Wow...Tinsley TOTALLY doesn't get it.

[dvandom]

The strip Mallard Fillmore has been going off all week about how evil it was for Jon Stewart to "fake" a Mallard Fillmore strip in the book "America".

Tinsley is apparently SO thick he can't recognize parody. Does he REALLY think that the writers of America were trying to make people think it was a genuine Mallard Fillmore strip? Especially since it was part of a set of pretty blatant parodies of other strips, like Doonesbury and (IIRC, my book is at the office) Peanuts.

What a humorless political hack.

Edit: For completeness, here's the other strips.

1) The original "JOIN, or DIE." snake, the only genuine one in the batch.

2) A buttcrack joke about Lincoln and a "divide in the Union".

3) A Tammany Tiger cartoon in which the tiger is real and eats the gentlemen, parodying Nast.

4) A Peanuts strip where Lucy red-baits Pigpen.

5) A riff on the "talking White House" Doonesbury strips.

6) A fake Mad Magazine folding page.

BTW, there were no signatures on any of the parody strips, but the Mad fold-in was actually done by Al Jaffee, so he signed it.

The credits in the back say who did each piece. R. Sikoryak did the Mallard Fillmore strip, as well as the Doonesbury and Peanuts ones.

Comments

[lameazoid.livejournal.com]

Our paper picked up Mallard Fillmore recently. I don't care for it much. It tends to push the same single point for far too long while repeating the exact same statement with different wording for like 20 strips in a row. Take this Jon Stewart thing for eample. The phrase "This isn't me" appears in 3/3 strips. "cut and Pasted" appears in 2/3. i imagine over the next month we'll all be tired of both phrases as poor Mallard says the same thing over and over until some other obscure and boring political issue becomes the new topic.

[querldox.livejournal.com]

This is a surprise? Mallard is one of the least funny strips in history. There's a real opportunity for someone to do a conservative comic strip at the level of Doonesbury; something that's funny and has character development rather than just taking cheap shots...and doing it in such a way that it's not even humorous.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

I've seldom seen it, and am uninterested in ever seeing it.

[polkatrip.livejournal.com]

No understanding of parody and - what? - almost a year out of date? Yeah, that's pretty much what we've come to expect from Mallard Fillmore.

It's not for nothing that the topic of MF's singular lack of humor has come up *so* often in the rec.arts.comics.strips group that it's got its own shorthand ("DS Alert!").

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

What does the DS in that stand for, anyway? Dipshit?

[polkatrip.livejournal.com]

What does the DS in that stand for, anyway? Dipshit?

Close: Duck Shit.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

I looked at it once or twice when it was running in the newspaper, over 20 years ago, and found it less interesting that three-times-reruns of Peanuts strips. Political commentary ought to resonate, not thud, or anaesthetize.

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

It's been around that long? Sheesh. I guess it was just its sudden addition to most of the papers I have access to that was zeitgeist driven. "Hm, we need more right-wing strips than just BC...hey, here's this rabidly Republican duck, we can use that."

[aberrantangels]

It's been around that long? Sheesh.

Happily, no. According to Don Markstein's Toonopedia page, the strip wasn't even created until 1991, and wasn't nationally syndicated until '94.

I guess it was just its sudden addition to most of the papers I have access to that was zeitgeist driven.

Only if by "zeitgeist" you mean "a demographic that's either been duped by, or is part of, the Powell Manifesto-created media infrastructure".

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Apparently not that long. It just feels that long ago.

[aberrantangels]

Political commentary ought to resonate, not thud, or anaesthetize.

For me, it resonates because it thuds, thuds in a way that makes the ground shake like the tread of a zombie army. And it doesn't anaesthetize me; it alternates between leaving me boiling mad at the way he misrepresents everything his opponents actually believe, or dumbfounded by the possibility that he himself might believe the shit he spews.

[foomf.livejournal.com]

To me, it thuds the way an elephant dropping thuds when it hits the ground from the source. I avoid it for much the same reason. :)

[scavgraphics.livejournal.com]

Looks to me he's hoping to get a mention on the Daily Show, maybe even an appearance.

[redneckgaijin.livejournal.com]

*sigh*

I'm one of the few people who likes "Mallard Fillmore," because heavy-handed as he is he finds an acorn a little more often than the proverbial blind pig.

However, it irritates me that Tinsley believes that -he- can parody people all he likes, but heavens forbid anyone parody -him.-

But then, he's a conservative; hypocrisy is likely second nature.

[aberrantangels]

However, it irritates me that Tinsley believes that -he- can parody people all he likes, but heavens forbid anyone parody -him.-

I had a similar reaction on Tuesday when he started this sequence. My first thought was "Now he'll know how Dems feel when he puts words in their mouths that have, at best, a tangential relation to anything they've ever actually said." Then I realize the two unwarranted assumptions in that thought:
a) that the prominent Dems he uses as mouthpieces for his strawman antirepresentation of liberalism lampoons give the proverbial two tugs of a dead dog's tail what he has to say; and
b) that he's capable of knowing what a non-"conservative" feels, or indeed of believing that non-"conservative" thought is anything other than a delusion brought on by eating too many Oglanuts.