That damned Guam

What's Mallard raving about today?

Regular people, celebrities, Guam.

In suggesting that regular people get transferred to Guam, rather than just being unceremoniously RIF'd and escorted from the building by security with their possessions in a box, Mallard only manages to illustrate that he has a better understanding of celebrities than regular people.

That damned inconvenient truth

What's Mallard raving about today?

Global warming.

Yeah. God forbid that should happen.

That damned CBS

What's Mallard raving about today?

CBS News Polls, CBS News, some weird lady with an excess of gums.

At least this explains why the most recent Fox News Poll shows President Bush with a 38% approval rating.

That damned Spring

What's Mallard raving about today?

Crocuses, trees, the air, daffodils, irises, congress, taxes.

I suppose it's not surprising that Mallard is pretending it's springtime in February. After all he's pretending Congress has raised taxes.

Neither of which is surprising when you factor in the knowledge that he's trying to create a parallel structure out of the following: "coming up, coming up, going up."

Those damned Hippies

What's Mallard raving about today?

Dennis Hopper, investment companies, hippies.

Mallard appears to be appealing directly to a demographic which reflexively retains a burning grudge against hippies 40 years after the fact. Perhaps he's trying to raise his personal approval rating into the low 30's, just like President Bush, by appealing to that narrow group?

It bears noting that, in 1967, Dennis Hopper was 31 years old not, exactly the prime age for being a hippie. By 2004, Dennis Hopper was a supporter of the Republican Party (if Wikipedia can be believed).

But, Mallard, don't let any of that stop you from confusing some of Hopper's fictional characters with reality.

That damned Dennis Hopper

What's Mallard raving about today?

Dennis Hopper, rebellious rebel-types and really-cool guys.

Pretty much everything you need to know about Mallard is summed up in this panel, and I'm not talking about the rambling incoherence and the unrecognizable caricature.

Apparently Mallard believes that the members of the Sixties generation, most of whom morphed into Yuppies, went 40 years from the late 60's until now without ever holding down a job.

Those damned anarchists

What's Mallard raving about today?

Liberal parents, conservative kids, trans-gendered body-pierced anarchists.

For two days running (unlike the 7 months prior to this), Mallard features a recognizable comic structure involving a setup and punchline.

Not that either panel has been funny in any way, mind you, but it seems important to mark this occurrence.

I would have mentioned it yesterday, but I figured it was just a mistake.

Those damned diets

What's Mallard raving about today?

Conservative daughters, new conservative boyfriends, small children, endangered species.

"I can't believe it!"

In that spirit, here's what I can't believe:

• That liberal Dad cant believe his daughter is bringing her boyfriend home for dinner.
• That liberal Dad believes conservatives have a different diet.
• That Mallard went through a whole panel involving the conservative college daughter without mentioning that NEW is spreading like wildfire.
  

Those damned federal employees

What's Mallard raving about today?

Federal employees.

What we really need is legislation regulating the publication of pointless vitriol from bitter cranks.

That damned President

What's Mallard raving about today?

Ronald Reagan, President's Day.

Does Mallard imagine that he's in a small club for whom Reagan is the favorite President?

If that were a poster of James K. Polk or Chester A. Arthur I might understand his smug superiority at having an unusual favorite President.

But Ronald Reagan? How banal.

Those damned liberals

What's Mallard raving about today?

Conservatives, Liberals, charity, the media.

Oh, snap! Mallard smashes yet another conventional wisdom icon. And, as is usually the case, it's not a piece of conventional wisdom with which I am familiar, thereby defying the very definition of conventional wisdom: ideas or explanations that are generally accepted as true by the public.

For example: can anyone point to all these instances where the media spout stingy right-winger tripe?

Leaving aside the subject matter, it's long past time to consider why Mallard bothers rhyming at all. What exactly is the purpose in tying his grammar into knots only to create rhymed pairs between passages of dubious scansion? My only explanation is that rhyme is supposed to be a substitute for humor in order to justify his categorization as a "comic."

Those damned Presidents

What's Mallard raving about today?

Commercial and material holidays, President's Day.

The panel itself is a paean to being boring and without any ideas.

As if to underscore that general bankruptcy, Mallard presents his fuliguline ass to the reader.

