Gipper, the Talking Points Duck
A recent email from a wingnut mentioned me as part of “the cartoonists syndicate” because I write at This Modern World, which is linked to by Ted Rall, who wrote something that hurt his poor widdle feewlings (boo hoo). What’s odd about my inclusion in this syndicate is that (a) I’m not a cartoonist and (b) I couldn’t draw to save my life, but it gave me an idea nonetheless. Inspired by the trend of recaptioning Family Circus strips and the 1994 Supreme Court case Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music which established that parody is a form of speech protected under the first amendment, here’s a few strips from my new comic, Gipper, the Talking Points Duck :
Maybe I should be careful. The real talking points duck is a thin-skinned baby whose readers are too stupid to tell the difference between a parody and the real thing. The last thing I want is to see another tort-reform conservative suddenly gain an interest in abusing the legal system.
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I don’t know what Tinsley is talking about in regards to Jon Stewart’s version of the strip – I could easily tell it wasn’t a real Mallard Fillmore. It was funny.
Comment by Sakurai — January 19, 2006 @ 6:33 pm
Hilarious.
Comment by Kyle — January 19, 2006 @ 7:47 pm
Your version was actually funny. How refreshing.
Comment by jimmarquis — January 19, 2006 @ 9:15 pm
BURNED. The Dean stretch was superb.
Comment by meatbandit — January 19, 2006 @ 10:13 pm
What, John Stewart? Of what do you speak, enlightened cable-having guy (or girl)?
Comment by Joe — January 20, 2006 @ 2:57 am
It boggles the mind, how that comic is total crap. Who would publish it?
Comment by Joe — January 20, 2006 @ 3:22 am
What, John Stewart? Of what do you speak, enlightened cable-having guy (or girl)?
Pick up America: The Book and all shall be revealed.
Comment by Brad — January 20, 2006 @ 10:30 am
And exactly what do you propose?
Comment by Burt — January 21, 2006 @ 4:02 pm
Politics aside, I just don’t understand why Mallard Fillmore is on so many papers.
Over the years I’ve asked several conservatives if they like Mallard; I’ve never met one who particularly cared for it.
They might agree with the duck, but they don’t find it entertaining or educational.
Comment by Paul -V- — January 23, 2006 @ 8:16 am
Does Tinsley use a stencil to draw that bloody duck? It’s like Paris Hilton: one expression.
Comment by ahem — January 23, 2006 @ 8:23 am
Great stuff. I remember writing a letter to the editor of my local paper about Tinsley. Where is it again?
Ah, Here it is.
Comment by Darryl Pearce — January 23, 2006 @ 9:19 am
Yeah, I complained to the Boston Globe many times over this craptacular strip.
Tinsley had actually wrote a strip basically begging for supporters to email their local paper in favor of Mallard…
So I emailed and asked, “Does this mean if enough people ask you to STOP running this travesty, you will?”
Got printed and everthang!
Now the Globe also runs “Prickly City”…
That’s not progress…
Comment by Sir Foxbat — January 23, 2006 @ 9:43 am
Too funny…because true. I’ve wanted to break Mallard’s beak for years now and make Peking Duck out of the mofo.
Comment by Ken — January 23, 2006 @ 10:30 am
It’s kind of amazing, that strip. It has no artistic merit. It deals in comicly distorted faces, but always uses the most racialized characterizations. The ‘John Stewart’ drawing is seriously unbelievable: it’s the most anti-semetic thing you’ve seen run in a major newspaper since Henry Ford and his rantings. There’s no joke half the time. It wants to be Doonesbury, of all fucking things, but he doesn’t have Trudeau’s, well, anything. You’d think Tinsley’d have quit by now out of shear humiliation at being so lousy, and so obviously unqualified.
Comment by Padraig — January 23, 2006 @ 11:58 am
Wow. It is just like Mallard Fillmore. Only funny.
Hey maybe you could do this with the State of the Union address. You know, put captions over W.’s picture at the podium, but make the address intelligent, honest and insightful?
Comment by larry4 — January 23, 2006 @ 12:05 pm
T- e – m – p – t – a – t – i – o – n
Greg Saunders pointed out last week that one can have great fun in recaptioning cartoons. Especially satisfying to recaption is Mallard Fillmore. Greg also posted a link to Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music which acknowledged Fair Use to copyrighted materia…
Trackback by Low and Left — January 23, 2006 @ 12:25 pm
One of the most impressive things about Doonesbury is that you can laugh WITH characters of all stripes, not just AT the ones you disagree with. Tinsley doesn’t even consider attempting this – it’s cheap shot city, or really, lame shot city — each one an absolute brick. Each one is just a farting whoopee cushion – cue Rodney Dangerfield, “Who stepped on the duck?”
