Which Creeps You Out More?
Here at the World News Center we have documented several examples of people being creeped out by clowns as well as a general panapoly of creepy things in general. It’s what we do.
Well, clowns are fighting back and trying to make people understand they’re innocent expressions of childish glee and not psychotic serial killers. David Moye takes a look at their progress.
Clowns devote their lives to making people laugh, but there are some things that are no joke to them — like being called “creepy.” That term makes many clowns as red as their rubber noses.
While the creepy label is now commonly thrown around like confetti at a 3-year-old’s birthday party, it wasn’t always that way.
Believe it or not, clowns were beloved characters for thousands of years, and their crazy antics, acrobatics and slapstick were considered important forms of social communication and, in some cases, social protest.
The “clowns are creepy” meme is a new, and according to one clown, if anyone is to blame for making life sad for people who try to make us laugh, it’s Stephen King.
Paul Kleinberger — who performs as Fuddi Duddy the Clown around Albany, N.Y. — says King’s 1986 novel, “It,” with its evil clown character Pennywise, is blamed by most contemporary clowns for hurting their image.
“Some people say that if it wasn’t for Stephen King, clowns would have an easier time,” Kleinberger told HuffPost Weird News. “I don’t know if that’s the case. I mean, when someone tells me they’re afraid of clowns, I say, ‘Well, I’m afraid of bankers.’
“People have to understand: A clown deals with feeling. When you meet a clown, you don’t remember what they look like, but you remember how they made you feel,” he said.
John Wayne Gacy didn’t help clowns’ image, either; he committed serial murders while performing as “Pogo the Clown.”
But New York-based clown Chris Lueck believes that any animosity that exists towards clowns is actually a reflection of the critic’s own unhappiness.
“There is a freedom in clown and if you see someone being free and you’re not, it can be threatening,” he said.
Lueck, who also teaches slapstick (“It’s a great aerobic workout”), says dealing with people who hate or fear clowns is part of the job. Still, he thinks “clownism” is an exaggeration.
“Some people may be clownphobic,” he said. “However, others are just commenting on it. It’s funny that they’re telling me they’re afraid of clowns because it’s usually when I’m dressed as a clown.”
Lueck says many clown haters will blame their fears on an incident in their early lives, but he thinks that they were merely conditioned by others to think negatively.
“Here’s a perfect example: I was performing at a birthday party for a one-year-old and it was late in the day when the family wanted to take photos,” Lueck related. “The mom shoves the kid in my face and he starts crying. Mom says, ‘I guess he’s afraid of clowns.
“The grandmother then came up and took the baby and, again, he started crying. She said, ‘I think he needs a nap,’ and I joked, ‘I guess he’s afraid of grandmas.'”
Yeah, my buddy’s grandma creeped me out. If I never hear the phrase “Hold nana’s smoke while she takes a (dump)” again it’ll be three days too soon.
But, a new thing has cropped up in the creepy category. PETA, which has exploited more women than Hugh Hefner on a bender, is opening (and, no, I’m not surprised) a porn site dedicated to preventing animal cruelty.
Oh, and porn.
PETA knows how to raise eyebrows. The animal rights group’s memorable campaigns have entailed everything from celebrities posing nude for its anti-fur campaign to scantily clad women having an erotic moment with their vegetables to support veganism.
Now, PETA has pulled out all of the stops with a XXX porn site for its next clever marketing endeavor, reports The Register.
PETA confirmed the XXX site in a phone interview with The Huffington Post.
“We live in a 24 hour news cycle world and we learn the racy things we do are sometimes the most effective way that we can reach particular individuals,” said PETA spokeswoman Lindsay Rajt.
Instead of focusing on anti-fur, the porn site will raise awareness of veganism, said Rajt. “We really want to grab people’s attention, get them talking and to question the status quo and ultimately take action, because the best way we can help the greatest number of animals is simply by not eating them.”
An increasing number of groups are suggesting that eating less meat is better for your health, and certainly better for animals. PETA’s website describes life for animals on factory farms:
Chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade, and male cattle and pigs are castrated without any painkillers. Farmed chickens, turkeys, and pigs spend their brief lives in dark and crowded warehouses, many of them so cramped that they can’t even turn around or spread a single wing. They are mired in their own waste, and the stench of ammonia fills the air.
So how pornographic will PETA go? According to Rajt, it will have enough adult content to qualify for the XXX domain site but also some other graphic images of animals that viewers may not expect to see.
Australia’s Herald Sun reports that “PETA’s sexy side displayed in galleries and videos will quickly give way to the sinister world of animal mistreatment uncovered by the group’s hidden camera investigations in a very different kind of graphic content.”
With the finer details still to be finalized, PETA did confirm that regular people, not just celebrities, will also be featured in the project.
“There will be a lot of girl and boy next door content, but we haven’t ruled out celebrities on the site as well,” said Rajt. “People who are extraordinarily dedicated to helping animals and who are willing to do whatever it takes to draw attention to the suffering they endure.”
The first environmental porn movement was founded back in 2005, reports The Independent. Set up by a Swedish and Norwegian couple, the duo offered a subscription video service with money being raised for the environment.
PETA’s jump into adult content comes on the heels of Brooke Hogan posing nude for a photo exhibit to benefit PETA, although there was no direct affiliation.
PETA has done ad campaigns with adult film stars Sasha Grey, Ron Jeremy and Jenna Jameson. In 2008, the organization’s YouTube account was temporarily shut down after posting racy videos of celebrities and others posing nude.
Even though PETA’s intention is to improve animal welfare, some argue that the move to protect animals comes at the cost of exploiting women. A Facebook group, Real Women Against PETA, was created after the organization posted a billboard of an obese woman that read, “Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber, Go Vegetarian.” A headline for The Sydney Morning Herald once read, “Pro-vegetarian group treats women like meat.”
But Rajt explains the motives behind these tactics are cleverly thought out and ensure they get results: “We try to use absolutely every outlet to stick up for animals … We are careful about what we do and wouldn’t use nudity or some of our flashier tactics if we didn’t know they worked. We also track the effectiveness of our actions very closely and see if we get visitors checking out other features on our site.”
Well of course nudity works you moron, porn’s been around since before Pompeii fell. Why? Because people like looking at naked people who are better looking than them. But, and this is kind of important, never once have I watched a porno and then decided to be a vegetarian.
Hell sometimes I’ve watched porn while eating a burger or a pepperoni pizza.
I guess, for some, that thought’s kind of creepy
Listen to Bill McCormick on WBIG AM 1280, every Thursday morning around 9:10!
