No Bozos Here, Says World’s Leading Bozo Expert

Breaking BozoGate News! A visitor to our original Christine O’Donnell Bozo post thickens the plot:

My name is Pat Cashin. I have a daily clown history blog called clownalley.net and am on the Board of Directors of the International Clown Hall of Fame and Research Center in Baraboo, WI.

I’ve researched the Bozo character for many, many years. I have NEVER heard of Daniel O’Donnell portraying the character.

Our deep and sincere thanks to Mr. Cashin for confirming our initial suspicions. (And happy first birthday, Jamie! Yo Gabba Gabba!) Now if the Lamestream Media will just step up to the plate, we might get some action here.

Update: New York Times covers BozoGate — and us:

“They would leave, I would come in and work for two or three weeks, whatever, until the regular Bozo came back,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “I was the fill-in Bozo.” He worked out of a local station in Jenkintown, Pa., he said, adding that station employees did his make-up and hair. He would also do remote appearances, got to supermarkets, meet kids, sign autographs and ride around in the Bozo Mobile. His son Daniel was his assistant.

And finally, The Truth is Revealed: Christine O’Donnell’s dad was a Second-String Bozo.

BOZOGATE: THE COMPLETE SAGA

1. A Very Special Stinque Investigation

2. “Where’s the Bozo Certificate?” Billboard

3. Channel Your Outrage Into Our Bank Account

4. The Times Rides Again

5. The Reckoning

6. Adventures in Surrealism: BozoGate on Countdown

7. It’s Always Bozo in Philadelphia

66 Comments

Meanwhile in more important news no word back from Queen Margrethe. Which, I must admit, is a little disappointing.

However, I was at the opera tonight – Nabucco, essentially a sword and sandal epic with tunes. It has something to do with them trying to find a jewish virgin. So right off the bat you know it’s not going to end well. There was a certain amount of bondage and girl-on-girl action plus the bearish daddy-type got put in a straight-jacket. Fairly ridiculous design with distracting bling at unexpected moments. Plus, it’s hard to take soldier-types seriously when they’re wearing white puttees which just scream ‘band-call’ to me. But in the 2nd act there was a very satisfactory outbreak of virility among the men of the chorus with back-slapping and wide-arm man-hugs in the best operatic tradition. Just in passing I should note that Happy Villagers were all over the damn place singing about shit. Which was okay since it’s an opera. However, when they started telling each other their nipples were hard from fear I did want to point out that there was no need to do that since everybody else is frightened too. The best thing might be to tell the fucking audience. The chorus of the jewish slaves was pretty grand though I have no idea what they’re singing about. The lack of a decent chinese restaurant perhaps? But even better was an extended chorus sung a cappella with solo lines and such as that really took off. Plus the mezzo, a Christiane Amanpour lookalike who had to sing her first big number lying down on a fucking sofa, finally got to sneer at the audience and let it rip. But.

Towards the end of the first act there was a commotion in the first row behind the conductor. He stopped and it was discovered that a woman was having what looked like a heart attack. The stage manager came out and actually said, “Is there a doctor in the house.” The curtain was lowered, a doctor appeared, the woman was helped out, the brass section vanished, the conductor returned, the curtain rose and the interrupted scene was performed. All done with no fuss, no shrieking and running about, no scenes in the aisle as the stricken lady was helped out, no calls to Jesus. Just calm, practical, good-natured coping. And I thought, these people would so rule the senate. They would just go down the list. Health-care? Done. Schools? Done. Infrastructure? Done. Green energy? Done. Universal access to Bang & Olufsen? Done. Plus the hotness. Sigh. We could all be so happy. Maybe not Jim deMint, but he’d be in exile in Ala so who gives a shit.

Are we sure about this Pat Cashin person? He says he lives at the Jersey Shore but did not use any obscenities, make any spelling errors or once refer to tanning or the gym. Since I get all of my information about people from MTV reality shows, you can understand my discomfort.

@homofascist: I did some identity verification under the hood, although I forgot to check for spraytan.

Meanwhile, we have a nibble from a Major Online Media Outlet. We’ll see what happens.

Why am I not surprised?

