We Cast our net far and wide to come up with this epic list of the biggest clowns of 2007! We start with the biggest Clowns of Fairfield County and move on into the World at Large! It’s epic! It’s evil! It’s 62 of the biggest clowns who ever walked the Earth!

This is Part 1 of a 3 part story.

Click here for Part 2
Click here for Part 3

Tom “Big T” Bennett
If any clown in Danbury is worthy of having his portrait oil-painted on velvet this year, it would have to be Tom Bennett. As the former host of Big T’s Talk and Variety Show on Comcast cable-access channel 23, Bennett brought almost two decades on the air to an awkward and unceremonious end, owing to his race-baiting.

It’s easy to dismiss the cherubic, gap-toothed, and mohawked Bennett as a product of the Hat City’s recent incarnation as pressure cooker of anti-illegal immigrant sentiment.

This assumption would be a discredit to this clown’s ability to multitask his prejudices. Gays, Liberals, the ACLU—all were fair game for game for his retro-style hate speech. Big T even kicked it old school with African-American slurs and epithets.
Ironically, it wasn’t even his belief that Mexicans should be shot at the border or his suggestion that the local Spanish Community Center perhaps be fire-bombed that brought about the demise. It was a live on-air phone call with an underage girl about oral sex that ran afoul of Comcast’s standards-and-practices policy. Bennett didn’t even bother appearing on his final show; a guest race-baiter filled in.


—Bruce George Wingate

Chris Caruso
Maybe Chris Caruso was right and Bridgeport needs ethics reform that borders on the Inquisition. We’re tired of mayors doing coke and a City Council–municipal government–Democratic Town Committee complex that reek of inbreeding like a West Virginia potato farm. Maybe we need an underdog who is not part of the Democratic Machine, to scour the city of back-room deals and conflicts-of-interest—which is exactly what Caruso, who’s represented the 126th District in the state assembly since 1991, sold himself as in his losing bid for the Democratic primary for mayor against Bill Finch. And that was kinda the entire sales pitch.

The underperforming educational system? Caruso wanted a full audit for illegal activity. The economy? “I don’t understand what our current economic development engine BEDCO has been doing all these years. We need to break the stranglehold of the machine that keeps development from going forward.” His opponent? “Bill Finch is the hand-picked candidate of a political machine that has a stranglehold over our city.”

Corruption, machine, stranglehold.

Politics is show business for ugly people and maybe Caruso broke the first role in show business: He believed his own hype. Maybe Bridgeport needs a good ethics power-washing but we’re glad no one handed Chris Caruso the Husky 1800 because, after a year of acting like either a conspiracy nut or a crybaby, we wouldn’t trust the man with an electric can opener. 

John Fabrizi
John Fabrizi has a reputation that stretches down to Texas. When the Weekly made a new hire, one that was then living in Houston, a coworker whispered to him that the mayor of the city to which he was moving did cocaine in office. Bridgeporters kept it an open secret that the new mayor enjoyed nose candy. It was a minor issue compared to the ones plaguing the last guy, currently serving a nine-year term on corruption charges. Then, in June 2006, the FBI got a tip from a former dealer and the bureau doesn’t take this stuff so lightly. Fabs was never charged but his name got spread in the news—all the way to Houston.

This year, Johnny Fabulous tarnished his rep further by showing up at the trial of a son’s friend, charged and later convicted of sexual assault and risk of injury to a minor, to say nothing more than: He acted like a good kid when he was over at my house. After all this, a nervous city councilman, Tom McCarthy, marched up to City Hall to tell the mayor to bow out of this year’s race because he couldn’t be reelected. We give him kudos for dropping out of the race; we didn’t want to witness his sweaty, nervous responses at debates when opponents brought up the obvious. Now Fabrizi is headed to a job in the department of education, assistant director of alternative and adult education and drop out prevention. The salary? $118,000 a year.

Crime does pay. 

Mark Boughton
If Danbury Mayor Mark Boughton was an actual clown, his specialty would be juggling. He balanced three scandals this year with very impressive obtuseness.

