Pardon in a White House Wonderland

Inspired by Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” We here at CoBaD consider Mr. Carroll the godfather of British humor. Mr. Carroll’s book truly is a timeless book in the sense that the characters (the feeble king with a bad sense of humor, a “sentence first, verdict afterwards” vindictive bloodthirsty queen, a sniveling word salad generating knave and (in a silent cameo) a clever, smirking and evasive feline that always manages to escape the queen’s ax) are very much alive and well today if you look close enough. Now we here at CoBaD don’t care for political humor: to paraphrase Mr. Neil Soup in the “Stock Market” sketch, political humor has a shelf life of a loaf of bread such that by this time next year people won’t know what the hell it means. But from our perspective, a sketch that intermingles Wonderland with 2020s-era Washington was too good to resist.

Queen of Hearts: “Now you listen here, Suicide King. I hole carded Wild Bill Hickok’s last hand, and I’ll hole card your sorry head if you try that sh** with me!” - The famous gunfighter “Wild Bill” Hickok (1837-1876) was killed August 1, 1876 while playing poker. According to legend, he was holding two pairs: black aces and black eights, as his "up cards." This aces and eights hand has since been known as the "dead man's hand." His “hole card” (the card facing down) was allegedly the Queen of Hearts, and had a drop of Wild Bill’s blood on it when he died.

King of Hearts: "OUT!!! AND TAKE THE CABINET WITH YOU!...AND CHESTER DRAWERS!!"

Pardon Attorney: (giggle) Chester Drawers…(collecting himself) sorry…

For more on Mr. Chester Drawers, see the “An Animated Discussion” and “Constipation is Making Me Late” sketches.

President: “Come on Harpo. Roll up those pants and let’s get to work before the Queen of Farts returns…”
Pardon Attorney: “Honk, honk, Mr. President!”
Alludes to a smuggling technique Harpo Marx (1888-1964) conducted during his tour of Stalinist Russia in the 1930s. Mr. Marx acted as a secret courier delivering communiques to the US embassy in Russia by taping them to his leg underneath his trousers. According to Harpo, upon reaching the embassy, he pulled up his pants, removed the tape and straps, handed over the dispatches, and scratched his leg for the first time in 10 days. Not that we’d ever compare Nancy “Palace Coup” Pelosi to Joseph “Palace Coup” Stalin of course.

White House Staff Happy Hour scene:

Duchess: “I’ve often wondered how a neck-sniffing, shoulder-rubbing, harebrained mousy king and a cold-blooded queen became President and Speaker of the House…”
Pardon Attorney (also staring into space): "Me too."
The Duchess (looks at Pardon Attorney): "I agree."
Pardon Attorney: "What?"
Duchess: "Nothing."

The Duchess is describing the King and Queen but she is also indirectly describing everyone sitting at the table: A recipient of a neck sniffing and shoulder rubbing from the King (the Duchess), a hare brain (March Hare), someone who’s mousy (Dormouse) and someone who’s cold-blooded (Bill Lazard, a lizard). She could pin the blame on the MeToo movement (which in our opinion is partially responsible due to their overlooking of discretions of those of the Democratic Party persuasion), but ultimately that movement didn’t force everyone at that table to vote for the King. So even in turbulent times such as these, voting is still a great responsibility, and should never be conducted when one is feeling rash, irritable, childish, or under the influence of a straight ticket.

Duchess: “What time is it, Hatter?”
Hatter: “Six o’clock…”

Reference to the conversation in Chapter VII in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland”:
“’Well, I'd hardly finished the first verse,' said the Hatter, `when the Queen jumped up and bawled out,
‘He's murdering the time! Off with his head!"
`How dreadfully savage!' exclaimed Alice.
`And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, ` [Time] won't do a thing I ask! It's always six
o'clock now.’”

March Hare: "Five o’clock? Oh, my ears and whiskers! How late it’s getting! I’d better scurry back down my rabbit hole and put some biscuits in the oven. The Rutles are coming over for tea.”
– The Rutles were a pastiche band of the Beatles. For more on the Rutles (and the tea and biscuit reference), see the mockumentary “All You Need is Cash.”

Hatter: “I’d better get home, too. I need to let those two clever ravens of mine out of the desk. They’ve been cooped up all day.”
Pardon Attorney: “Let your ravens out of the desk?!”
Hatter: “Yes. For some reason, wise ravens like a writing desk!