When I was doing initial research into this topic on Saturday I came across this comment to a story about Vance Colvig
, son of Pinto Colvig, the first Bozo, and a Bozo in his own right:

In the early 70’s, my sister and I were in the audience as part of our local (Philadelphia) Bozo Show. It was a small crowd that day, so almost every kid in the stands got a chance to be on TV, even my sister, who would have normally been considered too young on any other day. Our biggest Bozo memory? – Bozo’s filthy, yellow teeth. No wonder my sister now hates clowns…

I’m still interested in finding out whether any record can be found of Daniel O’Donnell being an AFTRA member and how likely it is that he would not have been a member if he had in fact “worked a series of small television roles” as well as “his signature gig — playing Bozo the Clown.”

@karen marie: It still might be the case that he performed under a different name, although I’m going to go out on a limb and presume that Mr. Cashin would know both the stage and legal names of Local Bozos.

Meanwhile, I’m sitting on a huge irony if this hits. Well, huge inside-joke irony. We’ll see what happens.

@nojo: Way to go with the original research, Nojo!

ADD: Are the hamsters in the server ready for a possible uptick in page views given the NYT shout-out?

My favorite part of the follow-up interview with Celibabe’s dad:

“To be an official Bozo, you had to go to a special school in Texas,” explained Mr. O’Donnell. He never did.

[insert Aggie joke here]

Oooh! Update!

I got a mention in almost-the-NY-Times! I’m famous!

@SanFranLefty: And special thanks to karen marie for the original tip and bulldog determination. Team Stinque Go!

@karen marie: We’re going to call you BozoTruther from now on, per the reporter.

We need some apocalyptic vulgarity for the front page! Simply wouldn’t do to greet all the NYT visitors with plain ol’ snark – like bringing dinner to guests on paper plates! ;)

Oh, and this. Apparently DeMented was feeling unloved.

In a follow-up email, Mark Liebovich writes:

He considers it his own personal signature gig, so who am I to judge?

All well and good, but that’s not what he wrote in the article. The Times still needs to run a correction.

@SanFranLefty: Yay!

I am famous!

Any minute I expect to get a call from Keefe and/or Rachel.

@karen marie: Could he be more condescending? What an asshole.

@redmanlaw: Yeah, well, he’s embarrassed. It’s understandable.

@Dodgerblue: Well, Nojo does get all credit for keeping the story alive.

Thanks, Nojo!

@karen marie: He’s tallish. Don’t forget him either.

@SanFranLefty: “To be an official Bozo, you had to go to a special school in Texas”

So there is a Bozo Certificate! I may have to hunt that down, see what one looks like.

Meanwhile, TPM picks up on BozoGate — linking to the Times, but not mentioning us.

And so, the inside joke: Megan’s working at TPM now.

@nojo: So does all of this mean that, if Christine’s dad was in fact a Bozo, he was a Bogus Bozo? Sort of like claiming you went to Oxford when all you did was attend a lecture there given by a non-Oxford educator? Just askin’ ….

@blogenfreude: To be fair — damn! — it was Bro who claimed Bozodom for Dad, not Celibabe. Dad wouldn’t talk to the Times last week, but he took their call this morning.

Comment of the day from a Times reader:

I am confused how someone believes that “lying” about a childhood icon be barred from serving in the Senate, and to do so by claiming Constitutional authority.

I may have to frame that.

@nojo: Hilarious. You just can’t make stuff like that up.

@karen marie: If you don’t change your avatar to Bozo Truther you are missing the opportunity of a lifetime…

@nojo: That would look good as a wall plaque or on a t-shirt. Maybe put the Stinque logo over the breast pocket of the shirt and the quote on the back. Don’t use CafePress, though, their shirts are not good quality.

Stinque is on the map now, y’all. We might have to clean the bathrooms and wash the glassware once in a while.

@nojo:
There are white lies and then there’s a whole other level of delusion.

Or… “Liar liar pants on fire.”

Congrats on the National Mention, Nojo. I’ve always thought of you as kind of a ringleader, so this clown thing is right up your alley.

@SanFranLefty:

Any candidate that has to start off by trying to convince the electorate that she’s not barking mad has a concession speech in their future.

I’m not a witch, but I can see that in my crystal ball.

@SanFranLefty: And if she’s trying to convince the voters she’s not a witch, was it a good idea to wear black?

@homofascist: Sadly, I have no clue how to change my avatar.

And I am even more incompetent at coming up with said avatar.

Nojo? Can you do the art for me?