And to underscore his lack of artistic talent, he draws a pencil with such an enormous eraser that it is hardly recognizable as a pencil.

That damned U.N.

What's Mallard raving about today?

Donald Trump, Rosie O'Donnell, Miss USA Scandal, the U.N.

Someone watches a lot of daytime TV and hates the U.N. and thought of a way to merge those two passions into a single incomprehensible bit of fifth-rate poetry.

That damned womanizer

What's Mallard raving about today?

Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Bambi, Jasmine, Tawny, Cherie.

Hilariously topical and important news flash today: Bill Clinton is a womanizer.

More important that today's content however, are the following questions:

• Grammatically-speaking, why are Jasmine and Tawny in quotes, but Bambi and Cherie are not?
• Why, as commenter John recently pointed out, do almost all of the peple who appear in Mallard's panels have their eyes closed.

I can't answer the first question.

As for the second, I suspect that he is forced to draw them closed, lest their cold dead stares haunt his barren lonely existence and slowly drive him mad until he kidnaps Walter Williams and holds him in his basement until Mr. Williams promises to run for Emperor of the Universe and take Mallard as his love slave. But that is just a guess.

Those damned Valentines

What's Mallard raving about today?

Valentines Day.

Example of truly exceptional writing ability: 17 words in the panel and two of them are "actually."

Depite the overuse of that word, doubtless meant to convice the reader that this is something which really happened, the story is still not funny, interesting, and only underscores that Mallard is an idiot who is unable to recognize junk mail when he sees it.

That damned Obama

What's Mallard raving about today?

Barak Obama, Hillary Clinton.

You gotta hate folks who come to the political spotlight without hard work. Folks who come to prominence by marriage, or, say, birth.

That damned Hillary

What's Mallard raving about today?

Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama.

Whereas a Valentine is usually an expression of affection or friendship from one person to another, a Mallentine appears to be a self-evident statement of no particular insight, import, or wit, set to an irregular rythym and sophomoric rhyme scheme, apocryphally attributed to a person in straw man fashion.

In case you were wondering...

That damned St. Valentine

What's Mallard raving about today?

Valentine's Day.

I have to confess that I am not sure why Mallard wears his unsenimentalsm like a badge of honor. Because, in truth, it seems more like just being an asshole that taking a faux-principled stand on an idiotic non-issue.

The winning detal in this particular panel is his use of the phrase "that stuff" to reference back to things which have not been previously mentioned. Unless Mallard is planning to purchase smarts, beautifulness, and smell, of course.

And yet, I am a big fan of this panel, if only because it marks a respite from the Walter Williams "plotline".

Those damned newsrooms

What's Mallard raving about today?

A newsroom near you, the media, black conservatives, liberals (presumably) , sraw men.

Well, that straw man has certainly shown me the light. I'm a changed person; I will never listen to the media again because, apparently, they don't know any conservatives.

Those damned disappointments

What's Mallard raving about today?

A newsroom near you, himself.

Okay, idiot duck, let's be clear about this.

You never threatened Walter Williams with a flood of emails or anything else. You said you were going to threaten him. But you never actually threatened him. Instead, you published the man's email address without warning of any kind after giving him 3 days to announce his candidacy for President.

I can't even find the strength to comment on the fact that Mallard thinks anyone, anywhere, cares what he has said or done this past 2 weeks...except us, of course.

Those damned skeletons

What's Mallard raving about today?

Walter Williams, Howard Dean, skeletons in the closet, murder, molesting interns, Bill Clinton (obliquely).

Mallard hits the trifecta. Abortion joke...check. Slavery joke...check. Pedophilia joke...check.

Still, you have to admire Mallard for the total dishonesty of this panel. Note how he deliberately muddles the Mark Foley scandal (in which underage interns were preyed upon by a Congressman) and the Monica Lewinsky scandal (in which President Clinton had consensual sex with an adult intern).

He's also probably referencing President Clinton with the murder reference, unless you doubt that Mallard believes Bill Clinton murdered Vince Foster, probably with his bare hands.

Those damned slaves

What's Mallard raving about today?

Walter Williams, The D.N.C., the Black Vote.

