By Dave Dahl
SPRINGFIELD-Gov. JB Pritzker has done it again – refer to his louder political detractors as “carnival barkers” – and the people of the circus and carnival cultures don’t like it.
“The din of a crisis,” Pritzker said in his State of the State message, “is when a carnival barker’s shout becomes a whisper soft enough to find the ears of the sick or worried or grieving or scared.”
“I’d like to correct the governor, if I may. They’ve always been referred to in the profession as talkers,” said Lee Stevens, past president of the International Independent Showmen’s Association. “Not barkers.”
Adding her voice to the chorus to defend the honor of circus performers and carnival workers is Amancay Kugler of Chicago. She uses the lyra – a hoop strung high in the air, not unlike a trapeze.
Kugler says Pritzker is not the first, nor will he be the last, to try to smear someone with the performers’ good name. “Even (then-President Barack) Obama in 2011 referred to Donald Trump as a carnival barker, which was very distressing for real carnival workers,” she said with a laugh, “to be compared to that man.”
Stevens, who describes himself as the kid who really did run away from home to join the circus, and who is a retired monkey trainer, says the negative view of the circus and carnival and their trappings is a “dime novel” stereotype.
And don’t get Kugler started calling someone a clown.
“Clowns are very hardworking people,” she said after a pause. “Honestly, I’ve done clowning workshops. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done, and I routinely hang from one elbow twenty feet in the air.”
In other words, calling a politician a clown is offensive – to clowns.
Kugler is organizing the Chicago Circus and Performing Arts Festival in April.
Dave Dahl can be reached at [email protected].
