by Lore Sjöberg

Tweedledee and Tweedledum
The major cultural accomplishment of "T&T," of course, is giving editorial cartoonists a cheap metaphor for equally idiotic people on both sides of an issue. My question, though, is this: How do you 'spoil' a rattle, especially a nice new one? Leave it on the kitchen counter overnight? Buy it everything it asks for and never punish it? Shouldn't Tweedledee have taken responsibility for the raising of his own rattle? C

Alice
I have to say I find Alice inexplicably charming, but she's still kind of a pushover. She finds something labeled "Eat Me," and down it goes. Someone hands her a flamingo and tells her to start whacking hedgehogs, and she's all over that surrealistic Victorian action. It's a good thing she doesn't get e-mail: "Alice saw that the reports she was to sell were themselves on the subject of selling reports. It made no sense to Alice, but she put her name at the bottom of the list and mailed it to ten thousand people anyway. 'After all,' she thought, 'If someone takes the time to put "MAKE MONEY FAST" in the subject of a letter, there must be money to be made.'" B-

The Mad Hatter
"Alice felt dreadfully puzzled. The Hatter's remark seemed to her to have no sort of meaning in it, and yet it was certainly English." Baby, I've been there. One of the great things about El Sombrerador Loco is the way he's drawn. It's perfect. Not only can you tell he's a hatter -- and I've never even met a hatter -- but you can tell he's mad, in the same way you can tell that the guy lurching down the street with a windbreaker tied around his head isn't exactly signaling all his lane changes. And he's the one who came up with the "Twinkle Twinkle Little Bat" poem. What more could you want? A

Father William
Father William, technically speaking, isn't actually in Wonderland. Rather, he's a character in a poem, but that never hurt the Walrus and the Carpenter any. At any rate, Father William can eat geese whole, do backflips, and balance eels on his nose, all while maintaining perfect rhyme and scansion. In addition he tries to get his son to buy dubious ointment and threatens to kick him down a stairwell. If Father William had been in charge, I doubt Tweedledee's rattle would have had any behavioral problems. B

Pat the Guinea Pig
I have to admit that I'm going to be unfair here. Power corrupts, and the incredible sway that this space holds over the hearts and minds of people worldwide only encourages me to use it to level petty vendettas against sitcom stars from the Seventies. You see, there was once a TV movie based on "Alice in Wonderland," and it starred just about every actor who hit hard times about the time "The Carol Burnett Show" closed. "Pat" was played by one Scott Baio. Now, I think you could make a good argument that Lewis Carroll had never even seen "Joanie Loves Chachi," but that one television event is enough to sour Pat forever in my mind. So sad.D+

The Queen of Hearts
I like the Queen; she's found her method of coping with life -- beheadings -- and she's okay with that. It's kind of like creative visualization, really; if there's something happening that she doesn't dig on, she creates a world where the person responsible has died horribly. And if nobody ever actually ends up headless, well, you create your own reality. I really think there's some room here for a new and potent form of therapy. B+