Something that doesn’t make my ass look fat, please.

tj/Ducks Jersey Lands Dude in Hot Water

Haas grabbed a baseball bat out of his sports bag, and stepped into the bathroom.

He slowly pulled the shower curtain open, and found a strange man lying in his bathtub, covered in mud, sweating profusely and wearing Haas’ University of Oregon Ducks football jersey.

“It scared the crap out of me,” said Haas, whose two young daughters, ages 3 and 5, were asleep on the couch.

The man in the tub reached for his wallet, pulled out a $100 bill, and offered it to Haas to keep him from calling police.

http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2010/10/portland_man_finds_stranger_in.html

@al2o3cr: Excellent point–we need a command performance from FCS to get some rank vulgarity on the front page. Now where did we put that graphic of skullfucking jeebus?….

@karen marie: Write me in the sandbox, dear, and tell me what you want- I’ll do it for you.
Congrats to you too, by the way.

@karen marie: I made Rachel laugh on the air once when I called her radio show.

@redmanlaw: That means she loves you. Make your move.

@karen marie: Congratulations on forcing a reporter of the New York Times to actually question a “fact” they were told by the brother of a Senate candidate. It’s reassuring to again see that political investigation has gone the way of the passenger pigeons in this country, even in this bastion of the liberal slant on the news. We really aren’t imagining that the content of “news” is a fantasy.

@Dave H: Well, it would be nice if they got off their asses when I wrote to complain about something actually, you know, important to people’s lives.

I’m glad though that this has been “officially” clarified, because it really irked me to think that a lying grifter was going to be allowed an ounce of cover for her and her family’s exaggeration of the truth, no matter how trivial.

She is right about one thing: there is no excuse for a lie (except if you’re hiding the equivalent of a Jew from the equivalent of the Nazis). Too bad she doesn’t practice what she preaches.

Got your Bozo right here:

“Senior U.S. District Judge Jack T. Camp Jr., former chief judge of the U.S. District Court in Atlanta just got arrested for buying coke, weed, and prescription painkillers. From a stripper.”

Reagan appointee!

Paging Cubbie!

http://gawker.com/5655666/meet-the-federal-judge-who-allegedly-bought-coke-from-a-stripper

@blogenfreude: Not to mention the spooky weird moving smoke things in the background. Or was that just on my computer?

@redmanlaw: Heh! Tranny stripper? I guess that will open up an appointment on that bench for Obama. Curious if the guy will resign/retire or if we’ll have an impeachment.

@SanFranLefty: I was gonna let that one pass, but it’s certainly swarmworthy. Everyone else just checked the Wikipedia page. We went beyond.

Dana Milbank at WaPo:

In other O’Donnell developments, our friend Mark Leibovich at the New York Times blew the lid off of the O’Donnell-as-Bozo-the-Clown scandal. O’Donnell’s brother, Daniel, told Leibovich that their father, also Daniel, “was Philly’s Bozo for a time.” Acting on a reader tip, Leibovich followed up and got the elder O’Donnell to admit that he was merely a “fill-in Bozo” and not, in fact, Philly’s regular Bozo.

No, Dana, we blew the lid off it. But ours is a humble website, so we’re just happy knowing the story’s finally out there.

@nojo: Darling, I am so on the Googlez tonight to track down every track back for you. And trying to find ways to put some linques back to you at every mention.

When is Benedick going to get off his Danish vacation ass and help you?
(I keed, Snorri…)

ADD: It’s another shout-out there in Millbank’s column to the reader tip from BozoBirther/KM!

ADD2: Someone is appropriating your billboard. Well played.

@SanFranLefty: AJC political columnist also made a reference. Memeorandum is just starting to light up, but of course we’re not there.

Well, the Times did us right. After that, the meme’s to the winds.

Have I mentioned that this finally tops The Great Jezebel Panty Raid?

@nojo: Yes, it tops the Jezebel panty raid, and this time Jamie Sommers won’t be disemvoweled.

@SanFranLefty: Careful about googling “bozo certificate”. Some really weird shit turns up…

@nojo: Eeeeew, clown porn freaks me out. Actually, clowns freak me out. Despite our friend with his museum in Wisconsin, the clowns really freak me out.

I’ve only been googling “bozo stinque” – seems more apropos, actually.

@SanFranLefty: “bozogate” and “bozo o’donnell” also help track The Spreading Meme, with or without us.

