Dear Editor,

I don’t know if you had anything to do with the digitalburg phone interview with Tuffy Gessling following the rodeo skit at the state fair last week. Compliments to digitalburg nevertheless. This was the only major or minor media coverage that gave any context or balance.

Major media totally misunderstood and misrepresented this MCRA skit that was designed to show the ferocity of bulls and prowess of clown-athletes. Clowns often assign a persona to an inanimate dummy, then allow a bull to knock it down and toss it around as the bulls would do to a real person given opportunity. A rodeo clown’s primary job is to keep bull riders from being knocked down, stomped on, and gored.

Since dummies can’t stand up on their own, a broom is used as the third leg to form a tripod. Clown Gessling was trying to surprise the crowd, wanting them to think the Obama masked figure was a dummy. (I came to this conclusion before reading digitalburg.) The surprise was that when charged by the bull, the Obama surrogate moved out of the way and saved himself. How is this so negative?

Major media have not sought or used context, and the broom on the backside shown in photos is often mentioned. That led to one Washington Post story comment line saying that the broom was symbolic of anal rape of black men as torture with a tool. The only major or minor media I have read that got information from Tuffy Gessling is digitalburg. Area rodeo fans are shocked at how major media don’t get it. Also at how PC Missouri politicians and the fair conceded the issue instead of trying to understand it in context themselves. This contributed to making Missouri and Sedalia look bad with mea culpa. Perhaps political cartoons and television political comedy should be banned as well … as in Obama going over the fiscal cliff and he’s going to crash, crash, crash …

I am becoming sarcastic and disappointed in the fourth estate. Clown skits preceding professional bull riding are to show how dangerous, big, and powerful the bulls are. A possible alternative to clown skits at next year’s fair is a Spanish style “running of the bulls” to show how wildly powerful bulls are. The ideal venue option would be to run the bulls down the middle of the midway. This would be politically correct.

Keep up the good work. And compliments to digitalburg.

Cynthia S. Nold

Slater, Mo.