Rodeo clown mocks Obama at Missouri State Fair; state leaders denounce antics! (BUTT>>>crowd loved it!)

NBC News ^ | 8/11/2013 | Erin McClam

Announcers at the Missouri State Fair rodeo are under fire for comments they made during a bull-riding event as participants mocked a clown dressed as President Obama. NBC's Mara Schiavacampo reports.
A rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair put on a mask of President Barack Obama, and an announcer asked an enthusiastic crowd whether they wanted to see “Obama trampled by a bull,” according to a witness and video posted online.
Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, said through a spokesman that the antics were “disrespectful and offensive,” and Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder, a Republican, said on Twitter: “We are better than this.”
A fair-goer, Perry Beam, posted his account on social media. Video of the stunt aired by NBC affiliate KSHB in Kansas City, Mo., records a rodeo announcer saying, “We’re gonna smoke Obama, man.”
“The crowd went absolutely nuts,” Beam told KSHB.
Beam said another clown ran up to the one wearing the Obama mask and played with the lips on the mask. About 15 minutes into the performance, a bull got too close and the clown in the mask had to leave, Beam told The Associated Press.
“They mentioned the president’s name, I don’t know, 100 times. It was sickening,” Beam told the AP. “It was feeling like some kind of Klan rally you’d see on TV.”
The Missouri State Fair, in a statement emailed to NBC News, called the performance disrespectful and said: “We strive to be a family friendly event and regret that Saturday’s rodeo badly missed that mark.”
A spokeswoman told NBC News that State Fair representatives would not immediately answer questions beyond the statement.
The Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, in its own statement, said it was “dealing with the situation firmly and quickly.”
“The Sport of Rodeo is not meant to be a political platform,” the association said. “We are taking measures by training and educating our contract acts to prevent anything like this from ever happening again.”
Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill, a Democrat, pointed out in a statement that the State Fair gets taxpayer money and said that young people who attended got the wrong lesson about political discourse.
“Missouri is better than this, and I expect someone to be held accountable,” she said.