Word of the day: be-clown

From Ron Rosenbaum’s excellent Slate article: The Tea Party’s Toxic Take on History

I think this is why it bothers me so much when Tea Party ignoramuses put swastikas on their anti-Obama posters. They disgrace themselves, they insult the dead martyrs to the truth, by lumping socialism with fascism and Obama with Hitler. They not only disgrace themselves; they be-clown themselves, they distort the historical consciousness of everyone they spread the comparison to.

That’s the Tea Party to me: an incoherent, jibbering mob of idiots be-clowning themselves.

The use of ‘be-clown’ is relatively new; besides the Rosenbaum article, the word only has a few Google hits from 2008 and 2009. But I think this word could come in mighty handy to describe the ignorant gun-toting racist freaks that currently populate our news cycles.

See, almost exactly two years ago, I predicted that the Obama years would bring a return of 90’s-style conspiracy paranoia. I didn’t foresee the nature of the TP-ers, with their poorly-informed reality-allergic antics, nor did I appreciate the sheer paralysing dumbth of their wingnut queen Sarah Palin. It wasn’t hard to see the 24-hour megaphone of Fox News stirring the pot, but the popularity of Glenn Beck was a bit of a surprise.

Ah, well, it’s tough not being psychic. But even I can tell that there’s going to be a good deal more be-clowning in future.