I still remember a Doonesbury strip from the 70s in which Jim Andrews (conservative head of an oil company) is lamenting the state of the oil business back then, he’s on his couch and won’t get up to go to work (his wife is trying get him back on the job) and he says, by memory here, so bear with me if it’s slightly off, “Without incentives, I don’t feel much like looking for my socks, let alone America’s oil reserves” and “listless, just listless.” It’s a great example of showing how this guy feels without necessarily approving of it.
Comment by mroberts — January 23, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
You just don’t understand the subtle performance art of the right wing. They have, for 30 years, been trying to prove that affirmative action forces you to lower standards and accept the less qualified on behalf of some other criteria such as diversity or ideology. They figured the best way to demonstrate this is to produce oodles of comic strips, books, movies, TV shows, think tanks, presidential candidates, etc that are so clearly inferior that any random guy with a blog could come up with better.
Of course, the miscalculation they made was that Americans just don’t get performance art, and many people seem to think “Mallard” et al are serious in their right wing beliefs. One of these days we’ll all get the joke, and look back and laugh and laugh and laugh at the meta-joke the right wingers have been playing ever since Goldwater got trounced in 1964 (the Nixon years were spectacularly misunderstood and hilarious, too).
[sarcasm off]
But seriously, I agree with you all, esp. mroberts. I’ll add that right-wing-target Boondocks is also like Doonesbury in that way — the author takes his shots, but is willing to poke fun at the biases of his own characters, too.
Comment by Whistler Blue — January 23, 2006 @ 4:04 pm
Whistler Blue is on target: ‘Mallard Fillmore’ is an affirmative action baby. The only reason it exists is to give the righties equal time on the comics page. Who cares if the strip is just right-wing whining? Lowest point Tinsley may have hit was accusing Trudeau of being a Democratic Party mouthpiece a few years back!
Actually, we should all be thankful for Mallard’s wit and quality: the NY Daily News ran a strip for a few months called ‘State of the Union’ that was even WORSE drawn, MORE strident and LESS (than zero) funny than MF. The News (which seems to be getting more & more like the NY Post every day) dropped this turd pretty quickly.
Comment by Miscweant — January 23, 2006 @ 8:08 pm
My hometown fishwrapper, the Dallas Morning News, began running “Mallard” a few years back, after having banished “Doonesbury” to the editorial page because its content was considered “too political.” I wrote the editors to ask why a truly clever and entertaining comic was relegated to a section where few readers will ever see it while a completely unfunny – but even more overtly political – one was still in the comics section. The features editor wrote back to inform me that Doonesbury would be returning to the comic page shortly, largely due to many letters such as mine. She also agreed with my assessment that “Mallard” was simply a joyless right-wing screed that made no real attempt at humor. I was really impressed by that editor until I came to the part of her letter in which she encouraged me to check out “Prickly City,” claiming that it was “a conservative strip that was as funny as Doonesbury. Sigh…
Comment by jjcomet — January 24, 2006 @ 7:00 am
At least Prickly City is better drawn.
Isn’t it interesting how these right-wing strips have no interest in characterization or storytelling? It’s just their characters spouting putdowns & RW talking points. (Last I heard Hugo Chavez won his election with a lot more support & less chicanery than GWB.)
Comment by Miscweant — January 24, 2006 @ 7:42 am
Should’ve explained my Chavez reference better. Today’s P.City strip (found via Google) rips Belafonte for calling GWB a dictator, but uses the same word to describe Chavez.
Comment by Miscweant — January 24, 2006 @ 7:44 am
Prickly City, continued…
I just sent its creator, Scott Santis, the following Email, via pricklycity@gmail.com:
I’m curious to learn what criteria you base your description of Hugo Chavez as a ‘dictator’ in today’s (1/24/06) strip. According to information I was able to find online, he outpolled his opponent by appx 1.4 million votes in his 2000 re-election. He also survived a military attempt to oust him from office several years ago, which meant Venezuela managed to keep a military dicatorship from replacing a democratically elected government.
I look forward to your response. Thank you for your time and interest…
If I get a response, I’ll share it with the folks here.
Comment by Miscweant — January 24, 2006 @ 7:53 am
First try
One problem is I need a name for the little guy. Greg Saunders has already laid claim to Gipper, damn him. If Greg wants to share, that’d be great. But any other bright ideas will be accepted….
