A clown has just been elected to Congress in my home country of Brazil.
 
And I’m not talking in a figurative way.
 
I’m not sure if this makes me love or hate my picturesque country.
 
Brazil has once again given the world a lesson that is ambiguously entertaining and polemical.
 
And this time, it’s not soccer-related.
 
A couple of weeks ago, a nationally famous clown named Tiririca, real name Francisco Oliveira Silva, received the most votes to represent the state of Sao Paulo.
 
With more than 1.3 million votes, he doubled the number of votes that former Rio de Janeiro state governor Anthony Garotinho received.
 
The metaphor — or lack thereof — in this “funny” fact of Brazilian politics immediately brings out some reflections that are begging to be taken for granted, but shouldn’t.
 
“There are so many metaphorical clowns in Brazil’s Congress. Why not send them a real one?”
 
You’d hear a lot of my ignorant and opinionated peers say this if you walked anywhere in Brazil right now.
 
But the much less funny results of this election pair up with Tiririca’s imminent nomination ceremony.
 
Other than him, elected candidates include politicians that underwent serious accusations of corruption some years ago, and even some still being charged for stealing stratospheric amounts of public money.
 
There’s more to Tiririca’s election than a fake critical sense of humor wants to point out.
 
It’s easy to appear opinionated when you’re making fun of something, but understanding the process and existence of what is being criticized is an entirely different story.
 
I’d love to believe Brazilian people are politicized and conscious enough to send out such a collective and articulated message to our politicians.
 
However, I don’t think that is the case.
 
Tiririca, the clown, is not known to be funny in the sense of a usual clown.
 
His humor — if we can identify that — comes from him acting like an ignorant, poor man who can barely articulate words or finish a sentence.
 
He’s known for surreal and eschatological songs that mean nothing and for hosting a TV show.
 
This tragicomic side of his persona is a good portrayal of a country with an abysmal gap in education.
 
One of the actual messages here calls for the attention of compulsory voting advocates.
 
I’ve seen it with my own eyes — a mass of people with no information, no education and no will to vote getting out of their homes in an election weekend and causing serious damage.
 
More than a lesson to be learned, Tiririca’s election teaches at least a couple of convenient truths that bear no national denomination.
 
Ignorance is not bliss, and funny is not always funny.
 
Both in Brazil’s rising economy and in the budget-cut filled U.S., education should be the greater treasure to be preserved and warranted as an insurance for present and future lives.
 
But it doesn’t seem like candidates and administrators nationwide remember that.
 
There are proposals for cutting education budgets all across America, and the current situation our University is encountering, with projected state funding shortages for who knows how many years to come, reflects that.
 
Clowns are supposed to be funny.
 
The utmost purpose of these funny characters that populate people’s imaginations is to remind us how life can be turned upside down and backward.
 
They make us realize how healthy and entertaining a constant review of values can be.
 
But watch your clowns closely, my friends.
 
Running freely in all corners of today’s society, they may end up in Congress.
 
Marcelo Vieira is a 32-year-old jazz cello graduate student from Brazil. Follow him on Twitter @TDR_MVieira.
 
 
 
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Contact Marcelo Vieira at [email protected]