It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Clowns help hospitalized kids cope, study shows By HealthDay News
Researchers say hospital clowns can help improve both physical symptoms and the psychological well-being of children and teens through laughter and play. File Photo by Francisco Guasco/EPA-EFE
Send in the clowns -- they could help hospitalized children cope with pain and anxiety.
New research shows that hospital clowns can help improve both physical symptoms and the psychological well-being of children and teens through laughter and play
For the study, researchers from Brazil and Canada reviewed databases to find clinical trials on the subject of hospital clowns published up until February 2020. They found 24 relevant trials involving 1,612 children and adolescents.
In those trials, anxiety was the most frequently analyzed symptom, followed by pain, psychological and emotional responses, perceived well-being, stress, cancer-related fatigue and crying.
The results suggested that children and adolescents with both short-term and long-term illnesses who were in the presence of hospital clowns, either with or without a parent present, reported significantly less anxiety during a range of medical procedures.
They also experienced improved psychological well-being compared with standard care.
The study was published online this month in the BMJ.
Three trials that evaluated chronic conditions, including cancer, showed significant reductions in stress, fatigue, pain and distress in children who interacted with hospital clowns compared with standard care, the study authors said in a journal news release.
Only one trial found no difference in levels of distress between a group of children who interacted with hospital clowns and those who didn't, according to Luís Carlos Lopes-Júnior, from the Federal University of Espírito Santo, in Vitória, Brazil, and colleagues.
"Hospital clowns might contribute to improved psychological well-being and emotional responses in children and adolescents in hospital with acute or chronic conditions," the researchers reported.
"Our findings also support the continued investigation of complementary treatments for better psychological adjustment during the hospital admission process in pediatrics," they wrote.
Previous studies had suggested that hospital clowns could help to reduce stress and anxiety in children before and after surgery, but results were inconsistent.
The trials researchers examined were designed differently and of varying quality. Limitations of the study include differences in data collection, follow-up time points, severity and onset of conditions and risk of bias.More information
Scientists decode why people are scared of clowns Vishwam Sankaran Mon, 6 March 2023 A new study about the fear of clowns aims to reveal why people are scared of the performers whose entire purpose is to make their audience laugh.
In the new research, published recently in the journal Frontiers in Psychology, scientists from the University of South Wales assessed data from an international survey of nearly 1,000 adult participants from 64 countries and found that more than half of the respondents reported having some degree of coulrophobia.
About 5 per cent of the respondents said they were “extremely afraid” of clowns – a number reportedly higher than that for other phobias like heights, animals, or closed spaces.
Exaggerated facial features of clowns and makeup hiding emotional signals are the main reasons people fear them, according to the study. Another reason cited was the negative portrayals of clowns in popular culture, like that of the character of Pennywisein Stephen King’s It.
Another factor that attracted one the highest ratings among survey respondents was the alleged unpredictable behaviour of clowns.
Researchers pointed out that the lowest level of agreement among participants was fear stemming from a frightening personal experience with clowns.
Scientists suspect it may not be any of the individual elements that may be frightening itself, “but rather the juxtaposition of these features”.
They said the “uncanny valley effect” – due to clowns not appearing entirely like humans in appearance – compounded by makeup that completely covers the skin may be some of factors that play out in combination to induce fear among people.
Researchers also suspect the redness on the makeup, “reminiscent of disease and contagion”, could play a part in striking fear among adults and children.
“These factors can combine to give a clown an appearance of deformity, to which (sadly, but nevertheless unavoidably) humans have a natural reaction of revulsion and fear,” they wrote and called for future research to provide a stronger test of these hypotheses.
They said research assessing participants and measuring their subsequent reactions as they viewed clown images as well as varying makeup and hair colours on them could offer fresh insights on the phobia.
Citing some limitations of the study, researchers said while about 54 per cent of the participants self reported having some degree of fear of clowns, the study did not assess whether the respondents would meet the diagnostic criteria for a specific phobia.
Scientists said future research should consider other factors associated with “co-occurring mental health conditions”.
In future studies, researchers also hoped to unravel if people with their faces painted as animals tend to induce the same kind of fear or if the clown makeups particularly have fear-inducing properties.
“In conclusion, this study is the first to investigate the aetiology of clown fear and to consider competing explanations of the origins of this phenomena,” they added.
Saturday, September 26, 2020
The happy hug of a clinic clown
It is established that dementia rates are rising worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 50 million people already suffer from dementia, with 10 million new cases being added every year
The happy hug of a clinic clown
6 min read.Updated: 25 Sep 2020, 10:20 PM ISTPriti Salian
As dementia rates rise worldwide, clinic clowns are helping to induce positive emotions and create a sense of well-being among patients
In Auroville, a few years ago, a bed-ridden woman was watching Fif Fernandes attentively as she sang and pranced around, playing on her ukulele. When the woman, who was living with dementia, finally smiled, Fernandes asked, “What did you do as a child?" The woman beamed and drifted into a childhood memory, when as a four-year-old she would travel on a bullock cart with her father to get an ice lolly. “The lolly melted and dripped down my chin, and then down my clothes, and then it broke and fell," she recalled just before her thoughts meandered elsewhere.
It is established that dementia rates are rising worldwide. According to the World Health Organization, 50 million people already suffer from dementia, with 10 million new cases being added every year. India itself has about 4.1 million cases, as The World Alzheimer’s Report 2015 notes. Experts believe this number may be higher, since many cases go undiagnosed, with people ascribing forgetfulness to old age. In such a scenario, clinic clowns, or clowns working in healthcare spaces, can be harbingers of joy to the elderly. Studies show that they induce positive emotions and a sense of well-being among patients.
