John Oliver’s Bunny Book Is Outselling Mike Pence’s Bunny Book
My favorite feud happening right now is one between John Oliver, living Postman Pat character and host of HBO’s Last Week Tonight, and Vice President Mike Pence. The feud is over two different children’s books about Mike Pence’s bunny Marlon Bundo. John Oliver is an expert in high-level trolling, so of course he’s winning.
Usually the President has an official White House pet that captures the hearts of the nation. But my guess is someone at the White House familiar with Of Mice and Men saw Eric Trump and thought “Yeah, maybe don’t give this family an animal…“, because there is no White House pet. The closest they’ve got to an animal celebrity is a bunny belonging to the Vice President.
Mike Pence’s daughter Charlotte Pence and his wife Karen Pence wrote a book called Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President. It follows Marlon Bundo (or BOTUS – Bunny of the United States) as he sees what Mike Pence does as the Vice President.
It’s well known that Mike Pence recoils in horror at the thought of anything not completely 100% hetero, so John Oliver had his own book written about Marlon Bundo called A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. John Oliver’s story is about Marlon Bundo meeting a boy bunny named Wesley and falling in bun-love. All proceeds of his book are going to The Trevor Project and AIDS United.
John Oliver introduced his book on Sunday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, and announced that it would be released on March 18th, one day before Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President. An audiobook was also released starring Jim Parsons, Jesse Tyler Ferguson, John Lithgow, Ellie Kemper, Jack McBrayer, and RuPaul. John Oliver appeared on Ellen yesterday, and Ellen DeGeneres informed him that after two days of sales, his Marlon Bundo book had reached the number 1 book spot on Amazon.com. John adds that they weren’t anticipating so many people to buy the book, and it’s already sold out. He says they’re printing more.
Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President is currently sitting at the number 4 spot. Charlotte Pence was recently asked about John Oliver’s book, and she said:
“I mean, I think you know, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery in a way. But also, in all seriousness, his book is contributing to charities that I think we can all get behind. We have two books giving to charities that are about bunnies so I’m all for it really.”
Forget about the trolling aspect, John Oliver’s story deserves that number 1 spot because it’s easily the better book. It has a much-cuter Marlon Bundo, and the story is better. Marlon and Warren live in a community run by a stink bug with bad hair who tells them boy bunnies can’t get married to other boy bunnies. Eventually all the other animals rally around Marlon and Wesley, they vote the stink bug out, and Marlon and Wesley get married. That’s very sweet surprise. I’ll be honest, when I heard “gay-themed book about Marlon Bundo,” my mind immediately pictured Marlon and his pal Rabbit Pryor snorting crushed-up carrots off a glass coffee.
Pic: HBO