Animal Rights Poetry and Prose By Heidi Coon from All-Creatures.org

Clowns Are to Rodeos what Ronald McDonald Was to McDonald's

Clowns are to rodeos what Ronald McDonald was to marketing McDonalds putrefying animal parts to the masses.

This is the description of a rodeo clown:

“Today in the USA, the job is split into two separate ones, hiring bullfighters who protect the riders from the bull, and entertainers, a barrelman and a clown, who provides comic humor.”

I have been researching rodeo clowns and their effects on rodeo children and have found the tactic to be similar to Ronald McDonald's role in systematic desensitization of kids to eat dead animals.

While there isn’t really much literature on this, it seems simple enough to deduce that the clowns play a crucial role in the desensitization and normalization of rodeo.

What happens is that rodeo clowns cause kids to laugh after an animal is injured or killed in the arena?

The clowns' effectiveness isn’t just with children though. Their banter and antics are just as effective with the adults. Clowns are used to draw attention away from injuries, but in general they’re there because the rodeo events alone aren’t interesting enough to entertain a crowd. Clowns are comic relief.

Children of rodeo parents are not shielded from animal violence, instead they are directly exposed to egregious cruelty.

What cannot be monitored or ameliorated are the corrosive effects that witnessing animal cruelty has on children. Children who are exposed frequently engage in “abuse reactive” behaviors. It is re-enacting of the abuse that they have been exposed to.

Rodeo thugs make future rodeo thugs.

For example, let’s look at "Mutton busting." Children, 4-7 years old, are placed on the backs of sheep who immediately try to get the kids off as soon as they’re released from chutes they were held in before the event. The children are told to hold on tight and to stay on the sheep for as long as they can (mere seconds). The average "mutton buster" is thrown on the dirt and is usually crying in seconds. Clowns can be seen immediately picking the kids up, dusting them off and behaving in a manner that quickly swaps their tears for giggles. Way to go, rodeo!

Mutton busting imparts to children that animals can be harassed for fun. This is rodeo animal cruelty for kids, encouraging children to participate in sanctioned animal abuse as a means to win a cash prize is abuse itself.

Rodeo gives cash prizes to little hellions for aggressively chasing and tackling young animals. Another children’s event at rodeo is when pony foals are released in the arena so children from the audience are encouraged to chase and tackle the foals. This must be abolished.

As a loud voice against rodeo, I get a lot of pro rodeo thugs who troll me. The most common response I get to rodeo animal abuse information is that I am a ‘tree hugger’ and, that they don’t want to …’raise a pussy’…

While pro rodeo folk claim they don’t want their kids to be pussies, they don’t have the ability to realize that their children actually are animal abusers, uncivilized like their parents.

Rodeo contestants violently prey upon young animals disguised as family entertainment!!!

It’s pay-per-view! It’s a sport!

Let’s end this demented shit. And, let’s be honest about it. Regardless of the argument that it’s “tradition” to torture an animal for entertainment, cruelty is cruelty and cannot be allowed whether a child or an adult is committing the act.

Keep in mind that sgteer roping, bronc riding, calf tie down (etc.) all seriously injure, sometimes kill, animals. Many of these animals come from feed lots which means those poor bastards are being tortured before they’re sent to slaughter.

©Heidi Coon, 2023

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