When did open hatred become fun family entertainment?

[Czarcasm]

@WhyNot

Well once he’s on the field, what else would you expect the announcer to do but announce what was going on on the field and get the audience excited about it?

Gee, I don’t know-maybe realize that turning a family rodeo into a political circus is the wrong way to go? Maybe dispense with the “Who wants to see Obama run down by a bull?” crap and just talk about the amazing job the clowns are doing?

[Miller]

@Czarcasm

I do believe that the clown in your example wore a variety of masks…

What makes you believe that? I only see the one mask in the gallery. Also, what makes you think that the clown in the Obama mask didn’t wear any other masks? Also also, what does the number of masks worn by either performer matter?

…and your example doesn’t show that the announcer said anything like "Here’s our Hillary dummy, or our dummy of Hillary’', or ask the crowd if they wanted to see “Hillary run down by a bull.”, or repeat her name over and over again to get the crowd riled up.

Well, the article doesn’t really give any indication about what the announcer said when that guy put on the Hilary mask. But I suspect it was A) primarily regarding possible interactions between the performer and a bull, and B) probably not terribly complimentary.

Either way, I’m still not sure why I should care.

[BrainGlutton]

@Chronos

Have we really gotten to the point where it’s taken for granted that just because 62% of a population voted against a guy, they’ll obviously hate him to the point of wanting to see him sodomized and trampled in effigy?

Yes, we have; and apparently not an unwarranted assumption, either.

[Miller]

@Chronos

Have we really gotten to the point where it’s taken for granted that just because 62% of a population voted against a guy, they’ll obviously hate him to the point of wanting to see him sodomized and trampled in effigy?

Sodomized?

[aNewLeaf]

@Chronos

Have we really gotten to the point where it’s taken for granted that just because 62% of a population voted against a guy, they’ll obviously hate him to the point of wanting to see him sodomized and trampled in effigy?

If those 62% had voted for the other guy while politely respecting Mr Obama and the side he represents, it wouldn’t be an issue.
So I see why people are sensitive on this, even if my own personal view is more like “meh, get over it”.

[Little_Nemo]

@Chronos

Have we really gotten to the point where it’s taken for granted that just because 62% of a population voted against a guy, they’ll obviously hate him to the point of wanting to see him sodomized and trampled in effigy?

Yeah, let’s separate out the partisan politics. Would you expect a crowd to cheer if it was a generic President? “Hey everybody, who wants to see the President of the United States get tortured and killed?”

I remember a friend of mine who was an arch-conservative. And after the 1992 election, he told me he hadn’t voted for Bill Clinton but now that he had been elected, he was hoping Clinton would turn out to be a great President.

What happened to that? Have we really reached the point where we want to see the President fail if he isn’t from our party? Is it too much to ask for people to put the interests of their country ahead of the interests of their political party?

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

Meh.

I’ve seen worse, by guys wearing Nixon, Carter, or Reagan masks.

[Terr]

@Czarcasm

Imagine an African-American family in those stands listening to the crowd cheering crap like this.

… because of course, every African-American family must be pro-Obama.

[aNewLeaf]

@Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor

Meh.

I’ve seen worse, by guys wearing Nixon, Carter, or Reagan masks.

Hating Nixon was a whole different thing, you have to admit.

[SlackerInc]

It also needs to be said, and sadly most likely disputed by some obtuse or just stubborn posters, that there is a difference, here in the States, between a mask which exaggerates or distorts a white person’s features and one which exaggerates or starts a nonwhite person’s features. (And yes: if we were in China, you could substitute “Han Chinese” for “white” there).

[Trinopus]

@Terr

… because of course, every African-American family must be pro-Obama.

No, but you kind of expect an African-American family to be opposed to open racism.

Logical fallacy, by the way. You substituted one term for another, and excluded the shared ground. Try studying Venn diagrams some day.

[Terr]

@Trinopus

No, but you kind of expect an African-American family to be opposed to open racism.

The OP didn’t accuse the clown of racism. He said something about “political beliefs”. Then he presupposed that political beliefs that would mock Obama would be abhorrent to “an African-American family” - just because they were “African-American”, I presume.

