The picture below is the prompt for Weekend Fiction this week 

 A Play in One Act

The time: December, 2016

The Place: Oval Office , The White House

Characters: The President of the United States, Rick Santorum

                        Advisers: Josh Thorogood, Michael Wiener

 Thorogood: Mr. President, the First Lady CANNOT wear that hat to the Inauguration.

President: Well, Josh, as you may recall, Aretha Franklin wore a funny hat to Obama’s Inauguration.

Wiener: She’s……how shall I say this…African American, and besides her hat resembled a Dutch windmill, not something from the bottom of an aquarium.

President: I see your point, but the commercial fishing industry gave heavily to our campaign and they are insisting on it. It was either the crab or the Charlie Tuna hat. The First Lady thought the pink highlights in the crab  better accented her complexion.

Thorogood: (Glumly) Well, I guess the Mandatory Fish on Friday legislation wasn’t enough for them after all.

Wiener: Your Press Secretary is up in arms about it.

President: Rush Limbaugh has a low threshold for up in arms-ed-ness. However, you can tell him, I resent his remark that it looked like my wife was “being shit out of a crab,” and reassure him that this head wear will not incite anti-Catholic feelings because a Pope hasn't worn it since Easter mass 1958. 

Thorogood: I didn’t want to bring this up, but your intransigence on this matter forces me to: If she wears that hat it is going to stir up all of those reports about your having contracted the crabs in college.

President: (Incensed) Lies! Lies! Lies! Why can’t we make this go away?  I did NOT have crabs! What I had was a mild case of gonorrhea that I contracted innocently by wearing Father O’Brien’s underpants.

Wiener: Mr. President, I have to be frank with you: that is a scary hat. Just think of all of those innocent children that have been born since the Anti-Abortion Act and Anti-Birth Control Act, and how frightened they will be when they encounter the image in their history books of the Holy Mother, er, First Lady with that monster on her head.

President: Frankly, Wiener, I think you are reaching on that one, but I see your point. I think we need a cover story. How about this: now that creationism is being widely taught in our schools and universities, why don’t we say that the creature was a life form that God evolved on the first lady's hat during the drive over from the White House?

Wiener and Thorogood: Or we could go with the Charlie Tuna hat!

President: Yes, indeed, we could. Good Christian imagery ….loaves and fishes, and all that. I could don a jaunty chapeau resembling a baguette. The agribiz lobby would love that one. I think I’ll get their PR guys going on it right away.

Thorogood: That's can-do thinking, Mr. President!

Wiener: Now  that's making a silk purse out of a sow's ear!!

President: Excuse me, Wiener, but that's out of line. Those are the ears the good Lord gave her.

Wiener: It's a figure of speech, sir.

President: Oh, I see.