Trackback by Low and Left — January 24, 2006 @ 8:00 am
Prickly City, the adventure continues…
I really got a burr under my saddle on this one. Here’s a letter I just sent to the president of the syndicate and the strip’s editor:
***
Robert Duffy, President
Universal Press Syndicate
4520 Main Street
Kansas City, MO 64111-7701
Dear Mr. Duffy,
Today’s Prickly City comic strip, in the course of critiquing Harry Belafonte’s reference to President Bush as a ‘dictator,’ uses the same word to describe Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez.
According to information I was able to find online, Mr. Chavez won re-election in 2000, with a 1.4 million margin of victory out of 6.3 million votes cast. His opponent received 37% of the vote vs. Mr. Chavez’ 60%. Say what you will about his politics, these results would hardly qualify him as a dictator, or Venezuela as devoid of an active opposition party.
I realize that Prickly City is offered to newspapers as a conservative alternative to Doonesbury, and as such is an opinion vehicle. However the question remains, should a comic strip that advocates a specific political viewpoint be required, within its advocacy, to be factually accurate? What kind of overview of Mr. Stantis’ assertions is his editor at the syndicate providing in this regard?
Thank you for your attention to my letter; I look forward to your response.
Sincerely,
***
Friendly, polite, factual… but I’m f’n sick and tired of rightwingers peddling crap & repeating often & loud enough to drown out the truth. This is my little cause for today – putting this particular guy’s enablers on the spot. Anybody have any idea how many papers the strip runs in & how to contact them? It’s time we stopped letting this propaganda go by unchallenged. Maybe we could get P.City to run a strip or 2 about how the US colluded in that attempted overthrow of Chavez a few years back, by way of an apology…
Comment by Miscweant — January 24, 2006 @ 8:36 am
Of course, Mallard Fillmore does inspire haiku:
The duck with only
A Right Wing always flies in
Circles and circles.
Comment by larry4 — January 24, 2006 @ 10:53 am
Much like common household trash, trash cartoons can be sorted for easy disposal- whereas Prickly City harps on the topic du jour, only to abandon it completely when the next talking point is spawned, Mallard Fillmore spends most of its strips dealing with topical issues such as Ted Kennedy’s 1969 incident or the “Dean Scream”. I find Stantis to be immpressively immature in his “satire”, but anything’s better than Tinsley’s half-dozen “jokes” repeated ad nauseam. I wonder if he’ll have an Elian Gonzalez zinger anytime soon.
Comment by Terrible Dan — January 24, 2006 @ 1:04 pm
I submit that “Prickly City” is misnamed slightly; to paraphrase Hawkeye Pierce, it’s off by two letters.
Comment by millsapian87 — January 24, 2006 @ 1:39 pm
At least Mallard Fillmore still has some interest, if only of the “rubbernecking at a car crash” variety; Day By Day is just as inane and even more boring. Try and parody that….
Comment by Martin Wisse — January 25, 2006 @ 1:19 am
I only just now realized that the paper up here doesn’t carry Mallard. We moved from Virginia (where it was in the paper every day) to Massachusetts at the end of July, and I totally failed to realize that I was no longer skipping it every day.
Do I miss those final panels where the duck stares out at us with his “as-you-and-I-both-know, liberals-are-full-of-shit” look? Hell, no. I can get bigger laughs staring at the back of the television set.
I’d point out that yours are much funnier, but that’s like saying water is wet. It’s impossible for them not to be. Good job anyway. I was unable to visualize the premise “like Mallard Fillmore, only funny,” but you pulled it off.
Comment by Kip W — January 25, 2006 @ 5:51 am
The Houston Chronicle moved Doonesbury to the editorial pages years and years ago. Then they added Mallard Fillmore – to the comics section. It was years before they let Doonesbury join Mallard the Right-Wing Loon in the comics section.
Comment by Easter Lemming — January 25, 2006 @ 9:56 am
It’s very simple. As much as conservatives hate “affirmative action,” they love threatening mainstream newspapers, etc., to get them to “balance” the argument. The comic’s commitment to be funny is a last-minute consideration. I’d welcome a funny conservative “funny paper” — really I would — but jokes about the slowness of the subhuman waiters and pullman porters, and the other stuff that makes Lord Plushbottom laugh in the smoking room — I don’t find funny. And that’s conservative “humor.”