When Republicans (hell, when anyone) mock Anthony Wiener, I don’t get all huffy because he’s Jewish and so am I. There is a leeeetle bit of “I wish he wasn’t Jewish” sentiment, I admit, but to pre-suppose that I would be offended when Wiener is mocked because I am Jewish is absurd.

[Miller]

@Little_Nemo

Yeah, let’s separate out the partisan politics. Would you expect a crowd to cheer if it was a generic President? “Hey everybody, who wants to see the President of the United States get tortured and killed?”

I’m not sure that’s a reasonable interpretation of the dynamic at play here.

Granted, I am very much not a rodeo aficionado, and I can’t claim to be picking up on all, or even most, of the nuances here, but I think the fact that this was a clown performance is an important part of the context. Clowns, particularly circus clowns, have an element of the cartoon to them. Audiences routinely encourage behavior that, if it were real, would be deadly - “Who wants to see Bobo get hit with the frying pan again?” People cheering on someone actually being beaten with a iron pan would be monstrous, but the clown exists in a conceptual space where there’s no real consequences to their actions, just like in a Road Runner cartoon.

Obviously, rodeo clowning is a bit different, in as much as the danger is very, very real. And that danger is certainly a part of the appeal of the show. But I’m not clear on how much of the performance is intended to foster that illusion of consequence free violence. When the announcer says, “Who wants to see that bull get Obama,” is that intended to invoke images like this, or like this?

For that matter, what is the usual announcer’s patter when the clown are in the ring? Is it unusual for the announcer to egg on the bull?

[Slithy_Tove]

At the risk of looking like a message-board version of a rodeo clown, I’m going to cite Sayre’s Law. There isn’t that much difference between the Ds & Rs, so they have to manufacture stupid distinctions, to generate brand loyalties. These appeal to the consumers/voters at their stupidest level, and the result has all the significance of a fistfight between a Buckeyes fan and a Wolverines fan in the stadium parking lot.

[Odesio]

@BrainGlutton

“Become”? There was a time in American history when fun family entertainment was a public lynching, announced beforehand in the newspapers.

I never came across announcements of future lynchings in any newspapers when I was in graduate school. I would be fascinated to make further explorations on this topic. Do you happen to know the date, time and newspaper that announced future lynchings? Failing that, some other citation?

[aNewLeaf]

@Terr

When Republicans (hell, when anyone) mock Anthony Wiener, I don’t get all huffy because he’s Jewish and so am I. There is a leeeetle bit of “I wish he wasn’t Jewish” sentiment, I admit, but to pre-suppose that I would be offended when Wiener is mocked because I am Jewish is absurd.

Nobody is mocking Anthony Weiner for being Jewish.
Many people hate Obama because of his race and it’s not hard to guess some in the audience share that feeling.
And yes, other presidents and public figures have faced the same sort of thing- but there’s an added component here, of actual, real race hatred.
Again, I’m not personally offended. But I sure get why people are.

[Miller]

@Odesio

I never came across announcements of future lynchings in any newspapers when I was in graduate school. I would be fascinated to make further explorations on this topic. Do you happen to know the date, time and newspaper that announced future lynchings? Failing that, some other citation?

Here’s one. First hit I got when I Googled “newspaper lynching announcement.”

There was also a good business in selling postcards of lynchings..

[Terr]

@aNewLeaf

Nobody is mocking Anthony Weiner for being Jewish.

How do you know?

Many people hate Obama because of his race and it’s not hard to guess some in the audience share that feeling.

How do you know?

[BrainGlutton]

@Odesio

I never came across announcements of future lynchings in any newspapers when I was in graduate school. I would be fascinated to make further explorations on this topic. Do you happen to know the date, time and newspaper that announced future lynchings? Failing that, some other citation?

See here.

Also here:

Often victims were lynched by a small group of white vigilantes late at night. Sometimes, however, lynchings became mass spectacles with a circus-like atmosphere because they were intended to emphasize majority power. Children often attended these public lynchings. A large lynching might be announced beforehand in the newspaper. There were cases in which a lynching was timed so that a newspaper reporter could make his deadline. Photographers sold photos for postcards to make extra money. The event was publicized so that the intended audience, African Americans and whites who might challenge the society, was warned to stay in their places.

