Tuesday, March 16, 2010

More Coulrophobia

In doing my post of the 13 clowns that you should be afraid of, I missed out on the #1 clown killer: Ronald McDonald. He kills more people with his fatty, artery clogging, sugary, diabetes inducing, salty, hypertension pumping, high caloric sludge that is pushed on us as food than all of the other clowns combined. He looks so benign, which is why I didn't think of him the first time around.
He has not always looked so nice: Willard Scott was the first Ronald, and the way he portrayed him would make J.W. Gacy himself shudder. Much of what would become the archetype of Ronald was in Willard's portrayal. The red hair, oversized red shoes, red lipstick extending to his cheeks, gloves, stripes on a red and yellow outfit. He also wore a box on his head and a paper cup on his nose. I think what makes his portrayal of Ronald so creepy is that he is portrayed by Willard Scott. There is a crazy homicidal look in Willard's eyes at all times, and this is only accentuated by clown makeup.
Ronald can't bear all of the blame for our obese nation of people slowly marching towards their own deaths, but he is one of the largest contributing factors. He pushes the junk to us when we are young, just like a drug dealer outside of a schoolyard. Traditionally his commercials were restricted to the realm of commercial children's programming, but in recent years McDonald's has become a major sponsor of PBS kid shows. Now there is a minute long spot before Sesame Street telling of all the good that McDonald's does. Ronald shows kids how to use their imagination in a spot reminiscent of the Reading Rainbow intro.
It is for these reasons that I should have given Ronald McDonald
the #1 spot for clown that you should be most afraid of, instead of Pogo.


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Heavy Metal Yogi by Nick Matthaes is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.