Fernandes is one of the handful of trained clinic clowns in India. After practising for over 30 years in Canada, she moved to Auroville and co-founded MeDiClown Academy in 2013 with her husband, Hamish Boyd, also a therapeutic clown. The academy’s work entails training and conducting workshops for individuals and organizations. The couple also visits people of all ages in hospitals and senior homes across cities. “Music is a huge part of what we do," says Fernandes. “It brings back beautiful memories for the elderly."
Once she is in an elderly person’s room, she observes pictures on the wall, a favourite pillow or a dress, which can be used in conversation. Once she has forged a connection, Fernandes recreates stories related to those objects through her clowning skills.
Once, for instance, an elderly woman with dementia told Fernandes that as a nine-year-old, she would walk to the village school with her four sisters. “One day, when we reached school late, we covered up by saying that the milk pot broke at home and that delayed us," recalls Fernandes. The teacher believed the five sisters and gave them a glass of milk each. In the evening, she told their mother, who was angry with the children for lying. Fernandes took cues from the story and enacted it for the lady with her colleagues. “The elderly love to go back to their childhood and like the freedom to laugh and be silly with clowns," chimes in Boyd.
Such exercises are significant for people with dementia; they often feel lost because they can’t remember things. “Families keep checking about facts and dates, without realizing the trauma and agitation it can cause," explains Fernandes. “Role-playing their narratives, under their direction, gives them the power to be in control without being challenged about their memory. We never tell them something could not have happened, however surprising it may appear."
Clowning in hospital settings was first started in North America in 1986 by Michael Christensen, co-founder of the New York-based Big Apple Circus. Karen Ridd (Robo the Clown), a child life specialist, simultaneously founded Canada’s first therapeutic clown programme at the Winnipeg Children’s Hospital. The practice later spread to Europe.
Since the 1990s, it has played a particularly significant role in Germany, where one in five citizens is over 65, and almost 10% of the seniors have dementia. Take Arnsberg, a city of 73,000 that is considered a model for inclusion of the elderly. It has nine trained clinic clowns like Julia Wille, who goes by the clown name of Mia Mumpitz and visits senior homes at least once a month.
The process has a therapeutic value for clowns too. Wille, 46, found her calling in clowning more than four years ago, during a long spell of clinical depression. “I saw a picture of a clinic clown in a newspaper and instantly knew the road ahead for myself," she recalls. She works at an assisted living facility in Arnsberg but has been doing honorary clowning work at elderly care facilities. “Clowning has kept me in good mental health without medication," she says.
One cheerful morning in July, Mia Mumpitz entered Helena Desol’s room at the St Anna home with a loud and affectionate “Hola", a red clown nose covering her own, hair pulled up into ponytails and lips defined with red gloss. Spain-born Desol, who is 80, lost the ability to speak a few years ago but squealed with delight on seeing her. Like a long-lost friend, Mumpitz enclosed her in a hug. Desol wrapped her left arm around Mumpitz—it’s her good side, ever since she suffered a paralytic attack.
Mumpitz then broke into a song, placed her hands on her waist and began the footwork. Eyes brimming with joy, Desol swung back and forth in her armchair and hummed along.
“About a third of the 90 residents at St Anna have dementia, and benefit from clown visits," says Dagmar Freimuth, the leader of social service at St Anna. Wille’s clowning gently persuades elderly people to participate in her activities. “Sometimes, though, all it takes is a gentle touch to reduce their agitation and anxiety caused by dementia," Wille says.
One of the residents of St Anna stopped talking to everyone after his sister’s death but opened up after the clowns cajoled him, recalls Wille. “An old lady always shooed me away, however hard I tried talking to her, but one day I happened to sing a song from her childhood and that was it. I am always welcome in her room now," Wille smiles.
Johannes Föster, who trained to be a clinic clown three years ago at the age of 72 and now volunteers as Clown Berti in Arnsberg, interjects with another story. There is a woman, Föster says, who would never respond to the clowns, but the last time she saw him in the lounge, she said, “Have a nice day!" Föster smiles, “I think she is coming around."
Fernandes has seen similar results in India, where medical clowning is still in its infancy. There are only a handful of individuals and groups working in Mumbai, Chennai and Bengaluru. Like Sheetal Agarwal, a former teacher who got into clowning in 2016 and founded Clownselors, now heads a team of 15 regular volunteers in Delhi. Then there is Humanitarian Clowns, which has had 250 volunteers visiting hospitals and old-age homes for the past eight years in Vellore and sometimes Chennai.
Generally, however, the absence of training institutes means clinic clowns are untrained and doing voluntary work. Which is why, in August 2019, MeDiClown Academy started its first 600-hour course on medical clowning with 11 students, to educate participants on art, storytelling, yoga, music and improvisation. “We want medical clowning to become a respectable profession in the country," says Boyd.
Students learn about patient psychology, dealing with care facilities and working in tandem with a medical team. “However," emphasizes Fernandes, “the most important thing for clowns is to know how to make a connection with their heart."
Priti Salian is a freelance journalist who has covered human rights, social justice, development and culture issues in India, Germany and Uganda.
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Fif Fernandes of MeDiClown Academy. Photo: courtesy MeDiClown Academy
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Julia Wille (standing, second from left) at work.
Saturday, February 26, 2022
A first convention gathers African clowns in Cameroon
Cameroon hosted the very first convention of African clowns on Wednesday and Thursday.
