Bastardette has lately been remiss in stomping on everybody’s favorite corporate adoption shill, the National Council for Adoption. Since I’m leaving town for a few days to attend my high school class reunion (Yes, I actually graduated from high school, but in the bottom third of my class. I was too busy tending my primal wound and snooping through closets looking for my identity to tend to algebra), I thought I’d leave you with this.
NCFA’s new PR flack: Rodney Huey.
Yes, this picture is for real. Before joining NCFA’s crack team of baybee broker busybodies, Mr. Huey was the VP of PR for Feld Entertaiment, that is… at Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Combined Shows… that is…the circus. (He is also the former VP of Communications at NPR!) Two years ago he received his doctorate in Cultural Studies from George Mason. His dissertation, “The Social Construction of the American Circus Clown,” focuses on how clowns are made and their role in society. (This is actually a great topic. I worked in theatre for 15 years. I should know!)
Rodney says:
I would see the audience laughing and going crazy when the clowns came on, and it made me start to wonder, “What’s so funny about what clowns do? And why do we like this?”…The clown questions authority and the status quo. Clowns are absolutely mandatory in every society because they are the figures that can make fun of the power structure.”
So what’s a nice guy like Rodney Huey doing on the wrong side of the tracks at the epicentre of the money-grubbing, baybee-swoggling, humor-deficient power structure called the National Council for Adoption? Beats me! Maybe he just needs a job.
Should we expect some humor out of NCFA soon?
I doubt it!
After I put this up it occurred to me that NCFA should be re-named the National Clowncil for Adoption. Or National Clowncar for Adoption.
I always knew clowns were evil, now this proves it!:-) Aren’t most kids actually afraid of clowns? My niece had a real phobia about them after being scared by one, and I never liked them either. Look at Krusty on the Simpsons, and all those Twilight Zone evil clowns and ventriloquist dummies.
“National Clownsil for Adoption” indeed! That’s perfect.
This made my day. Although it also makes me cry.
echoing margie. this made me crack up. thanks for the laugh marley.
Ah Marley, enlightenment and entertainment in one post. How DO you do it? LOL I loved it!!
“”Aren’t most kids actually afraid of clowns?””
Well here is a former kid who was absolutely terrified by the sight of clowns. I wouldn’t have gone near a clown if someone had paid me to. For me as a child, they looked like monsters. To this day I find nothing funny or laughable about clowns…I still think they are creepy looking…though the ‘terror’ is now gone!
OOOPs! A liar I cannot be! I loved the ‘Bozo’ TV Show’ and the ‘clowns’ that participated in same. Though I never met them up close and personal.. I think I still would have been scared in close proximity of.
And yes… the National Clowncil for Adoption…is quite appropriate.
Clowns are so creepy in fact, that in an article one of MSNBC’s reporters wrote, about the 10 top most disturbing figures in America, the Burger King clown was named as one of them! I bet the King of Kreep is related to Tom Atwood!
For years I worked with a major mime instructor. Now that’s scary–though he wasn’t!
I’ll name drop. Marcel Marceau (not the above instructor!) did a 1-week residency with us which culminated in his second only-ever public performance without makeup. Every day the rich ladies from Arts Partners came over and brought him a huge picnic basket full bread, cheese, strawberries and wine, etc. for lunch. And he’d promptly give most of it to me when they left. Once day I got into an argument with him over Sid Caesar. How weird is that?
“Every day the rich ladies from Arts Partners came over and brought him a huge picnic basket full bread, cheese, strawberries and wine, etc. for lunch. And he’d promptly give most of it to me when they left. Once day I got into an argument with him over Sid Caesar. How weird is that”?
LoL, I had to re read your comment because the first time I read it, being dyslexic and all I thought you meant Caesar salad. ROTFLMAO. I was going to ask if you had the argument because you wanted salad and not his gift basket of fruit and cheeses. So what was the fight over? Please don’t tell me croutons…
(and was Marcel nice or a huffy arrogant pain?)
Marceau suffered from tremendous stage fright. The free performance he did for us was still up in the air at 4:30 in the afternoon and it was scheduled for 6 M. We operated on the belief that he was a professional and he’d show. And he did. He was very nice to me, but he drove his personal assistant and one of our faculty who was a former student of his, crazy. The PA was always on the phone to his wife complaining, and our poor teacher cried all week. Her tenure review was at stake. I like the idea that we actually talked. For some reason I was convinced that he never spoke.
“The clown questions authority and the status quo. Clowns are absolutely mandatory in every society because they are the figures that can make fun of the power structure”… and he works for the NCFA. Wow indeed. He’d probably be happier with BN if only we could afford him.
Maybe with Bill dead and gone the NCFA is trying to become more of a big (circus) tent?