Hopefully this sketch clears up once and for the all the decades long smear campaign directed at Mr. Hatter. The Hatter was simply making an observation about his desk-obsessed aviary collection (“wise ravens like a writing desk”). A recent fact checking article (sponsored by the Sane Hatter Times) claimed that this was in fact false; the Hatter never uttered these words. Carroll unfortunately misheard Mr. Hatter’s words and recorded Mr. Hatter’s statement as a riddle (“Why is a raven like a writing desk?“). Since an answer is obviously never given, scholars since then, without checking their references, have jumped all over poor Mr. Hatter, falsely labeling him as mad because he doesn’t have enough sense to tell a joke without delivering a punchline.

Duchess (to Pardon Attorney): "And the moral is: “Looks like you’re stuck with the bill again…BILL!!” (The Duchess laughs and leaves).” - In Chapter IV of “Alice’s’ Adventures in Wonderland,” Alice reflected “…they seem to put everything upon Bill! I wouldn't be in Bill's place for a good deal.” In this skit, all the characters put everything on bill too…including the bill. Rather fitting that the Duchess would be the one to turn stiffing Bill into a moral (Chapter IX).

The Rose Garden scene:

The faces of Kamala Harris and Nancy Pelosi are demonstrating a phenomenon known as “The Thatcher Effect.” Created by Professor Peter Thompson in 1980, it illustrates (using a picture of the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, hence the name) how important a role the eyes and mouth play in facial perception. Like in the Thatcher effect picture, both Ms. Harris’s and Ms. Pelosi’s eyes and mouth were flipped 180 degrees. When you look at the upside down head with the right side up eyes and mouth (the bottom face on the “playing card”), the face appears normal. It’s only when you look at the right side up head and inverted eyes and mouth (the top face on the “card”) that you notice how different they look (some would argue more hideous, but we argue that their faces are actually more sincere, at least from a “Picture of Dorian Gray” perspective). It’s less noticeable on Ms. Harris, mainly because she only has one eye (the Jack of Hearts is a one-eyed Jack, you know). Thanks to this sketch, this is probably one of the only instances you’ll ever see Ms. Thatcher, Ms. Harris and Ms. Pelosi mentioned in the same sentence. Consider yourself cursed.

"Jolly" Roger That, C.B. Hand and Jack Sh** (the off-screen condemned) are nicknames for poker hands: “Roger That” and “C.B. Hand” are both nicknames for a poker hand with a ten and a four in it (as in “10-4, good buddy”). Jack Sh** is the nickname for a poker hand with a Jack and a two in it, a hand which is nearly worthless.

Captain “Jolly” Roger That: “Argh, that the Queen might take warning by the fate of the desserts that I had eaten, and to pay confectioners their wages when due, and to treat them better; saying, that her barbarity to them made so many turn into consumers of comfort food!”

This is a spoof of the section from the famous pirate “Captain” William Fly’s (?-1726) defiant last words on the gallows in Boston Massachusetts on 12 July 1726, shortly before his execution for piracy. The section really reads:

“…all Masters of Vessels might take Warning by the Fate of the Captain [John Green] that he had murder’d, and to pay Sailors their Wages when due, and to treat them better; saying, that their Barbarity to them made so many turn Pirates.”

Essentially this was Mr. Fly’s warning to all Captains that if you abuse and disrespect your crew, then expect to be mutinied. William Fly was gibbeted and buried at Nixes Mate, an island at the mouth of Boston Harbor.

Knave: “But Your Majesty, you promised your husband, the King, that you would be here to oversee these executions! Don’t you remember? He promised to do the posthumous pardons, the cadaver synods and the Roman slave reparations, and you agreed to do this! If you ask me, he dealt you a great hand! (cackle).” - It is very puzzling to us here at CoBaD why the world considers postmortem pardons and slave reparations so noble, and postmortem trials (such as cadaver synods) so ignoble. All three instances are essentially the same: Closing the barn door after the horses have bolted.

Knave: “Get this mess cleaned up, pronto. We gotta turn around the scaffold for this afternoon’s show. The Hester Prynne heckling starts at three.”
Alice: “Hester? That nice young mother from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 'The Scarlet Letter?’”
Knave: "The diehard Crimson Tide fan, yes.”
Turtle: "I like her…”

For more on this, see the "Hindsight is 1642" and "A Tribute to Pete and Dud" sketches.