It is in the French cultural institute of Douala that young and old alike gathered to watch comedians, clowns, jugglers and other performers. William Nong, is one of the instigators of the convention. After spending 15 years abroad he decided to return in his home country: "The person who first initiated me to clowning was a woman, Yeto Lougou. She’s a school head in the French city of Nantes. In retrospect, when I looked at my continent, I decided to promote the figure of the clown in Africa and more precisely in my home country Cameroon. Today there are two challenges one lies with timing another one with financing issues and there are also mentoring issues. That explains why many don’t know about clowns nowadays. Back in the day people knew about buffoonery and other clownish acts but it has faded away."
In order to revive this art throughout the country, many step up. Chamberlain Feumba also known as Féfé le clown is one of those who try to instil within the youth the love for the performing art he discovered twenty years ago.
"I am Féfé the clown and was taught clown classes by a foreign theatre company when they arrived in Cameroon. It is thanks to this training that I become a clown."
If there are no circus in the country, Féfé the clown works to train the next generation here in Douala. "I mostly work in schools and my primary audience is made up of children. So I achieve my teaching objective here in schools. Every time an opportunity comes my way I agree with the schools on a contract and I give 1-hour classes. At the end of the school year the children perform and they can show their parents all they have learned."
In Cameroon there is only a handful of clowns companies. If circus is popular elsewhere, the art of performing hasn’t won his spurs in Cameroon just yet. Clowns like Féfé do their best to make that happen.
Aloosh and the Gaza clowns: Men of peace, beyond Hamas and Israel's bombs
by Dario Salvi
The Italian Marco Rodari, known as 'Claun il Pimpa', talks about his bond with the artists of the Strip, a movement that he himself helped to create. Gifting a smile to a child can mean the difference between anger in the moment and hatred in the future. His personal remembrance of the Christian victims of the conflict, the parish of the Holy Family 'always an oasis of peace'.
Milan (AsiaNews) - "Extraordinary men of peace". This is how Marco Rodari, better known as “claun il Pimpa”, famous for having brought clowning and juggling to many theatres of war and violence, describes to AsiaNews the "mission" of Aloosh, Maroosh and the Gaza Circus School who, in these months of conflict (thanks to the coordination of the CISS Cooperazione Internazionale Sud) are trying to bring a smile to the Strip.
"The meaning of the word peace," he says, "I learnt it from them who, in spite of everything, manage not to hate, to contain their anger, and it is incredible that even this time they have managed to make children and adults smile. They have written to me a couple of times in the last period," he confides, "to tell me that they are alive and, I assume, constantly on the move. I get very short messages telling me that they are in Rafah' and that, although they cannot put on big shows, every now and then they 'manage to gather children and play with them', alleviating their suffering even for a few moments.
Claun the Pimpa experienced the 2014 war at first hand, sharing with the population of the Strip dramas and deaths, hopes and prospects for peace, and today he recounts: 'From the outside, you have no feeling of what is going on, while when you are involved from the inside, you understand nothing. A condition of total uncertainty'.
We caught up with Marco Rodari, 48, originally from Loggiano in the province of Varese (northern Italy), on the eve of his departure for a new adventure in another 'theatre of tension': the artist is heading to the Donbass, to give - as he has been doing for more than 15 years - a smile to the children (and adults) now victims of the Russian war in Ukraine, after having walked countless hospital wards with his red nose in the past to bring comfort to the sick.
From paediatric wards, he then set out to bring circus art and clown shows to Eastern Europe, Africa and the Middle East, to Gaza, where he first arrived in 2009. Thanks to a friendship consolidated over time with Fr. Jorge Hernandez first, Fr. Mario da Silva and Fr. Gabriel Romanelli later, all priests of the Incarnate Word, and parish priests of the Holy Family, "claun the Pimpa" started to promote shows in the Strip and contributed, with many other associations, to nurture a generation of local artists.
He also received recognition for his valuable work, the honorary title of Cavaliere della Repubblica from the President of the Italian Republic Sergio Mattarella in March 2023.
In the Strip, he strengthened his vocation of being a 'clown in the theatres of war', so much so that he experienced numerous conflicts first hand: in Gaza in 2014, then Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, where he arrived thanks also to the collaboration of the different Churches.
He has also left his mark, so much so that he is still remembered today from Baghdad to Aleppo, all the way to the Strip. It is his desire 'to be close to a population that I have come to know over time, appreciating its resilience: it is able to feel anger, rage, but without allowing itself to be dominated by a blind hatred that admits of no hope'.
Through his presence in Gaza, over the years Marco Rodari - who created the association 'Make the Sky Smile'in 2015 - has not 'only' served to entertain the younger generation. In fact, he has promoted and supported the birth of a local circus school and laid the foundations of a project that continues independently thanks to the dedication, and skill, of two now very popular clowns: Aloosh and Maroosh, who in these dramatic weeks of war have created improvised shows by reuniting the historic group of the Gaza Circus School.
"They stayed in the north until the situation became so difficult that they had to leave, when the population realised that it was no longer possible to stay, trying to act as human shields to their homes. And when they realised that the number of deaths among the children was becoming unbearable," he recounts.
"Imagine Aloosh who, thanks to his skill, is able to move and keep even 1,500 children entertained all at once. He who in these weeks of exodus, displacement and war has become a father for the second time, Maloosh and the other clowns have a joy inside that cannot wait to 'take revenge' on the horrors of the conflict. And that makes us realise,' he continues, 'that it is possible to put on shows even at this moment, in Rafah' while news reports announce the imminent ground operation by the Israeli army and more than 1.4 million refugees press the border with Egypt.
'I don't need many messages,' he explains, 'to know how they are, I only need to look at a photo of them smiling to catch their joy and that of the children. The great thing is that another four or five people who had stopped clowning to devote themselves to other activities, again linked to educating children, have resumed in these very weeks, to make a contribution too", rediscovering their former vocation.
