Dying Jobs: the Clown
“Young people have not been excited by clowns,” says Richard “Junior” Snowberg, a World Clown Association founder and a retired professor. “They’re more excited by entertainment on screens.”
…The World Clown Association has 2,400 members, about half its peak membership in the 1990s.
“I’ve been told that ‘you can’t come to the hospital. You’ll scare people.’ That was really heartbreaking,” says veteran Tricia “Pricilla Mooseburger” Manuel, 56, of Maple Lake, Minn. “It’s diminished my income. The damage is done in so many respects. There’s a whole generation that, when they think of a clown, they think of something scary.”
Though, Manuel adds, “people still love us in nursing homes.”
I say good riddance.
ReplyDeleteLet clowning sweep away into the dustbin of history, where it can take up its rightful place next to minstrelsy, bear-baiting, and all the other supposedly "wholesome entertainments" of darker bygone eras, which nobly sought to spread mirth and joy by means of cruelly mocking and abusing the meek, the unfortunate, and the destitute.