<snip>

According to an article, April 2, 2002, in Time:

"There were lynchings in the Midwestern and Western states, mostly of Asians, Mexicans, and Native Americans. But it was in the South that lynching evolved into a semiofficial institution of racial terror against blacks. All across the former Confederacy, blacks who were suspected of crimes against whites—or even “offenses” no greater than failing to step aside for a white man’s car or protesting a lynching—were tortured, hanged and burned to death by the thousands. In a prefatory essay in Without Sanctuary, historian Leon F. Litwack writes that between 1882 and 1968, at least 4,742 African Americans were murdered that way.

At the start of the 20th century in the United States, lynching was photographic sport. People sent picture postcards of lynchings they had witnessed. The practice was so base, a writer for Time noted in 2000, “Even the Nazis did not stoop to selling souvenirs of Auschwitz, but lynching scenes became a burgeoning subdepartment of the postcard industry. By 1908, the trade had grown so large, and the practice of sending postcards featuring the victims of mob murderers had become so repugnant, that the U.S. Postmaster General banned the cards from the mails.”[30]

In Without Sanctuary, a book of lynching postcards collected by James Allen, Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Leon F. Litwack wrote:

“The photographs stretch our credulity, even numb our minds and senses to the full extent of the horror, but they must be examined if we are to understand how normal men and women could live with, participate in, and defend such atrocities, even reinterpret them so they would not see themselves or be perceived as less than civilized. The men and women who tortured, dismembered, and murdered in this fashion understood perfectly well what they were doing and thought of themselves as perfectly normal human beings. Few had any ethical qualms about their actions. This was not the outburst of crazed men or uncontrolled barbarians but the triumph of a belief system that defined one people as less human than another. For the men and women who composed these mobs, as for those who remained silent and indifferent or who provided scholarly or scientific explanations, this was the highest idealism in the service of their race. One has only to view the self-satisfied expressions on their faces as they posed beneath black people hanging from a rope or next to the charred remains of a Negro who had been burned to death. What is most disturbing about these scenes is the discovery that the perpetrators of the crimes were ordinary people, not so different from ourselves – merchants, farmers, laborers, machine operators, teachers, doctors, lawyers, policemen, students; they were family men and women, good churchgoing folk who came to believe that keeping black people in their place was nothing less than pest control, a way of combating an epidemic or virus that if not checked would be detrimental to the health and security of the community.”

Not always just in the Deep South, either. See the lynching of Will James in Cairo, IL, 1909. (He was accused, almost certainly wrongly, of raping and murdering a white girl, Anna Pelley.) I don’t know if it was announced in the newspapers, but it was extremely public and extremely horrific. James Loewen writes in Sundown Towns:

The mob overpowered the prisoner and his guards and forced them onto a southbound train at Karnak. Word of the capture preceded them. When they reached Cairo, thousands of people, many of them from Anna and other nearby towns, gathered to watch at the main downtown intersection, spanned by a double ornamental steel arch festooned with thousands of bright lights. . . . A reporter described the scene:

The mob that hanged James was led by women, many of them the wives of influential residents of Cairo. The rope was pulled taught by female relatives of Miss Pelley, aided by several score of their sex. As the Negro was pulled up in the air, these same women danced and screamed in delight.

The men were for the most part spectators until the robe that was strangling the Negro broke and his dying body fell to the ground. Then hundreds of revolvers flashed and 500 bullets crashed into the quivering form of the Negro. The riddled dead man was then dragged through the principal streets of the city to the spot where the Pelley was assaulted and slain.

Women applied the torch to the bonfire that had been prepared and into which the body of James was thrown. Ten thousand cheered and danced at the scene.

Interestingly, this became an “equal-opportunity lynching,” for the crowd later grabbed another prisoner from the jail, a white photographer accused of killing his wife the previous summer, and hanged him from a telegraph pole at a different downtown location.