"Among other things, this flight from north to south, because almost all of them are from the north of Gaza," he adds, "meant that they could not bring anything but themselves, and pushed them to relive the clown experience with just a little make-up."
"Every child, because of what they are experiencing, will react differently, but it is important to giift them one beautiful moment that they will remember,' confides Rodari, who cites a personal anecdote from the harshest phases of the Syrian conflict: 'A 16-year-old girl from Damascus, whom I met years later at an event in an Italian high school, remembered the time I managed to bring a smile and a moment of joy to her while the battle raged outside. Sowing, 'even just one good memory in a child can make the difference, in the future, between feeling legitimate anger and going so far as to hate. A light of hope in the darkness of war, that is also the task of us clowns".
One last thought he would like to dedicate to the two women of the Holy Family parish who died during these months of conflict in Gaza, whom he knew and to whom 'I loved very much: seeing their son, who guided me around the Strip, bury his mother and sister' was a source of great suffering. The same applies 'to the killing of our organist [Elham Farah], the one who invented music in Gaza. It was her way of praying, this too is the drama of war'.
Friday, October 02, 2020
An actual clown on the PRESIDENTIAL debate: 'I hope we can set the record straight on what clowns actually are, and they are not Donald Trump' Juliana Kaplan Sep 30, 2020,
The word "clown" ended up playing a big role in the debate. sturti/Getty Images At Tuesday's night presidential debate, Democratic nominee Joe Biden called President Donald Trump a 'clown.'
Business Insider spoke with Tim Cunningham, a clown and emergency nurse, about the usage of the term in the debate.
Cunningham said he laughed when he heard the term used, but that Trump does not exhibit the virtuosity of a clown.
Tim Cunningham decided to watch the presidential debate while on vacation.
One undecided voter — who said he voted for Trump in 2016 — was asked by CNN post-debate whether it was appropriate: "Is it great that Joe called him a clown? No, but when the shoe fits. When the clown shoe fits."
"When I heard it, I laughed out loud," Cunningham told Business Insider. "I'm fully behind what Biden is trying to do. We need to replace this person as soon as possible — this person being the current person who calls himself president."
Cunningham began studying to be a clown in 2000, and began working with a nonprofit clowning organization in 2003. After working as a hospital clown, he was inspired to go back to school and become an emergency nurse.
Today, he works as a nurse admin in Georgia, where he's been working with nurses and caregivers to help weather the COVID crisis.
For Cunningham — who stressed that his opinions are his alone — Biden referring to Trump as a clown is a nuanced issue. He stressed the artistry that goes into clowning, saying that clowns are ultimately "virtuosos."
"The clown is capable of making that virtuosic act look easy, and in making it look easy, they also open themselves up to vulnerability and failure. And that's where the clown is beautiful, because we see an artist doing this incredible feat, and then every now and then they have a hiccup and they fail," he said. "And it's that moment of failure that we laugh. And then they bounce back up. They're truly resilient, and they guide us through a performance, and they connect with us."
While a clown may be virtuosic, that's not necessarily true of who the "c-word" was lobbed at last night. Does the clown shoe fit?
"The person who calls himself president is clearly not a virtuoso," Cunningham said.
And that gets at the paradox of calling Trump a clown, according to Cunningham. While he may not exhibit the traits that Cunningham identifies as intrinsic to a clown, the usage of the term against him instead reflects where societal standards lie.
"It's concerning that Trump has lowered the standards of human decency so much — lowered the standards of what it means to hold the office of president, to be one of the most powerful people in the world — he's lowered it so much that the response from otherwise highly intelligent, compassionate people is to denigrate him by calling him a clown."
Cunningham said that ultimately he's both "offended" and "honored" by Trump being termed a "clown."
And looking towards the future, he said that, like a clown, he maintains a sense of optimism — and hopes for a future where, instead of bouncing back, we can bounce forward.
But there is one thing he wants to clear up:
"I hope we can set the record straight on what clowns actually are, and they are not Donald Trump."
As the Halloween season gets underway, reports are emerging from the Scottish village of Skelmorlie that a menacing clown is on the loose.
The person appears to be dressing as the haunting Pennywise from Stephen King's It, complete with a red balloon. In the It books and film adaptations, Pennywise, a killer clown, uses red balloons as bait for children.
According to Scotland's Daily Record, the Skelmorlie clown has been leaving red balloons dotted around the small town, home to only about 2,000 residents.
One local, who asked not to be named, told the outlet he wasn't letting his two boys, ages 11 and 13, out at night after reported sightings of the clown.
"Whoever this is they are scaring everybody — he needs to be stopped. Someone needs to have a word with him before the police get involved or he really terrifies someone. He could give someone a heart attack."
The man added that another boy on his street "saw the clown from his bedroom window just before he went to bed — he didn’t sleep all night."
It seems the clown has set up a Facebook page for himself under the name Cole Deimos. The profile states he attended clown school and went to Hellgate High School.
On this page, the Skelmorlie clown posted images of himself in darkened streets and crawling around on all fours on a bridge in the village, though these posts have since been deleted, the Daily Record reports.
A resident named Pauline told the outlet that "everyone in the village" is talking about the Skelmorlie clown after seeing the Facebook posts.
"I imagine he took his photos and videos down because he was getting too much heat."
All that remains on Cole Deimos' Facebook page now is a video with the caption: "a message to the media."
In the video, posted a day before Friday the 13th, the clown dares police to catch them and taunts the journalists who covered the story.
The video opens with the clown sitting on a park bench. He speaks with a voice changer, though the person's Scottish accent can still clearly be heard.
