident has yet to illicit a response from Obama. While White House deputy press secretary Josh Earnest said that he had no reaction from the President, he did say that as a Missouri native, “it was certainly not one of the finer moments in our state.”
This post has been updated to include new information.
