Creepy Clown Panic. Which Are Scarier and More Threatening?

The latest thing this autumn is a rash of “creepy clowns” showing up in various locations across the USA. (No, I’m not talking about the Democrat candidates for office.)

I’m talking about people who apparently dress as scary clowns and traipse around outside for reasons only they know. Creepy clowns have been spotted, allegedly, in Ohio, Wisconsin, South Carolina, Georgia, North Carolina, Arkansas, Alabama, Mississippi, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Colorado. Soon, no doubt, to show up in other locations. It’s a fad, after all, and fueled, as so many are, by the Internet.

Apparently vigilante posses [insane clown posses?] are being formed in some areas to search for the scary pranksters, like a real-life game of Pokemon Go. This has law enforcement concerned. Someone might get hurt.

In a sign of the times, professional clowns fear being “profiled” by these posses! (Folks, you cannot make this stuff up.) [emphasis added]

We have reached the stage of the Great Clown Panic when real clowns have started to worry about profiling. In Johnstown, Pennsylvania, the Cumberland Times-News reports, “members of the Classic Clowns Club have been alarmed by news reports in which police have asked anyone who sees a clown to call 911. The troupe members often travel in costume, and worry that, if someone notices a van full of clowns and calls the police, they could end up in legal trouble.”

For years we’ve heard about people who have an unnatural fear of clowns, including benign clowns like Ronald McDonald, Clarabell, and Weary Willie. There’s even a scientific name for the syndrome: coulrophobia.

USA Today tells us that many people, not only coulrophobics, are “on edge” because of the clown sightings, even that schools have been closed and arrests have been made.

Imagine being arrested simply for dressing in a clown outfit. One sheriff in Arkansas has gone so far as to threaten “zero tolerance” for “creepy clowns!” No siree, Bob. In THIS instance of creepy clowns, law enforcement will NOT “stand down.”  Here’s what the sheriff said, [emphasis added]

If someone wishes to dress up and conceal their identity with the intent to scare or harass our citizens, they will be arrested and transported to the sheriff’s office. Not one citizen should be or will be subjected to this act of foolishness.

Good for the sheriff, I suppose, although one has to wonder whether it’s constitutional to infringe upon the rights of free citizens to dress as they please. How, exactly, will the sheriff determine “intent” during this Halloween season? After all, that’s what Halloween is for–scaring others.

Imagine people calling 911 to report a clown sighting, as if law enforcement officers have nothing better to do.

This is the very same country in which people won’t call police if a suspicious lurker happens to be a “person of color” or appears to be Muslim, for fear of looking bigoted. That, as we know, sometimes ends badly.

Clowns, creepy or otherwise, don’t have the ACLU looking out for their rights or George Soros to fund “community organizers” to get out there and “peacefully protest” against systematic clown oppression.

What stood out most was the sheriff’s statement about a person who “wishes to dress up and conceal their [sic] identity with the intent to scare or harass” other citizens.

But what about those other clowns who hide their identities with the stated intent to make persons of another race “uncomfortable.” You know, like these clowns:

Cops, under direction from Democrat politicians, “stand down” for one type of clown–allowing them to loot, pillage, assault, burn, and deliberately make others “uncomfortable”–while other LEO’s show “zero tolerance” for the elusive prankster clowns. Cops won’t be profiling one type of clown, yet will be profiling the other. They won’t be arresting one type of clown without due process, yet, apparently, will be doing so for the other.

But which type of clown is scarier, more threatening, more disruptive to civil society? More criminal?

Is this a great country or what?

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