"Should I smile for the cameras with my 'hideous' grin?" the clown asks.
"Or maybe Pauline's right, perhaps I've gone away. 'Too much heat,' what a stupid thing to say," the clown rhymes, referencing the Daily Record's report.
"The police have been informed. Do you think that I care? They'd have to catch me first anyway, and yes, that's a dare."
Calling out the Daily Record journalists who reported on him, the clown adds: "This clown doesn't want fame, glory or gold. He just wants to play in this so-called 'sleepy town.'"
"So come and join in, and learn to fear the Skelmorlie clown," the clown narrates over a video of him in front of the town's welcome sign.
The comments under the clown's Facebook post have been largely positive.
"Out of all the clowns in this village he's the best," one commenter wrote.
Others expressed they've been out in the village at night hoping to bump into the clown, but not everyone is on board with the Halloween antics. One commenter said the clown has been genuinely scaring people and needs to be stopped.
Is the Skelmorlie clown going too far? Or is it all in good fun?
Here's hoping this isn't a repeat of the great clown panic of 2016, when social media was flooded with sightings of "killer" clowns all over the world.
A party divided cannot stand — especially if they can’t stand their leader
The UCP may not fall as a result of its divisions. But after the result of the party’s leadership review vote is announced on May 18, it’ll have to be either all Jason Kenney or no Jason Kenney at all!
Alberta Premier Jason Kenney addresses a carefully curated crowd of about 100 supporters at a UCP “Special General Meeting” in Red Deer April 11 (Photo: Screenshot of United Conservative Party video).
And I’d say the United Conservative Party (UCP) led by Premier Jason Kenney is getting perilously close to the point where it’s so divided against itself, that if nothing changes, it’ll have to have to be folded up like a tent, thrown in the back of a blue pickup truck, and driven out of town!
It’s been apparent for a while there are serious divisions within the UCP – COVID deniers versus public health affirmers, Progressive Conservatives versus Wildrosers, neoliberals versus social conservatives, rural MLAs versus urban MLAs, possibly even climate change deniers versus “green conservatives,” to borrow a phrase from Preston Manning.
It looked for a spell as if the UCP – cobbled together in 2017 to restore the Progressive Conservative dynasty created by Peter Lougheed, who led the PCs to power in 1971 and created the big-tent model that kept them there until 2015 – might actually have cast out the demon of division animated in 2009 by the advent of the Wildrose Caucus in the Alberta Legislature, and its near miss with power in 2012.
Whether it was principally the superb campaign run by NDP Leader Rachel Notley or the divisions that bedevilled the Conservatives will forever be debated, but the rift in the conservative movement unquestionably contributed to the NDP victory in 2015 that ended 44-year PC Dynasty, and eventually the PC Party itself.
Kenney was anointed leader in a somewhat-tainted UCP vote in 2017. He seemed to lay to rest any doubts about the unity of the new conservative party, though, with his convincing electoral victory in 2019.
There were lots of Albertans, on the right and the left, who concluded then Kenney was the saviour of the right, who had resuscitated the indivisible Alberta Tory coalition of old.
But that ole Demon Division was not so easily cast out. Disagreement over how to respond to COVID seems to have been the catalyst, and Kenney’s own inclination to use polarization as a political tool certainly contributed.
That led to the party referendum on Kenney’s leadership now being conducted through a controversial – and itself divisive – mail-in vote, with allegations of cheating in the wind and Kenney himself calling members of his own party “lunatics” and implying that without him at the helm, bigotry would run wild in the UCP.
By the end of last week, no politically alert Albertan could miss the fact the UCP has become a public snake pit, with MLAs, party members and political staffers mud-rasslin’ on social media and in the press.
Quoting Chestermere-Strathmore MLA Leela Aheer, Bell wrote: “With the NDP, people had concerns about certain policies. ‘With us, they’re concerned about corruption.’”
Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie, from the party’s COVID-skeptical right, called Kenney “a federal Ottawa elitist.” Richard Gotfried, the moderate former Progressive Conservative from Calgary-Fish Creek, told Bell the premier is beholden to a small circle with “very little skin in the game in Alberta.” Same thing? Sure sounds like it.
Brian Jean, Kenney’s chief leadership rival in 2017 and victor in a recent by-election in Fort-McMurray-Lac La Biche on a platform of replacing the premier, made it clear that, this time, he won’t stand for cheating by Kenney’s supporters.
The same day, Kenney’s interim issues manager, Bryan Rogers, called the MLAs quoted in Bell’s column “just the same old crew” with a clip of clowns from an episode of The Simpsons.
The intramural mudslinging on social media got so bad and so public the Canadian Press reported on it.
“An internal feud battering Alberta’s governing party took a new twist after Premier Jason Kenney’s issues manager went on Twitter to compare Kenney’s United Conservative backbench critics to clowns,” wrote CP’s Dean Bennett in the deadly serious tones to which the national news service defaults.
Airdrie-East MLA Angela Pitt, another of the UCP MLAs quoted by Bell, took to Twitter to fire back: “This is exactly the kind of bullying and intimidation that happens every day from the Premier’s staff. MLAs provide dissenting opinions and they are ridiculed like clowns or called insane.”
Members of the UCP, which under Kenney has edged very close to the Christian right in Alberta, should be familiar with the metaphor about what happens when houses are divided against themselves.
It was used again by the first Republican president of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, to describe the state of that Union in 1858, on the brink of the U.S. Civil War.
“I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided,” Lincoln added on June 6 that year at the Republican State Convention in Springfield. The Springfield in Illinois, that is, not the one in The Simpsons.
At the risk of channeling President Lincoln, I don’t expect the UCP to fall either, at least before the next general election.
