Creepy clown threat is no joking matter

People in the UK are reeling from a spate of incidents in recent weeks involving sinister clowns.

Apparently, the craze for dressing up as a brightly colored but scary clown originated in the US and subsequently spread to Britain, other European countries, Africa and beyond. I doubt it will take off in China, where circus clowns are less well-known and the irony would be lost.

Recent UK reports include an account from a mother of six in West Yorkshire who says three clowns - one with a knife - tried to snatch her 3-month-old baby from her car. She said they only failed to make off with her daughter because they could not unbuckle the baby seat. That's equal parts creepy and Keystone Cops.

Another account comes from a young woman in Hamilton, Scotland, who said she was chased by two clown-costumed men brandishing weapons.

And another, from sleepy Bury St Edmunds, in Suffolk, describes a man in a clown suit wielding a machete as he chased two teenage girls while threatening to harm them.

Other recent stories include a clown with a chainsaw chasing students across a university campus, and solitary clowns standing menacingly on bridges and hillsides before disappearing from view.

So far, thankfully, there do not appear to have been any confirmed reports of people being physically harmed.

But damage has been done, nonetheless. Many children are now terrified of being harmed by a clown.

It is a shocking situation because clowns are supposed to be the decorated pranksters that make a trip to the circus worthwhile. They entertained us at birthday parties. They cheered up children on hospital wards. They made us laugh out loud with their mute stunts and funny tricks, their shaping of balloons into animals, and their tripping over their big feet while slamming one another in the face with shaving-foam-filled pies.

They were the personification of fun and innocent naughtiness and children the length and breadth of the UK used to want to be just like them.

Now, a charity that runs a help line in the West Midlands for children in difficulty says it was telephoned 26 times in one week by youngsters who were terrified of killer clowns.

It really is high time we took a step back from the madness to assess the situation.

These are not killer clowns, only people jumping on the bandwagon of a new trend, others who scare too easily and maybe a handful of idiots who are using the situation to indulge in the fantasy of having power over others.

There is no doubt, we in the media have a role to play in making all of this go away - after all, it was we who stoked it up in the first place. And parents need to calm their kids and remind them that there have been rambunctious teenagers since the dawn of time and always will be.

Almost all of the clown incidents being reported are overreactions to sad little copycats who are probably filming their unoriginal exploits so they can post video online and boast to their all-too-easily impressed friends.

And, for the minority of clowns who don their masks with darkness in their hearts, I urge the courts to treat them harshly. Maybe they should get community service, so they can pay back society through, say, a sponsored long-distance cycle ride on a miniature bike or by allowing people to hit them on the head with massive polystyrene mallets. Better yet, let's use an oversized cannon to blast them right out of the Big Top.

The author is an editor for China Daily UK. Contact the writer at earle@mail.chinadailyuk.com

(China Daily Africa Weekly 10/28/2016 page11)