Coulrophobia is Nothing to Clown About!

Coulrophobia is defined as an abnormal or exaggerated fear of clowns, especially common in children but also found in some teenagers and adults. I humbly submit there is nothing abnormal or exaggerated about fearing clowns. Indeed, it may be possible that in our intense fixation of a coming apocalypse brought about by machines, aliens, apes, or the Antichrist, we have overlooked a far more likely means of our destruction: clowns.

Think about it. What are clowns smiling about? And what about the sad clowns? Why are they sad? They’re clowns, shouldn’t they be happy? And what about the well-known, silent ally of the clown: the mime? What is this box they are supposedly trapped within? Could it be a metaphor for their ambition to dominate humanity? Clearly, there is something more insidious hiding behind the tears of a clown. We can trace the threads of this conspiracy to show that clowns represent an existential threat to humanity. Google “Clown College” and you will find 875,000 references on the web. Google the breeding ground of the mime, i.e. “Mime Theater”, and you will find an additional 787,000 references. This sample (admittedly broad, rough and unscientific) suggests there are over 1.5 million means of recruitment for bringing the brainwashed into the fraternity of clowns and mimes. By comparison, Google “Al Qaeda training” and you will find just over 3 million references on the web. The fact that Clown College and Mime Theater do not merit a similar number of references indicates how really insidious and ominous is this international conspiracy for clown and mime domination of the world. They are flying detected under the radar, unwillingly aided by those in the mainstream who dismiss the fear of clowns as irrational or ridiculous.

As one might expect, Hollywood has been an integral part of this international conspiracy from the beginning. Hollywood regularly masquerades thinly-veiled recruitment efforts as fantasy and horror films such as Tim Burton’s version of Batman, The Dark Knight, Stephen King’s IT, and Rob Zombie’s House of a 1000 Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects. Hollywood has even depicted how clowns can undermine law and order in a civil society for the sheer fun of it in Bill Murray’s Quick Change. Indeed, Hollywood’s role in this conspiracy stretches back more than 80 years to the release of the 1928 silent Lon Chaney film Laugh, Clown, Laugh. Is it a coincidence that Lon Chaney was referred to as the “Man of a Thousand Faces”? In a lifetime, how many faces may a clown present to the world? A thousand, perhaps? Perhaps now, you can begin to see the outlines of this threat to our very survival.

So far, fortunately, we have been spared the sum of our fears colliding in an unholy nexus of terror. If Al Qaeda really wanted to terrorize us, then they would infiltrate our clown colleges and mime theaters. They could then psychologically scar a whole generation of our children without ever resorting to the use of a single bomb. Let’s hope they decide against sending in the clowns… oh wait, they’re already here…