Pablo Fernandez

I’ve seen many cases of this before, but never one as clear as this. Mike Pence, the vice president of the USA, just released a children’s book about a bunny titled “Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President” and at the same time, John Oliver of Last Week Tonight released a counter-book titled “A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo“.

How can you make a counter book against a children’s book? Well, Mike Pence is known for being homophobic, for his views that women should not be in the military. Trump even said, regarding talking about gay people “Don’t ask Mike, he wants them all hung”. John Oliver’s book is about gay bunnies getting married. It’s promoting the values that Mike Pence is against.

I’m not a democrat, I’m not a republican, I’m not a feminist (that one is a bit more complex), I’m not gay, I’m not a Tory, I’m not labour, I’m not black. I’m socially liberal, fiscally conservative person. Or something like that. I do believe that tolerance is a good thing, including letting people chose who they love, who they marry, etc. From that point of view I dislike most conservative governments, from Trump’s to the one in the country I live in, the Tories (Theresa May).

I don’t understand how Trump got elected. I do understand why the group of people that voted for Trump did so. There’s a sector of white middle and lower class in the US that feel disenfranchised as their jobs, their way of living, is disappearing. I don’t believe Trump will solve it, but the problem exist and thus people suffering from it were very likely to vote for Trump.

But Trump’s government is anti-gay, anti-black, anti-women and anti many, many other things. All of those demographics surely outweigh the ones voting for him. This is why I don’t understand how Trump got elected. What were all those other people that Trump’s government is against doing on voting day?

Back to the bunny book, look at the reviews for Mike Pence’s book, Marlon Bundo’s Day in the Life of the Vice President:

and now look at the reviews for John Oliver’s book, A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo:

Now, let’s not kid ourselves. All those reviews, for and against both books, by now, are nothing but political commentary. This is political commentary on a neutral website: Amazon. It’s not political commentary on a political site that is likely to have only one side of the argument. And this is happening on other neutral sites as well, such as Goodreads:

By now, this is a popularity contest and a popularity contest that John Oliver is winning by a landslide. A popularity contest in which a story about a gay bunny is winning against the vice president of the United States.

Since an election is nothing else than a popularity contest, where were all those people that are writing reviews on Amazon on voting day? This is a message for everybody, no matter what you believe or what country you are in: get out of your lazy ass and vote!

There are various confounding factors that I want to address:

• A lot of these reviews might be international and those wouldn’t have an effect on US elections.
• Reviews are written by people with access to the internet and there might be a high correlation with Internet access and being anti-Trump, gay, lesbian, female, black, liberal. But didn’t Trump win by masterfully using the Internet and social media among other things?
• John Oliver announced the book last night, so, there might be a pro-John Oliver wave that will die down quickly and in the long run, Mike Pence’s book might prove to be the winner of the popularity contest.