First, there were those 11 Ecuadorian day laborers that the federal ICE enticed into a work van from Kennedy Park last year and then hauled to jail. Boughton, who once tried to get Danbury police deputized to enforce immigration laws, said that his statements from then (“The city was not involved”) match what the FIOA request filed by a group of Yale law students found (Danbury police drove the van and made the initial arrests).

Second, there was James Galante, the Danbury trash magnate, ice rink–owner and frequenter of finer penitentiaries. Galante, who previously spent a year in the joint for tax evasion, looks to be headed back for ninety-freaking-three charges, including illegal bundling—the scheme where you give more than the $1,000 legal limit to a political candidate or PAC by dispersing it through friends and family. The Hartford Courant suspects Galante buddled $8,000 to Boughton’s People over Politics PAC in October 2003. Four $1,000 contributions were from the family of Galante’s right-hand man Paul DiNardo (already in jail) and three more from people that are, in some way, six degrees away from Galante—all given in the same week and making up a third of People over Politics’ yearly intake. That didn’t raise any suspicion at People over Politics? “There is no way I could have known,” Boughton repeated. Is he just playing dumb?

Third, there was Boughton’s handling of “the Basso problem.” Before he went public with emails forwarded by common council majority leader Pauline Basso that insulted Hispanics, Muslims and Africans, local NAACP president Ivan Pitts “tried to handle it quietly behind the scenes and when that was rebuffed we decided to call a press conference.” He mentioned that “the mayor is aware of the emails” but expressed merely “distaste and displeasure.” Boughton then arranged a meeting with Pitts and Basso, believing in “more communication and less confrontation.” Confront the poor dear and she might think she did something wrong? What about the scores of shocked and disgusted citizens standing outside City Hall at the NAACP’s press conference? Did they all also get dinner invites?

Ann Coulter
We’re not putting New Canaan–raised Ann Coulter on this list for insisting Arabs are savages, that American women shouldn’t be allowed to vote to ensure a Republican majority, or for calling for more bombings and more blood in Iraq—with a bloodthirstiness that’d give Delilah a Chill. No point in being outraged at someone who has no shame.
Ann Coulter is not a clown for being a hate-spewing author or Fox News talking head; she’s a clown for bungling her act as a far-right performance artist.

This year, Coulter infamously told the Conservative Political Action Conference, “I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate, John Edwards, but it turns out that you have to go into rehab if you use the word ‘faggot’.”

John Edwards, a guy who’s apparently quite happily married and has fathered four kids, is a faggot?

“It was a cultural reference,” Coulter later attempted to explain. Nice try. Good stand-up comedians can throw around cultural references and nasty words but they have the skill, the likability and the funny to get away with it. Coulter has none of the three.

Her response to the response? “C’mon, it was a joke. I would never insult gays by suggesting that they are like John Edwards. That would be mean.”
—Nick Keppler

Pauline Basso
Pauline Basso wasn’t so special. There are plenty of old people who consider the computer a neat box where you can get racist jokes with lame graphics. What was special was the Republican’s majority-leader position on the Danbury Common Council; what is astonishing is the lack of response from city Republicans when her racist-email circle was exposed last October.

Up until last election, Basso sat next to the mayor’s podium at council meetings where her primary responsibilities seemed to be smiling and nodding whenever some member of the public with a what-the-fuck-is-up-with-all-this-Spanish-shit complaint came before the council.

During after-hours, Basso forwarded emails containing fat, greasy Mexican caricatures; alarmist rhetoric about Muslims and a picture of an Ethiopian tribeswoman carrying an AK47 and an iPod—we’re still not sure about the point of that last one. But we do know there are serious problems in Ethiopia; they aren’t funny and they, as far as we know, none of them involve iPods.

Two individuals did not want this garbage in their inbox and went to Rev. Gayle Keeney-Mulligan, of St. John’s Episcopal, who forwarded them to the NAACP, among other groups. Local NAACP president Rev. Ivan Pitts tried to go behind the scenes and address the matter with city officials. He got a half-hearted apology signed by Basso slipped under the church door. She wouldn’t even meet with him face-to-face.

