Word: clowning
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...lighting changes with every few sentences of dialogue, to underscore shifts in mood and to cue the audience that it has entered a realm of symbol and ritual. Pickup trucks outside a storefront sound as loud as jets. A half-demented Southern belle wears makeup reminiscent of a clown...
Later they toured the debate site, and Ailes, the modern master of muscular advertising, became the clown prince of debate prep. He joked with Bush, teased him, made him laugh. He told Bush at one point, "If he brings up Iran- contra, just walk over there and deck him." When Bush returned to the Beverly Hills Hotel, he received a massage and spent the final 45 minutes before the debate with Ailes...
When the plague starts to abate and things begin to return to normal, the troupe starts to disintegrate. So does the play. One by one, members abandon the happy life of the wandering clown in pursuit of more earthly professions. And as they leave, the play grows more and more serious...
...about tragedy and comedy. Among many other things, his father died when he was a teenager, and his older brother's accomplishments became a terrible burden. Yet when life crowded him, as it did so often, Billy, intelligent, sensitive, shy and insecure, would hide behind the mask of the clown. Last week Billy was buried in the red Georgia earth near Plains, his beloved hometown. His friends and family -- including brother Jimmy, the former President -- were there. They knew, if the rest of the world did not, what they had lost...
...clown had ceased to be funny. He was successfully treated for alcoholism, moved out of Plains, took a job with a mobile-home company and tried to resume a normal life. Then came the cancer. In a sense, though, it wasn't his body that defeated him; it was the outside world. As Jimmy Carter wrote in his memoir, "He was the president's brother, and therefore fair game...