The photo above shows one of the greatest clowns of all time Emmett Kelley (on the left). I was lucky enough to see him preform several times at the Ringling Brothers, Barnum, and Bailey Circus at Madison Square Garden when I was a child. While this was a three ring circus his was the only performance that was a solo act where he was known for desperately trying to sweep away the light from a spotlight all acoss the large arena. Read about him in The Triump of a sad clown, here.

Today we don’t have many sad clowns. We certainly have scary clowns but mostly we have happy clowns. When it comes to comedians I can’t think of any notable ones who could be called sad. We had groundbreaking angry comics like Lenny Bruce and Geroge Carlen, and some performing today like Ricky Gervais, Lewis Black, and Bill Marah. Jon Stewart was in a class of his own.

On the network late night shows today people expect laughs so when someone like Stephen Colbert weighs in on the most serious threat to American democracy in the 21st century it took him some effort for him to get his studio to grasp that what he was saying was no laughing mater.

Colbert wasn’t sad or even mad, he was scared and wanted his audience to feel frightened too.

The article on HuffPost (here) says “5 Brutal Words.” These five words are “Donald Trump is a fascist” which indeed is both true and as the subtitle says they are an urgent reminder about the former president who aspires to become the dictator of the United States who wants turn us into a fascist nation.

There are, however, 54 words in the Colbert warning that are described by HuffPost as “colorful” but as I noted in my own title they are more than colorful. They are chillingly accurate.

Colbert came up with a colorful way to describe the need for these reminders of who Trump really is: “It’s important to… metaphorically jam the sharpened stick of knowledge into the soft inner thigh of your mind and just grind it around a little bit to try to reawaken the horror of what our country would be like if this hate-filled dingus and his soulless goons ever get a hold of power again.”

HuffPost

The best comedians and their writers are wordsmiths. I admire them and others who write descriptions of people and events that are catchy. I endeavor to come up with my own original ways to put my ideas into words in a way that conveys what I want to express with a bit of memorable pinache.

Yesterday I expressed admiration for MSNBC writer’s description of Stephen Miller as ghoulish and was inspired to find a painting of a ghoul which bore what I thought was an uncanny resemblance to him:

This morning I liked how congressional reporter John Bresnahan said this on MSNBC “Yesterday was just — yeah, yesterday was just a hurricane of stupid. I mean, it was — you know, look, I think part of it is that the House has been in session for 10 straight weeks. Members, they get restless. They don’t like being around each other that much.” (Reference) “Hurricane of stupid,” good wordsmithing indeed.

People who manage to score tickets to late night shows hope to laugh and be entertained by famous people. They didn’t get this from Colbert’s monologue last night. Watch the video clip here.

I watched as Colbert’s warning got more and more dire and I got the sense that he was noting that some of what he was saying elicited some laughs in the audience, for example when he said “metaphorically jam the sharpened stick of knowledge into the soft inner thigh of your mind” but as he went on he got more groans and applause. I think he became more and more serious in his delivery as the monlogue went on.

What we’ve observed since Trump walked down the golden escalator is a late night transition from comedians mocking him, something that got under his thin skin more than anything else in the media, to them moving like Colbert did last night, into taking him very seriously.

Colbert’s monologue, while an example of clever wordsmithing, also sends a sober and alarming message. I’d like to see the day when such a monologue is met with stunned silence.

Previous blogs here.