After Pitts’ reluctant press conference, the pre-election silence from Basso’s party was deafening. Boughton held a meeting between Basso and Pitts—as if this was a private matter between the two. Basso refused to make a public statement, considering that note slipped under Pitts’ door sufficient. Common Council President Joe Cavo? Danbury Town Committee Chair Wayne Baker? City Councilwoman Mary Teicholz, who was CCed on the emails? No comment.

The silence said it all; racist emails weren’t something the Danbury GOP thought was important—or Basso’s reelection chances were more important. We’re not sure which is worse.

Danbury wasn’t putting up with it. Basso, who was once the common council member at large who gained the greatest number of votes in a previous election, lost her seat. At her final council meeting, Basso spotted Al Robinson, whose HatCityBLOG relentlessly pushed the story, and flipped him the bird. She gave the finger to the only guy in the room guaranteed to have a camera. It wasn’t very bright or articulate but at least she finally made a statement.

Danbury Democrats
Aside from the Bridgeport Democratic primary, there was one election in the county this year that looked like it could include some action. Danbury mayor Mark Boughton and his Republican Party launched an aggressive campaign, some of it possibly illegal, to oust undocumented immigrants from the city and barely chastised their leader on the common council when she got caught sending racist emails (see above). There were protests in the streets and rants on the web. People wanted them gone—and the Danbury Democratic Town Committee seized on almost none of this opportunity.

The DDTC’s radio ads and mailers timidly repeated information about the Danbury 11 case, the Galante scandal and Basso-gate that had already run in the Weekly, Danbury News-Times, Hartford Courant —and mayoral candidate Helena Abrantes, in her mouse-like voice, did nothing more in public debates. They barely nibbled at his heels. Do something creative with this stuff. Get a MoveOn.org consultant. We want mud!

Even more unforgivable, their website was still “under construction” three weeks before the election. This is 2007! HatCityBLOG can’t do everything for you.

In the end, Boughton raised $50,000 and got 8,140 votes; Abrantes raised $13,000 and got 4,241, and a Republican majority in government stayed firmly in place. The City of Danbury deserves better. For running a lousy campaign, Danbury Democrats got exactly what they deserved.

Alex Kelly
Darien residents bar their doors because the most notorious rapist this affluent town has ever produced is back home and living with Mom and Dad. That there was not more outrage that Kelly was freed in November after 10 years served on a 16-year sentence gives pause about the gentry of Darien. You are now living with a registered and violent sex offender.
In 1986 Kelly was a high-school wrestling star and used the moves he learned on the mats to good use; he was charged that year with raping two Connecticut teenage girls. But before he was to stand trial, in 1987, Kelly fled to Europe. (No one ever charged his parents with aiding and abetting a fugitive, but Kelly did not have the sense or money to finance an eight-year odyssey through the skiing capitals of Europe.) He was captured in 1995 in Switzerland and sent back to the U.S. to face trial. In 1997 Kelly was found guilty and given a 16 year sentence. In 2007 Connecticut saw it fit to parole him after 10 years for “good behavior.”

While in the can Kelly earned a BA in Economics and Third World Development. Maybe his parole officer will do the good people of Connecticut a favor and let Kelly go and use his degree to develop a country far, far away from his victims. —C.J. Sullivan


Lee Whitnum
We’ve suspected for awhile that, to run for Congress, you don’t need to have experience, ideas, honesty or even coherency. Lee Whitnum proved our suspicion to be spot-on. The Greenwich author and computer engineer, who’s running for the Democratic nomination for Connecticut’s fourth district, doesn’t have a platform so much as a list of pet peeves. “Illegal immigrants who refuse to register as taxpayers by a certain date must be rounded up and deported,” she writes on her site. “They use our public services but do not contribute. This is bad for the mainstream Americans.” “Register as taxpayers” with who? ICE? She’s sick of all the H-1B visas given to specifically qualified foreign workers; she has a hard time finding work these days and collaborated on her last software project with a bunch of Chinese and Indian dudes, she griped to us. She mentions, continually, she is “a breast cancer survivor” and says she’s “very aware of the high cost of health care.” She says, “Let’s talk about an improved market-based system…” (Those ellipses are how the section on healthcare on her site ends.) Ellipses, by the way, are grammatical marks meant to indicate an interrupted, obscured and uncompleted thought…

Another of Whitnum’s pet peeves, according to the Huffington Post, is being known on the web as the (previously self-promoted) love interest of John Kerry and the author of the erotic novel Hedge Fund Mistress, which she wrote under a pen name. “I’ve had a really bad three years and I have been unable to get a good job because of the internet postings.” Wait, we thought the problem was a bunch of Asian guys?


