Clown question

Bonnie Taylor-Blake b.taylorblake at GMAIL.COM
Sun Jun 17 22:23:39 UTC 2012


Two or three days ago a college basketball player I follow on Twitter
simply tweeted "That's a clown question" and I wondered why.  Now I
know (see far below).

Even Charles Krauthammer is getting in on it, having used "That's a
clown question, bro'" in reply to a long question asked him on TV on
"Inside Washington" yesterday.

It'll be interesting to see how far "clown question" (or the larger
phrase) gets this summer.

-- Bonnie

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>From NPR's "The Two-Way" Blog

http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2012/06/13/154941493/

'That's A Clown Question, Bro' Or The Rhetorical Comeback Rounding Twitter
Eyder Peralta, 13 June 2012

If Twitter has its way, "That's a clown question, bro." will join
"Don't tase me, bro." in the annals of popular rhetorical comebacks.

"That's a clown question, bro" comes from 19-year-old baseball phenom
Bryce Harper. That's what he told a Canadian journalist yesterday,
following his second three-hit game in a row.

The journalist asked the Nationals' Harper if he was going to
celebrate by drinking a beer, being that the legal drinking age in
Canada is 19.

Harper, who is Mormon, rolled his eyes and said, "I'm not going to
answer that. That's a clown question, bro."

[...]

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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