Late yesterday, Mark Ficken, the PA announcer who was on hand for the now-infamous stunt in which a rodeo clown dressed as President Obama at the Missouri State Fair, resigned his post as president of the group that put on the rodeo where this shameful event took place. And he may be in real danger of losing his day job as superintendent of a central Missouri school district.
A rodeo announcer at the Missouri State Fair has resigned as president of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboys Association.
Mark Ficken stepped down Monday evening from the post and says he's been unfairly roped into a controversy involving a clown posing as President Obama.
Ficken says he's been threatened physically and fears he'll lose his job as superintendent of the Boonville School District. The school board is launching an investigation into whether Ficken was involved in any of the behavior many are calling offensive.
Ficken has hired an attorney, Albert Watkins, who maintains his client was in no way involved in the act. In a
statement, Watkins maintains that the whole thing was the fault of a "rogue rodeo clown" who was miked up for the stunt, and that his client was as surprised as everyone else. I'm having a really hard time believing this. Even if the clown was the guy hyping up the crowd, why didn't Ficken intervene if he really was surprised by what was happening? When he realized what was going on, why didn't he say, "Get this idiot off the field!" And why didn't he do something to stop the crowd from whooping it up?
I started a petition calling for Ficken to be fired for this stunt. While I'll gladly take it down and apologize if it is conclusively proven that it was indeed the clown and not Ficken who was egging the crowd on, Ficken is not innocent in this by a longshot. At the very least, he fell down when he should have taken control of the situation. Especially considering how many kids were in the audience. Even if he really was blindsided by this stunt, the Boonville Board of Education should at the very least suspend him for failure of leadership.
6:49 AM PT: After some thought, there's just enough doubt that I felt it was best to shutter the petition to new signatures.