Obamas Threw ‘Wonderland’ Bash

The Obamas are Tea Party members after all! The first couple allowed Johnny Depp and Tim Burton to throw an Alice in Wonderland costume ball at the White House in Halloween of 2009, in the depths of the recession. According to The Obamas, a tell-all book by New York Times's Jodi Kantor that comes out on Tuesday, the mad tea party was so over the top that George Lucas sent the original Chewbacca to mingle. Burton turned the State Dining Room into the Mad Hatter's tea party—Depp was in full costume—to peg to the release of his Alice film. Meringue cookies were bone-shaped, fruit punch was served in blood vials, and there was a magic show in the East Room. “White House officials were so nervous about how a splashy, Hollywood-esque party would look to jobless Americans,” the book says. But the White House was apparently not shy about making sure more humble Halloween festivities earlier that day were well reported.