John Oliver, three-plus-year host of Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, has a lengthy career in film and television.
Just recently, on Tuesday, March 20, 2018, Oliver’s staff member Jill Twiss and professional illustrator E.G. Keller, who is not associated with the HBO production, created a children’s book about Marlon Bundo, a barely-infamous rabbit that the Mike Pence family owns.
No copies of Last Week Tonight with John Oliver Presents a Day in the Life of Marlon Bundoare available in stores yet – only Amazon – but that hasn’t slowed it down from selling a whopping 180,000-plus copies of the book.
Oliver’s book mocks Pence’s family members Charlotte and Karen Pence, who served as the author and illustrator, respectively for Marlon Bundo’s Day In The Life Of Vice President. To summarize what the first book – the “real book” isn’t an appropriate name, because just because something’s first, doesn’t mean it’s real; we’ll use “the Pence book” or “the Pence family book” – contained, Marlon Bundo followed “Grampa,” a nickname for Mike Pence, throughout a regular day in the White House, featuring nothing but innocence.
So, what does John Oliver mock, exactly? He follows Marlon Bundo throughout that standard day in the White House – except, likely to Mike Pence’s disapproval – that bunny is gay. Even further, the mock story of Marlon Bundo features the main, personified character falling in love with another male rabbit.
Controversy surrounds everything in today’s political landscape, though teaching children views of religion or sexual orientation, without being fair to all parties discussed, is likely something humanity will look down upon itself for doing 50 or 100 years from now.
In the Pence family’s original take on Marlon Bundo, Mike “Grampa” Pence reads Christianity’s Holy Bible to the rabbit, and even stops at and identifies Focus on the Family, an organization that, in real life, is adamantly against LGBTQ groups and rights, and is quite well-funded, at that.
Just as all proceeds – an alternative term for all money raked in minus all money used to pay others – from Mike Pence’s family’s book will be donated to several charities, so will Oliver’s team’s mock children’s book.
John Oliver has plans and agreements to send all proceeds to the Trevor Project, a nonprofit aiming to help LGBTQ children and victims of bullying, and AIDS United.