But after the result of the party’s leadership review vote is announced on May 18, it’ll have to be either all Jason Kenney or no Jason Kenney at all!
Glynis Johns, a Tony Award-winning stage and screen star who played the mother opposite Julie Andrews in the classic movie Mary Poppins and introduced the world to the bittersweet standard-to-be Send in the Clowns by Stephen Sondheim, has died. She was 100.
Mitch Clem, her manager, said she died Thursday at an assisted living home in Los Angeles of natural causes. "Today’s a sad day for Hollywood," Clem said. "She is the last of the last of old Hollywood."
Johns was known to be a perfectionist about her profession — precise, analytical and opinionated. The roles she took had to be multifaceted. Anything less was giving less than her all.
"As far as I’m concerned, I’m not interested in playing the role on only one level," she told The Associated Press in 1990. "The whole point of first-class acting is to make a reality of it. To be real. And I have to make sense of it in my own mind in order to be real."
Johns’ greatest triumph was playing Desiree Armfeldt in A Little Night Music, for which she won a Tony in 1973. Sondheim wrote the show’s hit song Send in the Clowns to suit her distinctive husky voice, but she lost the part in the 1977 film version to Elizabeth Taylor.
"I’ve had other songs written for me, but nothing like that," Johns told the AP in 1990. "It’s the greatest gift I’ve ever been given in the theater." Others who followed Johns in singing Sondheim’s most popular song include Frank Sinatra, Judy Collins, Barbra Streisand, Sarah Vaughan and Olivia Newton-John. It also appeared in season two of Yellowjackets in 2023, sung by Elijah Wood.
Back when it was being conceived, A Little Night Music had gone into rehearsal with some of the book and score unfinished, including a solo song for Johns. Director Hal Prince suggested she and co-star Len Cariou improvise a scene or two to give book writer Hugh Wheeler some ideas.
"Hal said 'Why don’t you just say what you feel,'" she recalled to the AP. "When Len and I did that, Hal got on the phone to Steve Sondheim and said, 'I think you’d better get in a cab and get round here and watch what they’re doing because you are going to get the idea for Glynis’ solo.'"
Johns was the fourth generation of an English theatrical family. Her father, Mervyn Johns, had a long career as a character actor, and her mother was a pianist. She was born in Pretoria, South Africa, because her parents were visiting the area on tour at the time of her birth.
Johns was a dancer at 12 and an actor at 14 in London’s West End. Her breakthrough role was as the amorous mermaid in the title of the 1948 hit comedy Miranda.
"I was quite an athlete, my muscles were strong from dancing, so the tail was just fine; I swam like a porpoise," she told Newsday in 1998. In 1960’s The Sundowners, with Deborah Kerr and Robert Mitchum, she was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar. (She lost out to Shirley Jones in Elmer Gantry.)
Other highlights include playing the mother in Mary Poppins, the movie that introduced Julie Andrews and where she sang the rousing tune Sister Suffragette. She also starred in the 1989 Broadway revival of The Circle, W. Somerset Maugham’s romantic comedy about love, marriage and fidelity, opposite Rex Harrison and Stewart Granger.
"I’ve retired many times. My personal life has come before my work. The theater is just part of my life. It probably uses my highest sense of intelligence, so therefore I have to come back to it, to realize that I’ve got the talent. I’m not as good doing anything else," she told the AP.
To prepare for A Coffin in Egypt, Horton Foote’s 1998 play about a grand dame reminiscing about her life on and off a ranch on the Texas prairie, she asked the Texas-born Foote to record a short tape of himself reading some lines and used it as her coach.
In a 1991 revival of A Little Night Music in Los Angeles, she played Madame Armfeldt, the mother of Desiree, the part she had created. In 1963, she starred in her own TV sitcom, Glynis.
Johns lived all around the world and had four husbands. The first was the father of her only child, the late Gareth Forwood, an actor who died in 2007.
Saturday, June 24, 2023
Swiss museum probes 'king of clowns' Nazi links
Agnès PEDRERO Fri, 23 June 2023 Born in 1880, Grock -- real name Adrien Wettach -- grew up in the Bernese Jura mountains above the city of Biel in northern Switzerland (Fabrice COFFRINI)
Grock became known as the "king of clowns" but the Swiss entertainer who made the world laugh is now in the spotlight over his connections with Adolf Hitler.
A Swiss museum, which has recently acquired Grock's archive, is researching links between the performer -- considered by peers to be the greatest musical clown of his time -- and the dictator of Nazi Germany.
In the first half of the 20th century, Grock's success rivalled that of Charlie Chaplin. But while Chaplin satirised Hitler, Grock seems to have welcomed him into his dressing room.
Last month, the Neues Museum Biel took possession of around a thousand items from Grock's collection.
Sound recordings from shows, letters, photographs and musical scores were donated by Grock's 74-year-old great-nephew Raymond Naef.
Via Naef, Grock's stage costumes and musical instruments were donated by Switzerland's Knie family circus dynasty.
But the Neues Museum Biel did not want to put on a Grock exhibition without first exploring the artist's life off-stage, where he developed a reputation as a shrewd businessman.
"It's the museum's responsibility. It's absolutely necessary," the art and history museum's director Bernadette Walter told AFP. - Hitler telegram -
Wettach published several autobiographies and his great-nephew Naef wrote a book and curated a 2002 exhibition about Grock's career -- but until now, no historian has investigated the nature of his Nazi connections.
"Grock says in his autobiography that Hitler came to his dressing room, and that Hitler saw his shows 13 times," said Walter, though the museum has not yet verified the claim.