I suppose if you need to top an abortion joke, a straw man joke involving slavery is about your only option.

That damned scream

What's Mallard raving about today?

Walter Williams, Howard Dean, waffling, Iowa.

Even if I were to grant that syndicated columnists were prevented from waffling by their paper trail (a claim which I do not grant), based on the fact that Mr. Williams directly compared environmentalists to mass-murdering communists, I would think that being waffling-challenged was the least of the problems his column presents.

Painting himself as a fringe element is probably more to the point.

Sadly for Mallard, the fringe is no longer in control here in America. In fact, I think what we're seeing over the last 2 weeks is actually a delayed reaction to the Midterm elections. It is the frenzied release of months of pent-up frustration over suddenly finding himself marginalized politically.

And yet, the idiocy of all that is actually overshadowed by the tired scream reference and applying the "waffler" sobriquet to Dean when it was actually used to tar Kerry.

You've got to hand it to the duck; just when you think he can't go any lower or get any stupider, he finds that extra gear.

Those damned doctors

What's Mallard raving about today?

Walter Williams, Howard Dean, the D.N.C., Doctors.

There's so much wrong with today's panel it's hard to know what is the most irksome.

The fact that he didn't stop his Walter Williams inanity?

The fact that he believes his one week effort will have led to a groundswell of support?

The fact that he keeps publishing the man's email address?

The fact that he believes Howard Dean almost became President?

In the end, however, I have to choose the fact that Mallard makes an abortion pun and implies that every doctor in the world can't help but looking at all things through the prism of abortion, presumably because all physicians are dratted abortionists.

No matter how you consider today's panel, the phrase "Have you no sense of decency, sir?" seems the appropriate response.

That damned Super Bowl

What's Mallard raving about today?

The Super Bowl, Experts, Valentine's Day, Male/Female relationships.

I have to assume, because it's really not clear, that Mallard's point is that men couldn't be bothered to observe Valentine's Day if it falls on the same day as the Super Bowl, which would cause a rift between men and women so serious that every single male-female relationship would be called off on that very day, all human procreation would end, thus providing the final nail in the primacy of Homo Sapiens on planet Earth. At least in America.

What's really got me curious, however, is the following question: Who the hell are all the cross-looking folk in the panel's center, staring at sheaves of paper and computers? I'm guessing they are supposed to the "the experts" but that, also, is not clear.

That damned media

What's Mallard raving about today?

The media, African-American Presidential candidates.

The Media keep saying that we're not yet ready for an African-American President?

Care to provide proof for that audacious statement, Mallard?

And simply raising the question does not count, given the fact that the next African-American President we elect will be the first.

Meta-Post: Walter Williams

Any of you who emailed Mr. Williams (politely & respectfully, I assume), please let the rest of us know what you find out. I know I'm curious what he thinks of all this.

For those of you wanting some sort of data point on who exactly Walter Williams is and what kind of person Mallard desires to be President, I offer the following from an article he wrote on January 24, decrying The Weather Channel (stop laughing, I'm serious...The Weather Channel) for a series entitled "It Could Happen Tomorrow:"

The environmental extremists' true agenda has little or nothing to do with climate change. Their true agenda is to find a means to control our lives. The kind of repressive human control, not to mention government-sanctioned mass murder, seen under communism has lost any measure of intellectual respectability. So people who want that kind of control must come up with a new name, and that new name is environmentalism.

I feel comfortable saying that level of discourse speaks pretty much for itself.

That damned email address

What's Mallard raving about today?

Walter Williams, the Secret Service, using the bathroom.

We may finally know what Mallard meant when he said he was going to "threaten" Walter Williams. That said, Mallard skipped the step where you actually make a threat and just published the email address without warning.

What's truly disturbing is not the idea of Walter Williams being drafted into the election but the sudden realization that this actually represents a serious effort by Mallard to start a political movement. It's actually quite uncomfortable to watch someone with such delusions of grandeur publish them in comic form.

This week cannot possibly end soon enough.

Those damned pies

What's Mallard raving about today?

Walter Williams, Rush Limbaugh, YAF, fundraisers, pies.

You know, when this week started I knew it would be dreadful. I never imagined it would be so goddamn boring.

Wake me when this is over.