<snip>

. . . Before burning the body of James, members of the mob cut out his heart; then they cut it up and carried the pieces away for souvenirs. Afterward, James’s half-burned head was displayed on top of a pole in a Cairo park, and photographers sold postcards of his hanging. Ministers justified both lynchings from the pulpit.

The lynching of Jesse Washington in Waco, TX, in 1919 (again, accused of raping and murdering a white woman) was even worse:

After four minutes of deliberation, the jury’s foreman announced a guilty verdict and a sentence of death.[24] The trial lasted about one hour.[25] Court officers approached Washington to escort him away, but were pushed aside by a surge of spectators, who seized Washington and dragged him outside.[24] Washington initially fought back, biting one man, but was soon beaten.[26] A chain was placed around his neck and he was dragged toward city hall by a growing mob; on the way downtown, he was stripped, stabbed, and repeatedly beaten with blunt objects. By the time he arrived at city hall, a group had prepared wood for a bonfire next to a tree in front of the building.[24] Washington, semiconscious and covered in blood, was doused with oil, hung from the tree by a chain, and then lowered to the ground.[27] Members of the crowd cut off his fingers, toes, and genitals.[24] The fire was lit and Washington was repeatedly raised and lowered into the flames until he burned to death. German scholar Manfred Berg posits that the executioners attempted to keep him alive to increase his suffering.[28] Washington attempted to climb the chain, but was unable to, owing to his lack of fingers.[29] The fire was extinguished after two hours, allowing bystanders to collect souvenirs from the site of the lynching, including Washington’s bones and links of the chain.[24] One attendee kept part of Washington’s genitalia;[30] a group of children snapped the teeth out of Washington’s head to sell as souvenirs. By the time that the fire was extinguished, parts of Washington’s arms and legs had been burned off and his torso and head were charred. His body was removed from the tree and dragged behind a horse throughout the town. Washington’s remains were transported to Robinson, where they were publicly displayed until a constable obtained the body late in the day and buried it.[24]

The lynching drew a large crowd, including the mayor and the chief of police, although lynching was illegal in Texas.[31] Sheriff Fleming told his deputies not to stop the lynching, and no one was arrested after the event.[32] Bernstein speculates that his actions were motivated by a desire to harshly deal with crime to help his candidacy for re-election that year.[33] Mayor John Dollins may have also encouraged the mob owing to the belief that a lynching would be politically beneficial.[34] The crowd numbered 15,000 at its peak.[35] Telephones helped spread word of the lynching, allowing spectators to gather more quickly than was previously possible.[36] Local media reported that “shouts of delight” were heard as Washington burned, although they noted that some attendees disapproved.[37] The Waco Semi-Weekly Tribune maintained that a number of black Waco residents attended, a claim that historian Grace Hale of the University of Virginia sees as dubious.[38] Waco residents, who likely had no connection with the rural Fryer family, comprised most of the crowd.[34] Some people from nearby rural communities traveled to the city before the trial to witness the events.[39] As the lynching occurred at midday, children from local schools walked downtown to observe, some climbing into trees for a better view.[40] Many parents approved of their children’s attendance, hoping that the lynching would reinforce a belief in white supremacy.[41] Some Texans saw participation in a lynching as a rite of passage for young men.[42]

Now that’s some fun family entertainment!

All of the above, you must understand, was at the time deemed justified and necessary, on the grounds that Negroes are creatures by nature predisposed to wild savagery and cruelty.

[SlackerInc]

@BrainGlutton

Not always just in the Deep South, either. See the lynching of Will James in Cairo, IL, 1909.

Cairo, though, is in the deepest southern tip of Illinois, across the border from Kentucky and farther south than the capital of the Confederacy. How about northern Minnesota, less than a century ago? (On the upper right you can see the nattily dressed mob proudly posing for a gruesome postcard photo.)

ETA: “although lynching was illegal in Texas” This has always puzzled me. I remember reading that the early NAACP fought for anti-lynching laws. Why wouldn’t lynching just be implicitly illegal, without a special category of crime? Isn’t it, you know, murder?