A clown wearing a US President Barack Obama mask appeared at a Missouri State Fair rodeo over the weekend and the announcer asked the enthusiastic spectators if they wanted to see “Obama run down by a bull.”
The antics led the state’s second highest-ranking official, Lieutenant Governor Peter Kinder, to denounce the performance in a tweet on Sunday. He said it was “disrespectful” to the president.
“We are better than this,” the Republican tweeted.
State Fair officials said the show was “inappropriate” and “does not reflect the opinions or standards” of the fair.
Perry Beam, who was among the spectators, said “everybody screamed” and “just went wild” as the announcer talked about having the bull run down the clown with the Obama mask.
“It was at that point I began to feel a sense of fear. It was that level of enthusiasm,” Beam, a 48-year-old musician, said on Sunday, referring to the reaction from the crowd that filled the fair’s grandstand.
He said another clown ran up to the one wearing the Obama mask, pretended to tickle him and played with the lips on the mask. About 15 minutes into the performance, the masked clown had to leave after a bull got too close, Beam said.
Beam was at the rodeo with his wife and a student they were hosting from Taiwan.
He said they were having a good time until the end of the rodeo.
“It was the usual until the very end at bull riding,” he said. “As they were bringing the bulls into the chute and prepping them ... they bring out what looks like a dummy. The announcer says: ‘Here’s our Obama dummy, or our dummy of Obama.’”
“They mentioned the president’s name, I don’t know, 100 times. It was sickening,” Beam said. “It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV,” he said, referring to the Klu Klux Klan, which terrorized African-Americans for decades.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
Jailed media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai (黎智英) has been awarded Deutsche Welle’s (DW) freedom of speech award for his contribution to Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement. The German public broadcaster on Thursday said Lai would be presented in absentia with the 12th iteration of the award on June 23 at the DW Global Media Forum in Bonn. Deutsche Welle director-general Barbara Massing praised the 78-year-old founder of the now-shuttered news outlet Apple Daily for standing “unwaveringly for press freedom in Hong Kong at great personal risk.” “With Apple Daily, he gave journalists a platform for free reporting and a voice to the democracy movement in
PHILIPPINE COMMITTEE: The head of the committee that made the decision said: ‘If there is nothing to hide, there is no reason to hide, there is no reason to obstruct’ A Philippine congressional committee on Wednesday ruled that there was “probable cause” to impeach Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte after hearing allegations of unexplained wealth, misuse of state funds and threats to have the president assassinated. The unanimous decision of the 53-member committee in the Philippine House of Representatives sends the two impeachment complaints to deliberations and voting by the entire lower chamber, which has more than 300 lawmakers. The complaints centered on Duterte’s alleged illegal use and mishandling of intelligence funds from the vice president’s office, and from her time as education secretary under Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. Duterte and the
RSS