In this week’s most absurd news, both Mike Pence’s family and the crew at John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight have released books about Marlon Bundo – the Pence family’s pet bunny.
Pence’s is called Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President and Oliver’s is A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo. It’s the exact same bunny. However, while the Pence version is about Marlon Bundo following the veep around for a day, the John Oliver version is about Marlon Bundo falling in love with another male bunny. As you can probably guess, Oliver’s book was written to piss off Pence, who is notoriously anti-gay rights.
Proceeds from both books will be donated to charity: the Pence family’s are going to A21, which works to end human trafficking, and Tracy’s Kids, an art-therapy program for children with cancer. The Last Week Tonight one chose the L.G.B.T.Q.-friendly Trevor Project and AIDS United.
At the time of writing, Oliver’s Marlon Bundo book has a 4.5 star rating on Amazon, while Pence’s only has 1 star. In America, the Oliver version sits at number one on Amazon’s best sellers list, while Pence’s is only number 4. Though it was written as a direct troll to Pence, Oliver’s version is a legitimate kids book, intended to be suitable to read to Oliver’s two year old son.
On his show Last Week Tonight Oliver urges viewers to buy the book for their friends, children or just because it’ll piss Mike Pence off. He says, “You’ll be doing a nice thing in a really dickish way”. I don’t know about you, but that’s all the encouragement I need.
In saying that, Charlotte Pence, the author of Marlon Bundo’s A Day in the Life of the Vice President actually responded in super wholesome way when asked about the Last Week Tonight version while being interviewed for Fox’s Business Network:
“I mean, I think you know, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery in a way,” Charlotte said. “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.”
Both books are available on Amazon and most good book stores; however, John Oliver’s version is also available at betterbundobook.com.