The museum did not consider turning down his archive, which entails conducting lots of research -- something Walter compared to the investigations that cultural institutions carry out into artworks looted by the Nazis.
"A museum must also tell stories that are not always spotless," the director said, arguing that the past should not simply be forgotten.
At a May 12 online auction, the museum tried to buy, for research purposes, a seasonal greetings telegram that Grock sent to Hitler in 1942.
"We know that he met Hitler and (Joseph) Goebbels," the Nazi propaganda chief, and that he performed for wounded German soldiers, said Walter, but whether he had any political allegiances remains a mystery.
Grock performed in Germany before the Nazis came to power in 1933, and the museum wants to see whether he adapted his stage show afterwards.
Grock always said he was apolitical and his autobiography mentions his shows in Britain, France and the United States, said Walter.
"He played when he was paid. We know that Grock was opportunistic, but that cannot be used as an excuse." - No joke -
Laurent Diercksen, who wrote the 1999 book "Grock: An Extraordinary Destiny", said the acrobat, juggler and multi-instrumentalist "didn't give a damn about politics" and focused on "success".
"We cannot judge him on a single letter, an isolated act or one revelation taken out of context," the journalist told AFP, finding it a shame that the great music hall artiste might primarily be remembered for his "so-called Nazi sympathies".
Born in 1880, Grock -- real name Adrien Wettach -- grew up in the Bernese Jura mountains above the city of Biel in northern Switzerland.
He chose his pseudonym in the early 1900s, when he replaced Brock in Brick and Brock, a famous duo of the time.
Grock died in 1959 aged 79, with his sketches known to audiences around the world.
"He brought laughter to an era when there wasn't much to laugh about," said his great-nephew, who nonetheless recalled that Grock's connections with the Nazis had caused family disputes.
But he wanted Grock's collection to be publicly accessible for historical research and potentially be exhibited, adding that people needed to distinguish between the art and the artiste.
"We do not destroy the houses built by the architect Le Corbusier simply because he was also a bit of a fascist," Naef concluded.
apo/rjm/rox/ach
Tuesday, September 13, 2022
It Is Time to Throw the Monarchies of the World Into the Dustbin of History
The royals are oligarchs. They are guardians of their class.
The fawning adulation of Queen Elizabeth in the United States, which fought a revolution to get rid of the monarchy, and in Great Britain, is in direct proportion to the fear gripping a discredited, incompetent and corrupt global ruling elite.
The global oligarchs are not sure the next generation of royal sock puppets – mediocrities that include a pedophile prince and his brother, a cranky and eccentric king who accepted suitcases and bags stuffed with $3.2 million in cash from the former prime minister of Qatar Sheikh Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, and who has millions stashed in offshore accounts – are up to the job. Let’s hope they are right.
“Having a monarchy next door is a little like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and has daubed their house with clown murals, displays clown dolls in each window and has an insatiable desire to hear about and discuss clown-related news stories,” Patrick Freyne wrote last year in The Irish Times. “More specifically, for the Irish, it’s like having a neighbour who’s really into clowns and, also, your grandfather was murdered by a clown.”
Monarchy obscures the crimes of empire and wraps them in nostalgia. It exalts white supremacy and racial hierarchy. It justifies class rule. It buttresses an economic and social system that callously discards and often consigns to death those considered the lesser breeds, most of whom are people of color. The queen’s husband Prince Phillip, who died in 2021, was notorious for making racist and sexist remarks, politely explained away in the British press as “gaffes.” He described Beijing, for example, as “ghastly” during a 1986 visit and told British students: “If you stay here much longer you’ll all be slitty-eyed.”
The cries of the millions of victims of empire; the thousands killed, tortured, raped and imprisoned during the Mau Mau rebellion in Kenya; the 13 Irish civilians gunned down in “Bloody Sunday;” the more than 4,100 First Nations children who died or went missing in Canada’s residential schools, government-sponsored institutions established to “assimilate” indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture, and the hundreds of thousands killed during the invasion and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan are drowned out by cheers for royal processions and the sacral aura an obsequious press weaves around the aristocracy. The coverage of the queen’s death is so mind-numbingly vapid — the BBC sent out a news alert on Saturday when Prince Harry and Prince William, accompanied by their wives, surveyed the floral tributes to their grandmother displayed outside Windsor Castle — that the press might as well turn over the coverage to the mythmakers and publicists employed by the royal family.
The royals are oligarchs. They are guardians of their class. The world’s largest landowners include King Mohammed VI of Morocco with 176 million acres, the Holy Roman Catholic Church with 177 million acres, the heirs of King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia with 531 million acres and now, King Charles III with 6.6 billion acres of land. British monarchs are worth almost $28 billion. The British public will provide a $33 million subsidy to the Royal Family over the next two years, although the average household in the U.K. saw its income fall for the longest period since records began in 1955 and 227,000 households experience homelessness in Britain.
Royals, to the ruling class, are worth the expense. They are effective tools of subjugation. British postal and rail workers canceled planned strikes over pay and working conditions after the queen’s death. The Trade Union Congress (TUC) postponed its congress. Labour Party members poured out heartfelt tributes. Even Extinction Rebellion, which should know better, indefinitely canceled its planned “Festival of Resistance.” The BBC’s Clive Myrie dismissed Britain’s energy crisis — caused by the war in Ukraine — that has thrown millions of people into severe financial distress as “insignificant” compared with concerns over the queen’s health. The climate emergency, pandemic, the deadly folly of the U.S. and NATO’s proxy war in Ukraine, soaring inflation, the rise of neo-fascist movements and deepening social inequality will be ignored as the press spews florid encomiums to class rule. There will be 10 days of official mourning.
