Dear Idlers
Is the time of the clowns drawing to a close? It looks like it. For many of us, this is a relief. The clowns were in charge for a long time, and not all of us found them terribly amusing.
Why do clowns get to the top? Because people like clowns. In their excellent study The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow describe the anthropologically observed phenomenon of the “clown king”. This clown king wasn’t expected to behave like ordinary citizens. In fact, the more he broke the rules, and lied and fornicated and boasted, the more the people liked him. The clown laughs at the essential absurdity and drama of everything. But his clownish antics have terrible consequences, because he doesn’t really care about anyone’s welfare. Clowns are amoral.
In the world of politics, those brilliantly entertaining conmen Donald Trump, Bolsonaro and Boris Johnson were of course classic clown kings, and at least half of each country fell for them (it helped that Trump spent millions on advertising). When they were at the top, they were in the papers every day. We loved talking about them, either with outrage or approval. The same cannot be said for their more sensible successors.
There are clown capitalists, too. Elon Musk is the classic example. He’s rarely off the front pages and is probably the most famous man in the world, saying and doing daft or "amazing" things every week. Like clown Boris, he has lots of children and appears to see the world and its doings as a colossal joke.
And people love him. He entertains us. Elon Musk gave his game away in an interview in the FT recently. The editor Roula Khalaf asked him: “Why does a serious guy with serious ideas indulge in silly Twitter games that could also cost his followers dearly?” To which Musk replied: “Aren’t you entertained? I play the fool on Twitter and often shoot myself in the foot and cause myself all sorts of trouble...” His clownish persona was possibly a factor behind last year’s bubble in Tesla shares which seems now to be ending. (A non-clown capitalist, Bernard Arnault, who looks more like your traditional scary Mr Burns type boss, has pipped Musk to the post as world’s richest man.)
That’s not to say of course that these clown kings won’t have a successful post-monarchical career. Boris has by all accounts wasted no time in getting paid top dollar for his clowning. In December he spoke at a blockchain conference in Singapore and the papers speculate he’ll be getting at least £100,000 per talk.
The clowns are not always immediately obvious. Lots of people considered Sam Bankman-Fried to be a serious businessman. It’s only recently that he’s been revealed as a clown. But if you think about it, he had all the classic characteristics of the clown: he was a PR man through and through, a skilled entertainer, a dazzler, a showman, a conjuror.
Perhaps, as people like Noam Chomsky argue, the role of the clowns is to keep us all distracted while, in the background, the elites get on with their job of increasing their wealth and power.
There are lots of clowns in the world of journalism, of course. Jeremy Clarkson springs to mind as one of the nation’s favoured clowns. Piers Morgan is another. He’s a clown in the court of Murdoch. They’re not arbiters of truth, nor do they expand our horizons or teach us anything. They’re simply very good entertainers, and as a nation we reward them very well. The late A.A. Gill was another clown: he made a spectacle of himself, entertained people with his spleen, bile and venom, and was well paid.
Twitter itself reduces people to clowns, performing monkeys. Significantly, I think, two of my favourite actual clowns, Adam Buxton and Stewart Lee are not on Twitter. And they are far more serious-minded people than Boris Johnson. They have morals and principles. We should call them not clowns, but wise fools, in the Shakespearean tradition.
So what do you think? Have we sent out the clowns?
Live well,
Tom
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The cover of Idler 88: January/February. Out now. Available in selected WHSmiths, Waitrose, Waterstones, Sainsbury's, Easons and Booths. For subscription options, click here.
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On "Idle Thoughts", selections from our new issue...
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Interview: Richard Coles
The retired vicar tells Tom Hodgkinson what he's learned about happiness. From the Jan/Feb Idler.
Deadly Lethargy
Rachel Kelly suggests strategies to cope with the dreaded midday malaise. From the Jan/Feb Idler.
I Live in a Van
Sarah Talbot quit her job after 34 years and found freedom on the road. From the Jan/Feb Idler.
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