Brazilian entertainer Francisco Oliveira, whose professional name is Tiririca, has been elected to the national legislature using the slogan "It couldn't get any worse. Vote for me." He's a clown, not a magician, but I think his success is at least partly due to political magic. After all, he seems to have been perfectly honest with the electorate. He admitted he was a clown. Political opponents tried to derail his campaign by saying he was illiterate, but a judge tossed the lawsuit. More here from USA Today, which notes that Mr. Oliveira's clown name means "Grumpy" in Portuguese (at least colloquially in Brazilian Portuguese; see here). Otherwise, it translates as nutsedge, a perennial (as in perennials that grow in gardens, not perennials who get elected to Congress, or perennially grumpy individuals, or perennially grumpy individuals who get elected to Congress).
By the way, I cannot find any evidence to support the idea that a professional clown's makeup and persona are protected by intellectual property law. Rather, professional norms--the idea that clowns do not copy one another's work--protects individual clown makeup and costumes. Professional clowns can register their makeup on a goose egg, either in the U.K. or the U.S. These registries serve as repositories for clowns to check out the work of other artists as well as a way to register their own property. Check out more about the world of professional clowns at the Clowns International website. Here's an address for the Department of Clown Registry in the U.S.
Department of Clown Registry/P.O.Box 12/Buchanan/Virginia/24066
Update: A colleague, Professor Lee Ann Lockridge, found this record for "Chuckles clown face" copyrighted in 2007. So, there you are. One can copyright clown makeup in the U.S.
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