FEMA Jerks who Faked Press Conferences in California
Yeah, those morons too. FEMA, having royally screwed it up in Louisiana, tried to make amends during the California wildfire “scandal” by faking a press conference—FEMA officials asking other FEMA officials to talk about the great job they were doing. A stunningly clownish move and you can’t blame Brownie for this one.


Dr. Jan Adams
Kanye West has never been one for humility, which made the YouTube footage of him crying on stage in Paris earlier this month, attempting to sing “Hey Mama,” even more upsetting. The reason he broke down was obvious: he was grieving from the early-November death of his mother, Donna West, following complications from plastic surgery. The man who performed the surgery, Dr. Jan Adams, was not board-certified and had a number of DUIs and medical malpractice claims filed against him. Following Mama West’s death, Adams showed up on Larry King Live for about fifteen seconds, before storming off. Previous supporters like Oprah Winfrey and Discovery Health, where he (bafflingly) appeared on a show called Plastic Surgery: Before and After denied any responsibility for Adams’ celeb-studded career.
—Drew Taylor

Heidi and Spencer from the Hills
1. Religious extremism and a seething resentment against America’s perceived imperialism are not the reason why terrorists want to kill us; Heidi and Spencer from the Hills is the reason.
2. When Heidi and Spencer make love, they do not have orgasms in the traditional method. Instead, at the apex of their pleasure, Marie Osmond passes out like one of those fainting goats.
3. Heidi and Spencer’s perfect smiles are not the result of veneers or whitening, their teeth were surgically removed and replaced with the polished and buffed skulls of tiny orphans.
4. The recent wildfires in Malibu were not the result of lightening, arson, or an unattended campfire; they were caused by Heidi and Spencer deciding they wanted to see ugly people burn.
5. Among the many high-profile causes that Heidi has worked on as an event planner, the one that gave her the most satisfaction helped thousands of starving children in Darfur receive free vaginal-rejuvenation procedures.
6. Heidi and Spencer haven’t let celebrity status change them, and have been known to greet autograph-seekers outside of restaurants by regurgitating food into their mouths.
7. When Heidi and Spencer die they will not cease to exist, but will in fact be allowed a wardrobe change and a second take. 
—Bruce George Wingate

GOP Presidential Hopefuls, to a Man
Setting aside the heroic (if deeply flawed in the reproductive-rights arena) Ron Paul, who are these clowns vying for the Republican presidential bid? There’s no candidate who stands head-and-shoulders above the rest. One problem (there are many) with the crop of contenders—Giuliani, Romney, McCain, Thompson, Huckabee—is that they’re possibly finding it quite impossible to out-clown the present GOP occupant of the White House. A tall order indeed. If any one of these clowns actually gets elected—and especially if it’s Giuliani—we’ll be with the circus that’s leaving town, headed straight for Canada. 

Don King
Don King did bring a major boxing event to Bridgeport but made a total ass of himself in the process. At a press conference for the WBA fight at Harbor Yard this summer, he said things like, “Here we are in Bridgeport, the…uh… city of bridges! And we’re here to sell tickets!”

City of bridges? That would be Pittsburgh. This is the “big city of dreams,” as the Young Souljahs “Bridgeport Anthem” music video demonstrates.

