No way! Look who's wearing Obama mask now

A rodeo clown who donned a President Obama mask at the Missouri State Fair was ridiculed, called a racist and banned for life – but when a similar mask was worn by Obama himself, the audience greeted him with enthusiastic cheers.

After the rodeo clown wore the mask Aug. 10 and teased the crowd about a bull coming to get Obama, fair officials called his stunt "unconscionable" and vowed he would never perform again.

The Missouri chapter of the NAACP demanded that the U.S. Department of Justice and Secret Service launch an investigation of the clown.

The president of Missouri's rodeo-clown organization resigned after the incident, and fair officials declared that all clowns would be required to attend sensitivity training.

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A rodeo clown wears a Barack Obama mask at the Missouri State Fair Aug. 10, 2013.

The clown was accused by a spectator of turning the event into "some kind of [Klu Klux] Klan rally."

Missouri's elected officials condemned the clown's act as disrespectful to Obama.

A Missouri-born White House spokesman told NBC News the stunt was "certainly not one of the finer moments for our state and not the way that I like to see our state mentioned in the news.”"

But in all of the media coverage since that day, there has been no mention of Obama's own performance in which he wore a similar mask in October 2007 during a "Saturday Night Live" skit:

As WND reported, talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh blasted the ongoing fallout over the rodeo clown as "infantile" and said it only exists because the president is treated as "a god."

"It is as though President Obama is a messiah or is a god and this little thing that happened at the Missouri State Fair is a defamation, a denunciation, almost a religious sacrilege that took place," Rush Limbaugh said Wednesday. "This is no different than those countries reacting freakishly when there were cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. That is exactly what this is."

"He's the president of the United States! They get made fun of! They get laughed at all the time!  Fun is poked at 'em," Limbaugh stressed. "I know this happens to be the first African-American one, but that should not insulate this president from standard, ordinary, everyday treatment, analysis, whatever. You know, you people on the left, who the hell do you think you are? You can't laugh. You can't take a joke. You can't take a punch. You can't take anything."

Limbaugh also noted, "Everybody knows this is all race. You put Bill Clinton in the White House and put that clown with the Clinton mask on there, and it doesn't even make the news."

In fact, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported in 1994 that a rodeo clown used a dummy with a George Bush mask, propped up by a broomstick, for his act. There was no expression of public outrage following the stunt.

The Missouri rodeo clown has since received a standing invitation from Rep. Steve Stockman, R-Texas, to perform near Houston.

"Liberals want to bronco bust dissent. But Texans value speech, even if it’s speech they don't agree with," Stockman told NBC News in a statement. "They want to crush dissent by isolating and polarizing anyone who questions Obama, even if it's a rodeo clown with a harmless gag."

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