The Greatest Show on Earth R.I.P.
Well, the Big Top is coming down and the elephants and the clowns will have to find new homes. Ringling Bros/ Barnum and Bailey is throwing in the towel. It couldn’t find enough audience for its traveling extravaganza and so another piece of Americana bites the dust of the digital 21st Century. Maybe you’re too young to remember when the circus came to town, midgets and lion tamers and acrobats on the high trapeze, cotton candy and the smell of sawdust, but back when I was a little kid, it was a Big Deal.
Strange too. Weird people, the circus performers, living on the road, traveling by train, hauling elephants for godsake across the continent to every mid-size town they could set up the Big Tops. It was nostalgic then, an era out of its time but slogging on despite accusations of animal cruelty. Still, you have to admit, those elephants standing on the rumps of the ones in front of them were a sight to see for kids used to stupid chickens and funny looking goats. You don’t see cows trained for bovine acrobatics, that’s for sure.
The only 3 ring circus now is in the White House, maybe not the greatest show on earth, but a helluva carnival these days. The spokespeople for Trump, the Ringmaster, can hold their own with their aerial verbal gymnastics, flying with the greatest of ease, touching the ground rarely. And the jugglers and the clowns, well, you be the judge. If the elephants can find new homes when the tents come down, these folks will be fine too, probably 6 figure salaries as lobbyists soon.
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Tags: 3 ring circus, barnum and bailey, big top, ringling bros.
What a shock. Canning the elephants seemed a good move, but what about making all those clowns get in the tiny car? Charlton Heston ran the circus in the movie; Jack Palance ran it on TV. Mickey Dolenz was Circus Boy. Now the GOP elephant is crushing us all.
All those clowns coming out of a little Volkswagen…. Now we know VW fudged the data. Probably only three clowns per mile, not the 26 cpm they claimed.