Then there was King’s attire. A denim jacket that looked like something out of a 1989 L.A. Gear catalogue, covered in sequins and national monuments—Mt. Rushmore and the Iwo Jima statue. He carried four or five little American flags, a couple Italian flags, a few Puerto Rican flags and he was waving them all at the same time, the whole time he spoke. It made no sense at all, but it was wonderful.
—Sean Corbett


Amy Winehouse
With a month left in the year Amy Winehouse spoke out with the mind-shattering news that she’ll be canceling the rest of her 2007 tour dates. Things aren’t looking too hot for Winehouse, who started out the year strong with the release of her sexy-confident Back to Black, an album whose pastiche didn’t overwhelm its effectiveness as a very modern pop record. This was exemplified by the Mark Ronson–produced single “Rehab,” in which she said “no, no, no” when she should have said yes. Working on a kind of reverse Britney Spears schedule (who started the year as a scandalous mess and ended it with a brilliant record), she’s shockingly and publicly been falling apart: the fight with husband Blake; that absurd cover story in Spin where she cut herself open with a shard of a broken mirror; all those drugs; saying ‘yes’ to rehab; mumbling and getting booed off stage. Just last week her manager quit because he had inhaled so much heroin smoke on the tour bus he tested positive on a drug test. For an artist who has so much talent at such a young age, she’s blowing it pretty early. 
—Drew Taylor


Anyone Who Didn’t See Grindhouse
What if two of the most cutting-edge directors in Hollywood got together to revive a long-dead way of watching movies, combining their movies in the form of a rustic double-feature? What if these same directors, on the same project, turned in some of their best movies in years, and got their filmmaker friends to provide fake trailers as connective tissue? It’d be infuriating, right? That’s what happened when Grindhouse was released this spring and nobody showed up. People complained that it was too long (it was 30 minutes longer than American Gangster and a thousand times less boring); they were confused and, not knowing it was a double feature, walked out before Tarantino’s Death Proof began. Those who saw it know what they missed: the most fun time had at a movie theater all year. Its financial failure ensures Grindhouse’s legacy as a singular, one-time-only event. Those who missed it should be punching themselves in the stomach until they vomit blood.
—Drew Taylor

Alec Baldwin
In April Alec Baldwin left a scathing and abusive voice mail for his 11-year-old daughter Ireland. You’d have to be a real clown of a parent to degrade your only child—particularly if you are a celebrity parent whose secrets can be aired by anyone in their circle, ex-wife Kim Basinger included. To hear Baldwin call his daughter “a rude, thoughtless little pig” is horrifying. Equally as startling was how he degraded Mom. Basinger is not completely innocent in this scandal, but at least she’s smart enough not to leave a voice mail that fell in the wrong hands and was heard by millions. 
—Debra Kirouac


Michael Moore
Michael Moore is no stranger to criticism. He’s been badgering the powers-that-be—most recently, in Sicko, the health-care giants—for so long, and with such box office success, that he’s become conservative America’s public enemy number two (behind Hillary Clinton). But it’s no longer just the right wing that’s got Moore in its sights; the left is taking aim as well. Bashing Moore has become obligatory to the point of cliché at cocktail parties from New York to San Francisco—and for good reason.

Moore took some liberties in Fahrenheit 9/11, but hits a new low in Sicko. His general argument is legitimate as usual, but again he opts for showmanship over truth by ferrying a boatload of sick Americans to Cuba for medical treatment. We know that all Cubans receive free medical care, while over 15 percent of Americans are uninsured, but Moore doesn’t feel it necessary even to mention the inadequacies of Cuban health care. (I know of these inadequacies because I received care there. The fumes from the broken X-ray “machine” made me pass out.) And at the film’s nadir, Moore’s stands in his boat in Guantanamo Bay, bullhorn to his mouth, lobbying for care for the three sick Ground Zero workers at his side. Study the workers’ faces. They’re not, as Moore would have it, outraged. Instead, they are—as we are, watching the most prominent liberal voice in America make a fool of himself—profoundly embarrassed. 
—Ryan Kearney


Hugo Chavez
It shouldn’t have taken so long for someone to tell Hugo Chavez to shut up, but when Spanish King Juan Carlos did just that at last month’s Ibero-American summit, there was a telling silence. No one, Chavez excluded, even reprimanded Carlos—probably because they’d all wanted to say the same thing. Chavez had it coming: He’d just called Carlos a fascist. Chavez, of course, is much closer to a fascist himself. The list of offenses is long, but the most egregious example this year came in May, when Chavez shut down a private TV station for being critical of his so-called Bolivarian Revolution, then replaced it with a state-funded channel.