Du kære, søde sjove mennesker og din Bozo.

Nu må jeg pakke og gå til lufthavnen.

BTW. I’m a member of AFTRA but on withdrawal as I never work under their contracts. They might tell me if someone is a member or not. If he did work in broadcast TV, like Bill O’Reilly, he would have to be a member. I think SAG does stuff that is filmed even though it’s broadcast, eg Mad Men (settle down, girls). I’ve never been really sure how that works. Very good benefits though not as good as SAG.

Before I fall down the rabbit hole again…

A Times commenter flatly states that there’s no TV station in Jenkintown. But there is — or was: An indie UHF station that changed its callsign to WTAF in 1969 or so, which corresponds to the two listed Philly Bozo years in Wikipedia’s list.

It’s now a Fox O&O in Philly proper, and thus the confusion.

well slap my ass and call me sally–the NY TIMES?!?

K.illing
A.ll
R.eports
E.nabling
N.utjobs

M.aking
A.ll
R.etards
I.nstant
E.nterprise

for STINQUE.com WOO HOO!!!

noge is wearing the nehru and petting silent creative cat.

GO TEAM STINQUE !!!

@nojo: Soon as you get a taste of that first Snickers bar in Jon Stewart’s green room, this will become a pay site. Look at AMC! Look at Mommy 1.0! Look at, um, Greg?

/grovels for grandfathered free commenter status/

ADD: But seriously, well done, fearless leader. Can you do anything about Dennis the Duck Dixon while you’re at it? Los Acereros may still need him this season….

@redmanlaw: Hey … sorry.. whaa? Been buried in writing 25-30 page research papers once a week because I enjoy academic torture, as the Book of Faces can attest.

This is par for the course for these judges, and he’s not the only one in Georgia that I know, although the other ones are in other federal court districts in this lovely state.

@SanFranLefty: Nah. The kid is all wet. I didn’t call the story into question because of what I read in Wikipedia. What I read there merely confirmed my suspicion that the O’Donnells were attempting to pull a fast one.

novomaisky is just upset because he’s discovered that the NY Times can be less reliable than Wikipedia.

@Snorri Haraldsson: Yeah, it sounds as though any on-air television work by Daddy O’Donnell occurred in the late ’60s, early ’70s. I was hoping AFTRA had some kind of archive that could be exploited for information.

I just found this post. Thank you so much for the title “World’s Leading Bozo Expert”. I have studied the character extensively but (believe it or not) there are those out there who are far more deserving ; )

It looks from all that I’ve read in the wake of BozoGate that Mr. O’Donnell was never sent by Larry Harmon Picture Corp. (owners of the Bozo franchise) to El Paso, TX to study with Howell Eurich, KDBC-TV’s Bozo, who trained each of the performers personally.

Mr. Eurich’s son Robin grew up to perform with the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, teach at their Clown College and become Bozo’s sidekick, Rusty the Handyman, on WGN’s longrunning Bozo Show. Today Robin Eurich works with Circus Sarasota’s community outreach program in Sarasota, FL visiting children in area hospitals.

Daniel O’Donnell would not likely have been allowed on-air without having trained in El Paso and from other quotes it seems unlikely that he ever appeared on the show. Without knowing how to apply his own makeup, why would the station even use him for personal appearances more than once? Anyone who believes that clowns have makeup artists and hair stylists doesn’t know much about clowning ; )

Believe it or not, you CANNOT just place another person in a Bozo costume and pass it off to children as the same guy. It simply doesn’t work that way. The voice, the mannerisms, the actor’s face… it all comes together with the makeup to create the character. It’s not a mascot costume from Sesame Place. Kids KNOW when it’s a different guy, ESPECIALLY on television!

The time period that O’Donnell describes (the late 1960s) also makes it EXTREMELY unlikely that the show was shot live. Who would allow a live mic around a studio full of unsupervised kids in the late 60s??? More likely it was shot live-to-tape and in such a case the station would simply re-run earlier episodes than shoot with a faux-Bozo for a “couple of weeks”.

It sounds more and more to me like he may have filled in once or twice for a personal appearance, a supermarket opening or at a movie theater’s kiddie matinee, and like his daughter has “embellished” this into appearing as host of the show.

From all that I’ve read, his story “stinques” to high heaven.

Pat Cashin
clownalley.net

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