The following is flash fiction for my attention span is but a thimble in a downpour of creativity.

~*~

Pekady Callflower strutted proudly, wry fingers tucked loosely under two of his four breast pockets. He grumphed loudly and turned over to his assistant-sitting-on-desk-not-on-chair, the inimitable Cereline Yost.

"News bastardology!" Callflower burst forth, his jowls and semi-chin wobbling in a self-created air of importance.

"Ahmm?" Cereline turned her head, short blonde (so light it was almost white, she thought sometimes) hair following the motions, with strands clacking into each other. (Heavy hair.)

Callflower declared: "I know this all along, and it is true. For who has the greatest respect in our country? Not kings nor queens, nay. The tail wags not the dog, either — there is an invisible person gripping the dog and shaking him, at times so hard the fleas are afraid to come aboard. What's more, this person is continually laughing!"

Cereline's lips were chapped after days of subterfuge, and she couldn't protest much. But she would hear him out. "'Splain more, Sir!"

"What I mean," Callflower expounded, his brique-a-trot across the room patterned across some lazy melange between Freed Asstare and Silbert Gullivan (both dead), "is politicians are the people's playthings. Sure, we have many citizens who get mad, in arms, threatening uprisings against unpleasant laws… but don't actually do anything. They respond more, and more importantly, give their respects to comedians. It is the kings & queens of comedy who run this show of society, a tour de farce peppered with fluorescent laughter. And do you know what else, Cere?"

"Ahmmm?" Cereline was somewhat distracted.

"I'll tell you what else! Why… I know for a fact that these political scandals we see in the news, they are by far and large fabricated. I will tell you right here, right now (as a famous song once intoned) that I know — on first-name basis — a Mayore who got himself into a very visible affair of the mature sort so he could be the joke of the towns for months!"

Cereline cocked her head. She knew. "So what you're presuming is, this Mayore was really 'in bed' with a comedian and they cooked the whole controverstew up so that said king of comedy would have plenty of jokes to tell, one-liners, monologues, and more?"

"Oh yes, oh yes. It never goes on forever, but a few months is a great stretch, a good run. And plenty of… what does it always come down to?"

"Money and laughs."

"Of course."

"Note how these scandals, they rarely ever involved harm of the grievous bodily sort. That is both career-limiting and not funny. And note the ones that do succeed!" Callflower whipped up a wallchart displaying all sorts of intriguing facts, pictures, and excess chartchunk. "They may be unlawful and against moral values, but it cannot be denied that, they are really victimless in a sense."

"But what about the Mayore's betrothed?"

"I am sure she is in on it too."

"But for what purpose?"

"Money & laughs!"

"Of course."