The Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage and I were getting ourselves situated in the living room with some after supper coffee while watching the little bit of TV. These days, a little bit of TV is about all a person can handle.

Nothing quite measures up to a nice hot cup of coffee after a scrumptious supper and if anybody can scrumpturize a supper, it is the Gracious Mistress of the Parsonage. Every once in a while she will point out the fact that I am not as skinny as I once was. My response to her is simply this, “It’s your fault for being such a wonderful cook.”

That stops the conversation; she smiles, sits back and thinks about what I just said. I sit back and smile thinking that I have gotten out of another bit of a pickle.

It is very hard to keep up with the news today because we have such technology that whatever happens anywhere in the universe we have an immediate story about it.

I do not know about anybody else, but I am just a little bit tired of the news these days. My wife and I were shocked this week to see a news report about, of all things, clowns. These clowns, so the reporter went on, were scaring people and committing crimes like robbery.

Really?

Then they had some footage of somebody dressed up as a clown, frightening people and threatening to do bodily harm. Now, some places are forbidding clowns to show up. Even during the Halloween season, some stores are not selling clown costumes.

How far have we gone in our culture when clowns are a threat to our culture?

It was not always that way. In high school, for example, I was often referred to as the class clown. That was a title of deep reverence and pride. To be the class clown meant you were doing things that made other people laugh. You were joking and clowning around and creating a great deal of merriment. With the tension many of our high school teachers created in class, the class clown had an important job of bringing down the tension.

If there were awards for being the class clown, I certainly would have gotten one in high school. They only have awards for scholarship and athletics. I say nothing is more important in a class than the class clown. There should be some kind of recognition in this area.

Then when I was growing up, my mother kept telling me to, “Stop clowning around!”

At the time, I really did not understand what she was trying to say. In high school, it was a measure of acceptance, but in the home, it was something inappropriate.

Although I do respect my mother, I have yet to “stop clowning around.”

Now, I have my wife telling me to, “Stop clowning around.” I have often wondered if this is not some kind of gene passed on to every woman.

There was not just one news story about these fallacious clowns doing all sorts of criminal activity, but it seemed to be as if a trend was developing.

I have a friend of mine who is a professional clown and does all kinds of work with children’s and charity activities. You would not find a nicer person in all the world than my good clown friend. I have not talked to him about this new development in clownville, but I am sure he has a good take on it.

The purpose of the clown is to make people laugh. That’s all.

Now even a certain fast food chain has given their clown a vacation until some of this nonsense passes over. I think this is stupid.

I believe that if somebody is misusing the clown motif for “naughty activities,” the people who are affected the most should justly punish him. And by that, I mean children and people who still are acting like children.

If any of these people dressed in a clown outfit should be caught doing something that is unclownish there should be some very dire circumstances administered in an appropriate way. Like a pie in the face.

At one time, no circus was complete without a whole bunch a clowns keeping the merriment going strong. All of these false clowns should be gathered together and dealt with rather brutishly. After all, if you are going to defame such a sacred character in the American culture, you need to be dealt with very severely. How dare somebody do this sort of thing to an iconic figure of American society?

Why is it we have some people who will take something that is very precious to certain people, turn it around and make it a very negative and nasty thing? There should be a law against that sort of thing. Where is the politician that is going to put his or her foot down against this kind of travesty in our society?

Is nothing sacred anymore in our country? I think the apostle Paul had something like this in mind when he wrote, “Unto the pure all things are pure: but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure; but even their mind and conscience is defiled” (Titus 1:15).

Why will some people take something that other people get pleasure from and turn it into something negative? Only a corrupt mind would do this.