We aren't born hating mimes. I'm convinced of this. It's something that is a learned behavior, like coordinating your clothing or eating haggis. So whence cometh the mime-hate of late? Why am I hearing mime-hating jokes? Why am I hearing urban legend-type stories about mimes who slash, dismember, and kill? There are whole websites devoted to mime-hate. Mime-hating clubs. Is it because they refuse to talk? Is that what makes them seem somehow warped and unnatural to us? Like maybe they have telekinetic powers or something? I could understand if it were clowns. Clowns are the mime's sinister cousin. Clown-hating is a perfectly common, perfectly respectable pastime these days, and the explanation for it is a simple one--extreme creepiness. On the creepy scale, clowns rate somewhere between Jason Voorhees and those twin girls from The Shining. Have you noticed, by the way, that clown-hating is kind of a generational thing? Boomers have no problem with clowns. A Boomer can see a clown and not be disturbed in the slightest. He or she might even respond with laughter and merriment (presumably this is the clown's goal). It's Gen X'ers and younger who have taken issue with Ronald McScary and his terrifying henchmen. But I'm straying from my original question, which is: why do we as a culture hate mimes so much? Is it just a natural outgrowth of the clown thing, a sort of Jungian color-bleed of our psychological laundry?