The Clowning Of America

Download or read book The Clowning of America written by Orwell Goode and published by . This book was released on 2020-09-09 with total page 207 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why is America's politico-cultural landscape in its current condition?This book offers a tongue-in-cheek outsider's perspective to the current unraveling tensions as we enter another election cycle. As riots, "peaceful" protests, lockdowns, phony scandals, and escalating civil unrest dominate much of the news cycle, the media's complicity in driving crucial narratives as well as Western Government's impotent "anarcho-tyranny" have become apparent. Outrage mobs and witch hunts on social media seek to ruin people's lives for the sake of ideological conformity and wielding social power. Megacorporations are at the helm when driving much recent social change. A hundred years ago, revolutionaries were draped in red flags when leading their charge; now, HR and Marketing departments slap a cheap rainbow filter on their brand's logo every now and then on their social media pages. Branding has adopted its own form to push a silent "online" revolution, but it has also assumed the role of identity. Both socio-economic status and subcultural affiliation have been subsumed by branding.And if you don't like it, the alternative is a anemic, lily-livered option that serves as nothing more than a release valve. Briefly touching upon key issues before granting more power to the aforementioned megacorporations driving the very social change that undermines their non-economic positions.Some, however, aside from all this nonsense, just want to be left alone and grill, for God's sake. But current trends turn a placid pastime into a nostalgic pipe dream. The frailties of the current system are increasingly obvious - both sides have shown discontent in their political representatives. And in a very "online" age, the way in which said discontent is expressed has evolved, taking on a nature outside language alone - as memes are worth a thousand words. This is the clowning of America.

Download or read book The Clown Egg Register written by Luke Stephenson and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2018-03-20 with total page 233 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Step right up for the Greatest Book on Earth! For more than 70 years, Clowns International—the oldest established clowning organization—has been painting the faces of its members on eggs. Each one is a record of a clown's unique identity, preserving the unwritten rule that no clown should copy another's look. This mesmerizing volume collects more than 150 of these portraits, from 1946 to the modern day, accompanied by short personal histories of many of the clowns. Here are Tricky Nicky, Taffy, Bobo, Sammy Sunshine, the legendary Emmett Kelly, and Jolly Jack, clowning since 1977 and still performing today with a penguin puppet named Biscuit. A treasure just like the eggs it enshrines, The Clown Egg Register is an extraordinary archive of images and lives of the men and women behind the make-up.

Download or read book Shalimar the Clown written by Salman Rushdie and published by Vintage Canada. This book was released on 2009-02-24 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Shalimar the Clown is a masterpiece from one of our greatest writers, a dazzling novel that brings together the fiercest passions of the heart and the gravest conflicts of our time into an astonishingly powerful, all-encompassing story. Max Ophuls’ memorable life ends violently in Los Angeles in 1993 when he is murdered by his Muslim driver Noman Sher Noman, also known as Shalimar the Clown. At first the crime seems to be politically motivated—Ophuls was previously ambassador to India, and later US counterterrorism chief—but it is much more. Ophuls is a giant, an architect of the modern world: a Resistance hero and best-selling author, brilliant economist and clandestine US intelligence official. But it is as Ambassador to India that the seeds of his demise are planted, thanks to another of his great roles—irresistible lover. Visiting the Kashmiri village of Pachigam, Ophuls lures an impossibly beautiful dancer, the ambitious (and willing) Boonyi Kaul, away from her husband, and installs her as his mistress in Delhi. But their affair cannot be kept secret, and when Boonyi returns home, disgraced and obese, it seems that all she has waiting for her is the inevitable revenge of her husband: Noman Sher Noman, Shalimar the Clown. He was an acrobat and tightrope walker in their village’s traditional theatrical troupe; but soon Shalimar is trained as a militant in Kashmir’s increasingly brutal insurrection, and eventually becomes a terrorist with a global remit and a deeply personal mission of vengeance. In this stunningly rich book everything is connected, and everyone is a part of everyone else. A powerful love story, intensely political and historically informed, Shalimar the Clown is also profoundly human, an involving story of people’s lives, desires and crises, as well as—in typical Rushdie fashion—a magical tale where the dead speak and the future can be foreseen.

Download or read book Tears of a Clown written by Dana Milbank and published by Doubleday. This book was released on 2010-10-05 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank takes a fair and balanced look at the unsettling rise of the silly Fox News host Glenn Beck. Thomas Jefferson famously wrote that “the tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.” In America in 2010, Glenn Beck provides the very refreshment Jefferson had in mind: Whether he’s the patriot or the tyrant, he’s definitely full of manure. The wildly popular Fox News host with three million daily viewers perfectly captures the vitriol of our time and the fact-free state of our political culture. The secret to his success is his willingness to traffic in the fringe conspiracies and Internet hearsay that others wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole: death panels, government health insurance for dogs, FEMA concen­tration camps, an Obama security force like Hitler’s SS. But Beck, who is, according to a recent Gallup poll, admired by more Americans than the Pope, has nothing in his background that identifies him as an ideologue, giving rise to the speculation that his right-wing shtick is just that—the act of a brilliant showman, known for both his over-the-top daily out­rages and for weeping on the air. Milbank describes, with lacerating wit, just how the former shock jock without a college degree has managed to become the most recognizable leader of antigovernment conservatives and exposes him as the guy who is single-handedly giving patri­otism a bad name.

Download or read book A Fool's Guide to Clowning written by Leslie Ann Akin and published by . This book was released on 2017-09-10 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Clown of God written by Tomie dePaola and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2018-03-06 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This beautiful new edition of Tomie dePaola’s 1978 classic retelling of a French legend stars a little juggler whose unique talent leads him to what might be a Christmas miracle. Little Giovanni is poor and homeless, but he can do something wonderful: he can juggle. The people of Sorrento marvel at his talents, and before long, he becomes famous throughout Italy for his rainbow of colored balls that delight the nobility and townspeople alike. But as the years pass, Giovanni grows old, and his talents begin to fail him. No longer a celebrated performer, he is once again poor and homeless, begging for his food. Until one Christmas Eve, when Giovanni picks up his rainbow of colored balls once more. And what happens next just might be a miracle…

Download or read book City of Clowns written by Daniel Alarcón and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2015-11-03 with total page 73 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gorgeously rendered graphic novel of Daniel Alarcón’s story City of Clowns. From the author of The King Is Always Above the People, which was longlisted for the 2017 National Book Award for Fiction. Oscar “Chino” Uribe is a young Peruvian journalist for a local tabloid paper. After the recent death of his philandering father, he must confront the idea of his father’s other family, and how much of his own identity has been shaped by his father’s murky morals. At the same time, he begins to chronicle the life of street clowns, sad characters who populate the violent and corrupt city streets of Lima, and is drawn into their haunting, fantastical world. This remarkably affecting story by Daniel Alarcón was included in his acclaimed first book, War by Candlelight, and now, in collaboration with artist Sheila Alvarado, it takes on a new, thrilling form. This graphic novel, with its short punches of action and images, its stark contrasts between light and dark, truth and fiction, perfectly corresponds to the tone of Chino’s story. With the city of Lima as a character, and the bold visual language from the story, City of Clowns is moving, menacing, and brilliantly vivid.