I'm not quite sure if Democrat Governor Nixon was involved in any of this. The condemnation of the clown was a tweet from the Lieutenant Governor, who is a Republican, according to the website Jody pointed us to.

This is a tempest in a teapot. The rodeo organizers are doing public relations, they don't want to lose business over this, and they are willing to throw the clown under the bus to cover their butts. The NAACP is doing their usual squealing on anything that even remotely can be considered as racism. Embarassing racists and condemning racism, whether it is legitimate or not, is their job, and it is constitutionally protected free speech also.

I think what the clown did as a performer was also constitutionally protected free speech, even if it was racist and offensive (and yes it was). His firing was unjust, and probably against the law. But there has also been a gleeful flap about this from the Conservative blogosphere, those guys are always whining about how they are being ground under the statist heel of the Liberal thugs. Those poor babies, they are so abused.

Saturday Night Live, not exactly what you might call a Republican propaganda organ, has skewered Obama a number of times, with both black actors and whites in blackface. No one, Left or Right, cared.

Poking fun at our elected officials is never to be questioned, when we are forced to be obsequious to them, when caricature, satire and parody are forbidden, you can kiss our freedom goodbye. So even if this particular incident was offensive and racist, (and I believe it was) we must never use the power of the government to attack that right, or punish those who exercise it.

But if private groups want to object and pressure and demand, that is their right too. And if Conservatives are upset about that, then it must be working, exactly the way its supposed to, and I'm all for it.