When you vote in clowns, a circus is sure to follow.

And what a circus we are seeing from the GOP in the House of Republicans. Wow.

They made it evident that they were Clowns from day one but it was mainly in their clownish performances as soloists or in small troupes. Yesterday, the whole group of clowns showed up (in what I imagine was the world’s largest clown car) and the circus was on. McCarthy was voted out as Speaker of the House and the first act of the new temporary head clown was to shut everything down and go into recess for a week.

That’s probably a good thing. They can’t do as much damage when they’re not there.

These are not serious people. They have no interest in governing or advocating for real people, only in performing for money.

These bad clowns reminded me of a blog post from back in 2015 about some other bad clowns.

From 2015:

I found myself awake late one night this past week watching a Film I’d seen a couple of times before.  It was He Who Gets Slapped, a silent film from 1924 which was the first film made by the then new movie studio MGM.  It stars the great Lon Chaney in a pretty grim and tragic story (it is based on a Russian play after all) that is sometimes hard to watch and hard to turn away from at the same time. On this particular night I couldn’t look away.

The basic premise is that Chaney plays a brilliant scientist who is screwed over by a wealthy man who steals both his ideas and his wife, humiliating him before a crowd of the foremost scientists who laugh at him.

This humiliation spurs him to retreat and become a clown called He whose act is to be masochistically slapped by an entire troop of clowns, his pain sparking the laughter of the crowd night after night. Of course, it ends with a bit of wonderful revenge as the rich guy gets his just rewards but it is by no means a happy ending or a feel-good film.

But a great film it is.

The imagery of the clowns in the film is quite remarkable and haunting. Whenever I see this film or Chaney’s other dark clown classic, Laugh, Clown, Laugh, (it was on immediately after He but I couldn’t take that much pain in one sitting) I am not surprised that many people have coulrophobia, the fear of clowns.

It made me perform a quick search for some GIFs with clowns to share. Putting them together was quite creepy. Try to have a great day after taking a gander at these joy makers.