Friends, let me ask you: what do you look for in a good hand sanitizer these days? Of course you want one that kills all harmful microbes and saves you from a COVID-19 infection, sure, but what if you could get so much more than that? Well, you can. I’m going to give you the inside story on the very finest sanitizer available, the one our Chief Infecutive himself uses.
It’s Pontius Pilate Brand ™ hand sanitizer, of course! It’s the sanitizer of choice, not just for our own “president,” but for two-fisted, authoritarian leaders around the world. So why is it causing such a stir?
First, it’s got the scent that says “unapologetic power grab,” the kind wannabe despots crave. The kind that allowed our Chief Infecutive to say with a straight face, “I have absolute authority” (April 10, 2020), whether it be to lock down the country, to fire Inspectors General, to contradict or ignore his own health experts, or to force governors to bid against the federal government and other nations for hospital equipment, like sweaty auction addicts on Ebay. An absolute authoritarian is going to require a sanitizer with that kind of commanding scent, and Pilate Brand ™ more than fills the bill, in traditional Gladiatorial Sweat, and now in new extra-potent Post-Orgy scent!
But Pilate Brand ™ sanitizer’s real value comes through in its astounding ability not just to wash clean the user’s hands but to absolve him of any responsibility—for anything! It’s a product fit for a Chief Infecutive who insists, “I don’t take any responsibility at all” (March 13, 2020). He’s not responsible for disbanding the Obama-era pandemic readiness group, or for ignoring the need for swift action in the pandemic’s early days, which, as both Dr. Fauci and Dr. Birx have agreed, would have dramatically limited the damage to the country. Will he accept responsibility for the thousands of needless deaths resulting from the waste of more than six precious weeks before publicly admitting the gravity of the coronavirus? Of course not, because even with the impressive list of lethal gaffes he has inflicted on America, Pilate Brand™ sanitizer has got him covered. Somebody else is to blame. It was Obama. It was China, and the World Health Organization! The Center for Disease Control! Sesame Street! Whoever his current scapegoat might be, Pontius Pilate Brand™ is there for him. It offers aloe-and-lanolin softness along with freedom from even the fundamental responsibility for being the criminally inept, crude wretch that he is!
You can bet that if Judas Iscariot had had a nifty 6-ounce atomizer of Pilate Brand™ (costing considerably less than 30 pieces of silver, by the way), he would’ve escaped responsibility for his tacky betrayal thing and might have gone on to a notable career as a tax lawyer. Or maybe a Pharisee.
The “president” wasn’t casual in his choice of Pontius Pilate Brand.™ He admitted later that the company’s advertising slogan, “All the Power, and None of the Responsibility!” definitely moved the needle for him, but, methodical as ever, he performed thorough due diligence and looked at other sanitizers, too.
He felt that Lady Macbeth Brand, traditionally a classic big seller, was a fine sanitizer but had the limitation of working only when sleepwalking in the dead of night, which is time he reserves strictly for tweeting while drunk on Diet Coke.
The Howard Hughes sanitizer was also given serious consideration since its protective qualities were impressive, and its “Spruce Goose” scent had the manly quality that would naturally appeal to a 73-year-old man in a corset. It was the issue of side effects, finally, that proved a fatal flaw. Too many customers, otherwise satisfied with the product, were put off by sudden urges to collect their own bodily waste in old mayonnaise jars. The “president” was actually quite keen on that idea initially, but abandoned the project—and the sanitizer–when the Smithsonian’s History and Culture Collection flatly refused to build a special wing to house the relics he had reportedly already begun amassing.
The White House has been generous in sharing its stockpile of “PP” (as staffers now refer to Pontius Pilate Brand™) with various Fox News personalities who expressed interest in the product, trusting it would relieve them of responsibility for constantly downplaying the danger of COVID-19 when it was in its crucial early stages. If the Chief Infecutive is washed clean of responsibility for allowing the virus to achieve the deadly foothold it needed to kill more than 100,000 Americans, why not them, too? After all, they were just providing cover for him, the brilliant, now blameless leader who told us it would all just go away “like magic.”