In the next to last drawing, the Dormouse (Chairman Rosie) is seen at the right muttering “F**king tea on my head!”). This is intended to clear up another myth, this one coming at the hands of the psychedelic rock band Jefferson Airplane. At the very end of their 1967 hit “White Rabbit,” lead singer and songwriter Grace Slick sang the words “Remember what the Dormouse said/”Feed your head”/”Feed your head.” A fact checking article (sponsored by the Dormouse Times) claimed that the Dormouse said nothing of the sort, a quick look at Chapter VII of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland corroborates this. Just before Alice left the Tea Party, Alice claimed that she saw the March Hare and the Mad Hatter trying to put the Dormouse’s head into the teapot. So what the Dormouse really said was “F**king tea on my head!” which were the words first uttered upon waking up. Like with the Hatter article, this fact checking article was groundbreaking for two reasons: (1) it was in fact true, and (2) it wasn’t some partisan laden drivel written by the likes of Gaslight, the Brown-beaked Butt Boy Wonder. So while Ms. Slick argued that the lines were really about opening your mind to a book (“feed your head),” a noble cause, if she had only checked her references like the aforementioned scholars, she would have learned the truth, that the whole basis of her book-pushing narrative was actually based on a natural response to someone realizing that he was the butt of a practical joke.

Voiceover: “This CoBaD sketch HASN’T been brought to you by Grumble Search Suppressor, the official search smotherer of Kamala Comedian. That perfect search engine for when you want to look for everything that you know and don’t know yet, based on what you’ve just been able to see and because you’ve seen it or not and it hasn’t happened OR is limited to what you have seen. “

The second sentence was a spoof of a “word salad” response given by Ms. Harris at a 10 March 2022 press conference in Warsaw with the President of Poland, Andrzej Duda. The question was “Will the U.S. support an international investigation into war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine? And can you see any political future for Putin?” It was the second paragraph of a three paragraph response and reads:

“But we all watched the television coverage of just yesterday.  That’s on top of everything else that we know and don’t know yet, based on what we’ve just been able to see.  And because we’ve seen it or not doesn’t mean it hasn’t happened.”

Jim Hacker of “Yes, Prime Minister” couldn’t have said it any better.

Voiceover: “Our engines are guaranteed to keep consumers in the dark AND prevent meddlesome content creators from sudden revenue streams and viewing spikes gained by the posting of new material. When content strikes, you can rest assured Grumble Search Suppressor is there to hide your favorite channels and incomplete your autocompletes. Preaching the freedom of the press and practicing the freedom TO suppress since 2022. We are Grumble Search Suppressor, where a search by any other name won’t let you see sh**” –

Inspired by a recent search of the phrase “CoBaD” on this social media platform. In the search CoBaD did not appear at all. We thought that this was rather puzzling since many political commentators on this very platform railed against search engines such as Google for manipulating search results at the benefit of Democrats. Yet it appears that this very platform, for whatever reason, is committing the exact same manipulation as well, and doing so at the expense of this troupe.

References:
888poker.com. The Ultimate Guide to Poker Hand Nicknames. https://www.888poker.com/magazine/strategy/poker-hand-nicknames

Carroll, L. (1865). Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. https://www.alice-in-wonderland.net/wp-content/uploads/alice-in-wonderland.pdf

Executedtoday,com (12 July 2008). 1726: William Fly, Unrepentant Pirate
www.executedtoday.com/2008/07/12/1726-william-fly-pirate-boston/

Jeffersonariplane.com (05 Feb 2020). The Story of White Rabbit. https://jeffersonairplane.com/the-story-of-white-rabbit/

Whitehouse.gov (10 March 2022). Remarks by Vice President Harris and President Andrzej Duda of Poland in Joint Press Conference (10 March 2022).
https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/03/10/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-and-president-andrzej-duda-of-poland-in-joint-press-conference/

Wikipedia. Cadaver Synod. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cadaver_Synod

Wikipedia. Harpo Marx. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpo_Marx

Wikipedia. Thatcher Effect. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thatcher_effect

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Convulsions of Birth and Death (CoBaD) is a comedy sketch troupe founded in September, 2022 that posts skits on social media covering varied topics such as music, history, art, science, sports, literature and events encountered in everyday life. The title was inspired by Henry David Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” (1849), an essay written as a protest against the U.S. government taking his “gift” (i.e., his taxes), and wasting it in ways in which he did not approve (e.g., war and slavery). CoBaD writes sketches in the spirit of Thoreau, but instead of strictly casting its nets outwards towards governments and figures of authority, it projects its protest inwards by taking a humorous, lightheaded look at humanity and specifically those who take the greatest gift of all, life, and senselessly and stupidly waste it on greed, narcissism, self-centeredness, petty-mindedness, arrogance, opportunism, power-grabbing, quid pro quo, the status quo, ulterior motives, and the most despicable waste of all, social media.