Insults fly at Ga.’s largest fair. But nowadays, clowns spew them carefully.
PERRY ― A young man in a black cowboy hat sidled up to the dunking booth at the Georgia National Fair the other day. He had on a short-sleeved shirt. A few of its top buttons were undone. The look provided just enough of an opening for the microphone-wielding clown in the dunk tank to pounce.
“Well, yeehaw,” the clown hooted, his voice booming from a loudspeaker. “How’s it going, Tex? Hey, man, can you button up your shirt? I don’t need to see that crop failure.”
The young man, Kendan Ricks, from the east Georgia city of Swainsboro, reached for his wallet. He plunked down $5 for five baseballs to toss at the wisecracking clown. Or, rather, at a target the size of a cantaloupe that, when struck, sinks the clown in a 400-gallon vat of water.
Ricks, 18, flung his first ball and missed. The clown returned serve. “You know, that’s a big hat for such a small head.”
Ricks missed on each of his next four throws and stamped away.
The clown let loose a parting shot: “There he goes, folks, another satisfied failure.”
Ricks didn’t mind the digs.
“He cracks jokes,” Ricks said, “but he doesn’t mean it.”
Some fairs have phased out dunking-booth clowns, whose get-under-your-skin shticks were a carnival staple in years gone by. In recent times, though, they have stirred enough complaints to make them expendable.
At the Perry fair, which runs through Sunday, the jesters have proved popular enough to keep around — or to at least tuck into a back corner of the midway between a shooting-skills, pellet-gun game and a fun house.
On this recent afternoon, the clown in the tank is a fourth-generation carnival worker named Justin Smith. He had just rolled into town from his last stop in west Texas.
Smith, 32, was filling in for the Soak the Bloke booth’s main act until nightfall, earning his paycheck this day perched inside a cage on a metal slat rigged to a lever that makes it collapse when balls nail the target.
“I have a lot of fun talking smack to people and making kids laugh and giggle,” Smith said. “I’m not trying to hurt anybody personally, but still trying to take their money. … You have to be PG about it, obviously. I think people are loosening up now. I think people want comedy back in their lives. I think people are understanding that we’re not just insulting. It’s a comedy skit. … But, I mean, there’s always a Karen here and there.”
* * * *
For some fairgoers, the quips might sting or embarrass. But there is zero foul language.
These days, what with the barbs flooding the political spectrum and the constant cutdowns, taunts and disses that fuel swaths of social media, in-person barrages of insults from dunking-booth clowns tend not to provoke much ire. The midway spiels are a touch softer, in a family-friendly setting.
Yet anyone within earshot is fair game.
In the current climate, where talk-show hosts and comics have come under fire and been censored, carnival clowns are careful. They don’t do politics or current events. They don’t bash. But snark is their stock-in-trade.
Dunk-tank pros say they can get away with a lot, so long as the razzing isn’t too personal, and they follow their good-natured ribbing with goofy chuckles. That tends to soften their swats. Still, they take care to perform without crossing the line between entertaining and incendiary.
When a gray-haired, middle-aged man from Putnam County missed the target on all his throws, Smith, the clown, barked, “Can somebody call in a Silver Alert? We have an old man missing at the dunk tank.”
The man’s wife said, “We come here every year to hear the insults.”
Later, an 11-year-old boy misfired on all 12 of his $10 worth of tosses. The clown noticed the boy’s Under Armour T-shirt and joked, “More like underachiever.” As the kid trudged away, Smith hollered, “I’ll see you later tonight — in Fortnite.”
A beefy high-schooler wearing a fanny pack forked over five bucks and loosened his arm. As he wound up to throw, Smith chimed in: “Hey, man, take the purse off first. … What you got in there, Twinkies?”
Smith laced each poke with a cackle, a burst of rapid-fire laughter, something that might be emitted by a tipsy Bozo on a pogo stick. Hoo-hoo-huh-huh-huh.
Then came a teenage girl.
“You play softball, honey?” the clown said.
The girl nodded and promptly missed the target.
“For the losing team?” Smith said.
Despite the darts he slung, no one got ticked. He even kidded a little boy who could barely toss the baseballs at the target, saying, “You knock me in the water and I’m gonna tell your mom where you’re hiding all your wet bed sheets.” The boy’s mom didn’t flinch.
A guy in his late teens with a rocket arm hummed the first of his dozen throws and missed. “Do you feel cheated?” Smith said to the guy, who nodded. “Now you know how your parents feel.”
The guy promptly sank Smith on a pair of other throws. As Smith climbed from the water, he told the guy, “You know what happens if you knock me in three times? Nothing. I’ll go home and dry off. You’ll still be butt-ugly.”
The guy just grinned.
* * * *
A clown here who in recent years was the dunking booth’s main draw has since retired to the guess-your-age stand.
It wasn’t that his act was too harsh. It was his knees. The splash landings, the bottom of the metal tank when he was dropped, proved too harsh.
Gary Zack, a Floridian who has taken over the wettest role on the midway and also helps oversee the booth’s daily operation, recalled hearing of another dunking-booth outfit that wasn’t asked back after a clown unloosed an offensive remark at a veteran. Zack said the only complaint his stand ever received was when a clown called a kid “Billy big ears.” Zack said the kid’s mother reported the remark to fair management, though nothing came of it.
He said some kids “might get mad, but they’re never picked on to the point where they’re crying. We definitely don’t want to be that kind of act.”
And even if his stage is a cage, he enjoys what he does.
“I’m not our here at Carnegie Hall,” Zack said, “but I do love telling my jokes and perfecting my craft.”
His great-grandfather was in the carnival business. Zack understands the delicate nature of what he does.
“In a place like this, you have people walking by that aren’t necessarily willing participants,” Zack said.
He said it takes “a good balance of being able to float jokes at people, prod the crowd and then deliver a show when they come up.”
As evening set in, Zack manned the counter, taking contestants’ money, handing them baseballs to toss. Smith, the other clown, was still in the cage, on the hot seat as it were, manning a hot mic.
What looked to be a peewee-league baseball team of 5-year-old boys scampered up to the dunking booth. Smith, the clown, hooted at them. He called them “rug rats” and begged them not to get “boogers on my baseballs.”
The boys, all told, heaved 30-plus throws at the target. None dunked the clown. When they were out of balls, some of the boys screamed at Smith until their faces flashed red. “Be quiet!” they howled.
“Kids,” the clown snapped as they scattered up the midway, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but they pay me to talk.”
About the Author
Joe Kovac Jr. is Macon bureau chief covering Middle Georgia for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