In 1953, Her Majesty’s Government sent three warships, along with 700 troops, to its colony British Guiana, suspended the constitution and overthrew the democratically elected government of Cheddi Jagan. Her Majesty’s Government helped to build and long supported the apartheid government in South Africa. Her Majesty’s Government savagely crushed the Mau Mau independence movement in Kenya from 1952 to 1960, herding 1.5 million Kenyans into concentration camps where many were tortured. British soldiers castrated suspected rebels and sympathizers, often with pliers, and raped girls and women. By the time India won independence in 1947 after two centuries of British colonialism, Her Majesty’s Government had looted $45 trillion from the country and violently crushed a series of uprisings, including the First War of Independence in 1857. Her Majesty’s Government carried out a dirty warto break the Greek Cypriot War of Independence from 1955 to 1959 and later in Yemen from 1962 to 1969. Torture, extrajudicial assassinations, public hangings and mass executions by the British were routine. Following a protracted lawsuit, the British governmentagreed to pay nearly £20 million in damages to over 5,000 victims of British abuse during war in Kenya, andin 2019 another payout was made to survivors of torture from the conflict in Cyprus. The British state attempts to obstruct lawsuits stemming from its colonial history. Its settlements are a tiny fraction of the compensation paid to British slave owners in 1835, once it — at least formally — abolished slavery.
During her 70-year reign, the queen never offered an apology or called for reparations.
The point of social hierarchy and aristocracy is to sustain a class system that makes the rest of us feel inferior. Those at the top of the social hierarchy hand out tokens for loyal service, including the Order of the British Empire (OBE). The monarchy is the bedrock of hereditary rule and inherited wealth. This caste system filters down from the Nazi-loving House of Windsor to the organs of state security and the military. It regiments society and keeps people, especially the poor and the working class, in their “proper” place.
The British ruling class clings to the mystique of royalty and fading cultural icons as James Bond, the Beatles and the BBC, along with television shows such as “Downton Abbey” — where in one episode the aristocrats and servants are convulsed in fevered anticipation when King George V and Queen Mary schedule a visit — to project a global presence. Winston Churchill’s bust remains on loan to the White House. These myth machines sustain Great Britain’s “special” relationship with the United States. Watch the satirical film In the Loop to get a sense of what this “special” relationship looks like on the inside.
It was not until the 1960s that “coloured immigrants or foreigners” were permitted to work in clerical roles in the royal household, although they had been hired as domestic servants. The royal household and its heads are legally exempt from laws that prevent race and sex discrimination, what Jonathan Cook calls “an apartheid system benefitting the Royal Family alone.” Meghan Markle, who is of mixed race and who contemplated suicide during her time as a working royal, said that an unnamed royal expressed concern about the skin color of her unborn son.
I got a taste of this suffocating snobbery in 2014 when I participated in an Oxford Union debate asking whether Edward Snowden was a hero or a traitor. I went a day early to be prepped for the debate by Julian Assange, then seeking refuge in the Ecuadorian Embassy and currently in His Majesty’s Prison Belmarsh. At a lugubrious black-tie dinner preceding the event, I sat next to a former MP who asked me two questions I had never been asked before in succession. “When did your family come to America?” he said, followed by “What schools did you attend?” My ancestors, on both sides of my family, arrived from England in the 1630s. My graduate degree is from Harvard. If I had failed to meet his litmus test, he would have acted as if I did not exist.
Those who took part in the debate – my side arguing that Snowdon was a hero narrowly won – signed a leather-bound guest book. Taking the pen, I scrawled in large letters that filled an entire page: “Never Forget that your greatest political philosopher, Thomas Paine, never went to Oxford or Cambridge.”
Paine, the author of the most widely read political essays of the 18th century, Rights of Man, The Age of Reason and Common Sense, blasted the monarchy as a con. “A French bastard landing with an armed banditti and establishing himself as King of England against the consent of the natives, is in plain terms a very paltry rascally original…The plain truth is that the antiquity of the English monarchy will not bear looking into,” he wrote of William the Conqueror. He ridiculed hereditary rule. “Of more worth is one honest man to society, and in the sight of God, than all the crowned ruffians that ever lived.” He went on: “One of the strangest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is that nature disproves it, otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ass for a lion.” He called the monarch “the royal brute of England.”
When the British ruling class tried to arrest Paine, he fled to France where he was one of two foreigners elected to serve as a delegate in the National Convention set up after the French Revolution. He denounced the calls to execute Louis XVI. “He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression,” Paine said. “For if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.” Unchecked legislatures, he warned, could be as despotic as unchecked monarchs. When he returned to America from France, he condemned slavery and the wealth and privilege accumulated by the new ruling class, including George Washington, who had become the richest man in the country. Even though Paine had done more than any single figure to rouse the country to overthrow the British monarchy, he was turned into a pariah, especially by the press, and forgotten. He had served his usefulness. Six mourners attended his funeral, two of whom were Black. You can watch my talk with Cornel West and Richard Wolff on Thomas Paine here.
There is a pathetic yearning among many in the U.S. and Britain to be linked in some tangential way to royalty. White British friends often have stories about ancestors that tie them to some obscure aristocrat. Donald Trump, who fashioned his own heraldic coat of arms, was obsessed with obtaining a state visit with the queen. This desire to be part of the club, or validated by the club, is a potent force the ruling class has no intention of giving up, even if hapless King Charles III, who along with his family treated his first wife Diana with contempt, makes a mess of it.
Copyright Robert Scheer, 2020.
CHRIS HEDGES is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief for the paper. He is the host of the Emmy Award-nominated RT America show On Contact. His most recent book is "America: The Farewell Tour" (2019).
