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Friday, January 26, 2007

Those damned asterisks

What's Mallard raving about today?

The F.D.A., pet obesity, Chinese obesity, dog-eating.

This panel would only be half as appalling if I didn't realize that Mallard spent two days on a rambling, incoherent lead-in to the rather flaccid joke that China's kids are obese because they are eating America's obese dogs. Not to mention the excessive use of "footnotes" (a term which can only be used loosely because attributing something broadly to USA Today can't be considered documenting your work).

The last paragraph deserves special mention as the single most unhinged rambling ever published in comic form. Rather than trying to justify his "joke" on the basis that it is grounded in fact, I'd prefer Mallard just bitch and moan about how he's been vilified for insinuating that the Chinese eat dogs.

Though it did make me wonder if somewhere in India there's an analogous comic in which a fuliguline Indian reporter rants about how cow-eating in America is rising, not falling.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

pvfwWow- Mallard put 1 and another 1 together and got a very unfunny 2! What's next Tinsley, that old chesnut about hotdogs in packs of 10 and buns in packs of 12?


* How revealing is it that Mallard's prime source of news is USA Today? Those colorful graphs must be easier to grasp when you're hungover.

Charles CĂ©leste Hutchins said...

First he complains that people get upset when he draws racist caricatures. Then he goes on to say that the yellow peril is eating our beloved overweight pets.

This guy is senile. Or, at least, I'd like to think the best of him and believe that he's senile. I don't know how to explain away his readers and editors who run his comic.

Anonymous said...

If you can explain Limbaugh's listeners, you can explain Tinsley's admirers. In short: many people are stupid and vile.

As far as the editors go, they run Mallard to "balance" Doonesbury, which is drawn by a talented and witty cartoonist who can put together sensible stories, characters, and jokes.

Chance said...

well, I don't get any newspaper, and don't read comics. i surfed in from Crap every Time. So, Mallard Fillmore, eh?

This strip is appallingly lame. Not just today, in general.

I mean, holy schnitt, this is the conservative Doonesbury? Whether you agree with Trudeau about anything or even find him funny, at least he, you know, draws people and things in a practiced style, makes points about things people care about, and provides somewhat realistic setups for easily identifiable punchlines.

This? This is a goddamn poorly executed scribble of a duck head poking out under lines and lines of crazed rambling that one might find on the blog of a repressed 14 year old who just discovered that there are people who don't believe in what his daddy taught him.

Chance said...

PS: Mallard spent three days leading up to this strip; three days ago he introduced the obese dogs part.