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Insane Clown Posse warn against “army of scary, terrifying and dangerous clowns” in Time magazine editorial

By | Published on Monday 10 October 2016

Insane Clown Posse

Insane Clown Posse’s Violent J has written an editorial for Time magazine, in which he rails against the “army of scary, terrifying and dangerous clowns out there in this country trying to suppress the rights of thousands of people to exercise the most basic part of the Declaration Of Independence”. Because it’s 2016 and anything can happen.

“I’ll tell you what would be funny”, said someone in Time’s offices last week. “If we got Insane Clown Posse to write an opinion piece about all these scary clown sightings”.

Maybe you’re unaware of the epidemic of ‘creepy clown’ sightings across the US. That may be because you’re cowering at home hiding from all the creepy clowns spotted in Canada, New Zealand and England from north to south. Or maybe you’re a non-creepy clown struggling to find work in these increasingly coulrophobic times.

Whatever, a mixture of possibly genuine and definitely hoax creepy clown sightings have been fuelled by social media, newspapers and TV, Chinese whispers and humanity’s underlying fear of clowns. Even Stephen King is tired of being asked about it.

I’d imagine King was the first choice for a Time op-ed, but ICP are a good alternative. Maybe the magazine was imagining something along the lines of ICP classic ‘Miracles’ in their heads as they fired off the email proposing the article. But more creepy clown focussed.

What they possibly forgot is that Insane Clown Posse are no long angry about scientists lying about how magnets work, and are instead angry about things that are actually happening. Since 2011, the duo have been trying and failing to get their fans removed from a list of dangerous gangs produced by the FBI. Could they bend a light-hearted article about clown sightings round to that topic? You bet they could.

“After 25 years of unquestionably being The World’s Most Hated Band, Insane Clown Posse has just about seen it all”, writes Violent J, opening with two definitely false statements. “We’ve had an album censored and then yanked from stores by Disney, been completely slaughtered by music critics despite selling over twelve million albums and, for the first time in music history, had our entire fanbase – The Juggalos – officially labelled a ‘hybrid gang’ by the FBI”.

To be fair, those are all things most bands haven’t experienced. And Violent J even claims to have lived through a ‘clown sightings’ epidemic before. Which is possibly true, because it is seemingly a thing that pops up in the media from time to time. The problem, he reckons, is the latest clown fad is a distraction.

“There’s a whole army of scary, terrifying and dangerous clowns out there in this country trying to suppress the rights of thousands of people to exercise the most basic part of the Declaration Of Independence, which evokes the freedom to ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness'”, the rapper continues. “The only difference is these clowns don’t wear greasepaint”.

Warming to his theme, he goes on: “These clowns threaten the very fabric on which our nation was supposedly founded upon – and for some fucking crazy-a reason, they’re getting away with it. From keystone-cop clowns shooting unarmed citizens, to racist clowns burning down Islamic centres or clowns in the NSA spying on us through our cell phones and laptops, America has turned into something far more terrifying than Insane Clown Posse’s Dark Carnival. Even a scrub like me who dropped out of school in ninth grade can see what’s going on. Today’s reality is scarier than anything you’ll ever hear on one of our albums”.

Yeah, that’s right, a member of Insane Clown Posse did just say something quite poignant about the US – and in many ways the wider world – in 2016. Even though he switched the distraction to his own band, rather than the topic he was supposed to be talking about. This is just one of many confusing shifts in tone, tense and focus throughout the article.

Having made that shift, the rest of the article is largely about ICP’s battle with the FBI, before making another sudden shift back for a conclusion, saying: “Just know that, despite these sensationalised reports about ‘killer clowns’ wreaking mischief across the nation, there are real clowns out there killing ours and your very rights as an American citizen. Now that’s truly scary, and nothing to clown around about”.

Read Violent J’s full op-ed here.



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