Chavez has been given a pass by the international community because he’s a fierce critic of Bush (you can never have too many of those). But his calling Bush “the devil,” as he did last year on the floor of the U.N., doesn’t make him any less of a devil himself. There’s hope, though. A referendum he put to voters on Sunday, proposing 69 changes to the constitution (including abolishing term limits and allowing him to declare states of emergency indefinitely), was defeated 51 percent to 49 percent. Looks like Venezuelan voters realized what American voters should have realized in 2004: that their leader is not simply a jackass, but rather a frightening threat to their civil liberties. 
—Ryan Kearney


David and Victoria Beckham
David Beckham claimed he left Real Madrid, one of Europe’s most elite football teams, for Major League Soccer’s Los Angeles Galaxy to help promote the sport in the U.S., but his move reeked of nothing but greed and opportunism both for himself and his anorexic Skeletor of a wife, Victoria (aka Posh Spice). Injured from the get-go, Becks spent more time partying in Hollywood nightclubs with Tom Cruise than he did on the playing field. The few times he did play, the Galaxy was actually worse than they were when he watched from the sidelines or a luxury suite—Bench it Like Beckham!

While David was busy stuffing his pockets with an estimated $50 million per annum of filthy lucre, his wife was trying to revive a flaccid career—first through a failed reality series effort that turned into the wretched one-off Coming to America “special,” then by announcing a Spice Girls reunion tour that was welcomed about as warmly as the resurrection of Saddam Hussein. Both are trying to make the transition into Hollywood acting careers, but they still haven’t made the necessary commitment of selling their souls to L. Ron Hubbard. Yet. 
—Chris Gill


Fred Phelps Sr.
Somewhere along the line Fred Phelps, pastor of the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, must have mistaken God for Dirty Harry because Phelps thinks God Hates Everybody, especially if they’re gay, Swedish, Irish or dead (God hates you, too, Jesus). Apparently God wasn’t feeling it for Minnesota this year, either, as Phelps turned his ire upon the 13 victims of the I-35W bridge collapse, threatening to bring his minions (i.e. a few of his 13 children) to protest memorial services in Minneapolis, a city his press releases described as “the land of the Sodomite damned.” Jeeeezus Mr. Phelps! Don’t you think that having to live in Minneapolis/St. Paul was already ample punishment for these poor souls?

The only remotely gay things connected with Minneapolis are the Minnesota Vikings’ purple uniforms and Prince’s sexual ambiguity, so we have no idea why Phelps singled out the city for anti-gay rage. Regardless, Phelps’ threats turned out to be idle, as they often are, and he never showed up as promised. Perhaps he stayed away because Out and About Travel adopted the land of the Sodomite damned as its new marketing slogan for Minneapolis and he couldn’t book a room there. 
—Chris Gill


Rachael Ray
This spastically perky bitch, who makes Katie Couric seem like a character from a Kafka story, is hell-bent on turning back the clock on American cuisine so far that it will actually be worse than England’s, circa 1965. Why bother with today’s abundance of fresh, tasty ingredients when you can plop canned and frozen corporate garbage into a pot, heat it up and call it a meal in 30 minutes or less? Ray’s 60-minute Thanksgiving dinner entirely misses the point of the holiday, and the end result isn’t fit for the guard dogs at Abu Ghraib.

As Ray’s empire grew to new heights this year, she signed the ultimate deal with the devil as a spokesperson for Dunkin’ Donuts. “It’s like endorsing crack for kids,” said celeb chef Anthony Bourdain. “Juvenile diabetes has exploded. Half of Americans don’t have necks. I’m not a very ethical guy, but somehow this seems over the line.” Even worse, her candy-coated-carb capital helped finance her husband-attorney’s vanity band, the Cringe. That’s exactly what Ray makes us do every time she barfs out one of her insipid catch phrases like “yum-o” and “delish.”
—Chris Gill

Click here for Part 2