As every Constitutional scholar knows, the First Amendment includes a clause that strictly forbids mockery of the President of the United States, depending on who it is, and which party he belongs to. It’s in one of the penumbras of the Constitution, or maybe it’s an emanation. I always get those two mixed up.

Thus it became essential for the forces of freedom and democracy to crush an impertinent rodeo clown who dared to put on a mask of our Dear Leader, President Barack Obama, and ask spectators if they would like to seem him get run down by a bull. “Many in the audience responded enthusiastically,” reports the Associated Press.

And we can’t have that. Just forget about all those effigies of George Bush you saw the Left parading around with, back when Americans had full-time jobs. That was completely different.

His loyal followers were not enchanted by the novelty of seeing bull headed toward President Obama for a change, because they raised a great hue and cry. The whole affair reached a level of national media importance we have recently been told is inappropriate for local stories, such as the Kermit Gosnell abortion-murder trial. Punishment was swift and devastating:

The Missouri State Fair on Monday imposed a lifetime ban on a rodeo clown whose depiction of President Barack Obama getting charged by a bull was widely criticized by Democratic and Republican officials alike. The rodeo clown won’t be allowed to participate or perform at the fair again. Fair officials say they’re also reviewing whether to take any action against the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association, the contractor responsible for Saturday’s event.

Another job destroyed! And Obama’s nineteenth “pivot to job creation” had been going so well.

That ought to teach those uppity rodeo clowns not to make fun of Dear Leader! And if that doesn’t do the trick, sending them all to a sensitivity training camp should take care of it. A press release from the Missouri State Fair Commission stipulates that before the fair considers working with the Missouri Rodeo Cowboys Association again, “they must provide evidence to the director of the Missouri State Fair that they have proof that all officials and subcontractors of the MRCA have successfully participated in sensitivity training.” On the bright side, those who attend these sensitivity training seminars will enjoy the finest North Korean cuisine.

But wait, the commissars want even more punishment! They’d like to defund the entire state fair, to make sure the miserable Obama-hating hayseeds who attend these events learn the same lesson as the rodeo clowns:

Missouri House Democrats have suggested the Republican-led chamber should form a special committee to investigate the incident and determine whether to continue providing tax dollars to the fair. State Rep. Steve Webb, chairman of the Missouri Legislative Black Caucus, said Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon should cancel the governor’s annual ham breakfast scheduled for Thursday at the fairgrounds. But Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said the governor did not plan to cancel the breakfast because of the “deplorable actions that took place during this one event.”

In case you were wondering, cowboys claim such mockery of sitting presidents is not unusual, although of course America was a more unruly, less regulated nation back then, and we’ve never had a President with such a fragile ego before. The Associated Press review of pro-clown and con-clown arguments is an unintentionally hilarious study of political correctness:

David Berry, a Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association member who was at Saturday’s event, described the clown as a friend and said there was nothing offensive or unusual about his actions. Berry said the Obama character was meant to look like a dummy and that rodeo clowns have long performed such acts, often imitating sitting presidents. “The joke is not that it was the president,” Berry said. “They drag out this person dressed like a dummy and all of the sudden this dummy just takes off running. That’s what’s funny.” But other rodeo professionals said the Missouri fair stunt appeared to go too far. “It’s not unheard of for a rodeo clown, depending on how he reads his audience, to play politics a little bit,” said Jim Bainbridge, the senior public relations coordinator at the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association, based in Colorado Springs, Colo. “But this crossed a line. Clearly, when you’re suggesting that the president should be injured, it kind of gets to a level of hostility that is inappropriate.” Perry Beam, an attendee who posted a photo of the event on Facebook, has said it had the feeling of a Ku Klux Klan rally. He said that, at one point, another clown ran up to the one wearing the Obama mask and played with the lips on the mask.

Somehow I suspect it is about to become unheard-of for rodeo clowns to play politics a little bit, because there is a line you must not cross, and that line isn’t going to budge until 2017 at the earliest. In any event, it has become redundant for clowns to make fun of Barack Obama at a rodeo, because nothing could make him look more ridiculous than an all-out jihad by his supporters to crush everyone involved in a rodeo act.

Update: Another triumph for the jihad: the president of the Missouri Rodeo Cowboy Association has resigned, unwilling to fight the new crime of Being Disrespectful To Barack Obama in the First Degree while he seeks to hold onto his other job as superintendent of a school district. The school district announced it was hiring a private investigator to look into any “inappropriate conduct” he might have engaged in, while mocking Dear Leader. The clown is reportedly also getting booted out of the rodeo association.