Comment by Jim — January 25, 2006 @ 12:32 pm
Wow, before following a link and looking at a new one, i’d forgotten how interminably lame “Mallard” is.
Seriously, my cats excrete funnier things into their litterboxes than this cartoon.
I’ve seen and been in car accidents that were more entertaining.
Mallard fillmore is so torturously crappy that reading a single frame of it is a pain just short of that associated with organ failure
Comment by The Crapture — January 25, 2006 @ 12:56 pm
Wasn’t there a funny version of this comic a while back called Bloom County?
Comment by DUDACKATTACK!!! — January 25, 2006 @ 2:21 pm
“Mallard Fillmore” is unique in that it has NEGATIVE humor content. You’ll find you have trouble laughing at even (say) “The Daily Show” after reading it. (It’s been scientifically proved!)
Comment by Pere Ubu — January 25, 2006 @ 2:24 pm
Today’s “Prickly City” strip featured a stunning lie (But Dr. Dean, 80 Democrats took money from Jack Abramoff). I wonder if he’ll get called on that, since of course, no Democrat received any money from Abramoff, although many did receive money from Abramoff’s clients (it’s hard to blame the clients for hiring a sleazeball, but I’m sure Prickly City can handle it).
Geesh. Lies, Damn Lies, and Conservative Core Values.
-JAH
Comment by Josh a Roonie — January 26, 2006 @ 10:38 pm
Demonstrating Bruce Tinsley bereft of ideas, Exhibit A:
Several days of shopworn Postal Service jibes (I see the price of a stamp is going up again, maybe now they’ll deliver my mail to me promptly, haw haw). Seriously, stuff Bob Hope in his declining years wouldn’t have touched with a ten foot pole.
And to add insult to injury, he followed with several days of jejune responses to reader mail objecting to his careless slander of USPS employees.
The proof is in the puddinghead–
Comment by Chris Vosburg — January 28, 2006 @ 11:04 am
mallard fillmore had a lot of shots to give during the election but when something big comes up like katrina, abramoff, plamegate, etc. he becomes less political and pretty much ignores current events – and is still not funny
what a chickenshit
Comment by peter — January 28, 2006 @ 12:20 pm
It’s simple,right wingers aren’t funny. Not even to other right wingers most of the time. The best they can manage is a cruel snicker as they kick someone who is down or make fun of the disadvantaged. Just listen to Rush Limbaugh for 15 minutes and see if anything he says that is supposed to be a joke is even remotely humorous. They even managed to suck all the funny out of the formerly funny Dennis Miller.
Name five funny right wingers – and I mean funny on purpose, not accidentally funny, or so lame they’re funny in a Plan 9 from Outer Space kind of way. I bet you can’t.
Comment by rev.paperboy — January 29, 2006 @ 5:11 am
Wow! Mallard Fillmore can actually be funny…
Check out: Gipper, the Talking Points Duck
…
Trackback by Yet Another Web Site — February 2, 2006 @ 8:46 am
Nice to see there are liberal sites where everyone gathers to agree with each other, too. Would hate for conservatives to have all the fun. As for the guy who never met a conservative who likes Mallard. You have now. I enjoy his daily skewering of leftie pretensions. Obviously others do, too. Papers generally don’t carry a strip that has no audience…. it’s called the free market. Works pretty good.
Comment by Gary — February 3, 2006 @ 8:17 am
Obviously you’re not familiar with the comics business.
You think anyone is really a huge Lockhorns or Hagar the Horrible fan? It’s all about inertia and stuff people are familiar with. That’s why comics keep running years after their creator has run out of things to say and/or died.
Comment by Alyson — February 5, 2006 @ 1:30 pm
Hey, you made Mallard funny!
You should make more Howard Dean strips, good stuff.
Comment by Heron Burr — February 5, 2006 @ 2:51 pm
mallard is absolutely an affirmative action baby. If not for the need for “equal time”, he would have no outlet for his humor challenged strip.The best joke is that tinsley’s witless comic strip makes perfect sense to the hypocrite unsophisticated loudmouths. Anyone defending Mallard should answer this question: What exactly is the point of fanning racial issues? (see mallard 2/7/06). Seems that the right wing loves racist baiting. Simply put: its not funny. And its anti-American.
Comment by presidentialcrimewave — February 7, 2006 @ 5:18 am
Dubya C Fields
Milhous Fillmore by way of Gary political, political cartoons, cartoons, satire, parody, Bush, comic strips, Mallard Fillmore Zencomix…
Trackback by In Search Of Utopia — April 3, 2006 @ 9:40 am