Project Wonderful Banner

Friday, August 31, 2007

Those damned Vikings

What's Mallard raving about today?

Vikings, the NEA.

Dead Horse. Beat beat beat.

That said, I'm a big fan of the two midget Vikings in front of the horde, of whom only the horned hats are visible.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

Why is Mallard holding papers in the second panel? He's in his house, not doing a news report. Surely Tinsley didn't just cut 'n' paste an image of Mallard from a previous strip...

BillyWitchDoctor said...

Attention whore.

Just as Tinny wants to believe that his little neocon talking-point regurgitator is "speaking truth to power," he desperately deludes himself with the belief that the NEA is stomping its feet in impotent rage over his weekful of pissant slander.

Figure it out, Tinny. A handful of us come here to shake our heads in amusement at your idiocy. No grown-up finds you genuinely offensive...except you. To the rest of the world, you're just a bug.

Anonymous said...

This is beyond absurd. Everybody knows that teachers prefer dressing up as pirates.

Speaking of crappy political comics that were dropped by the print version of the Houston Chronicle, La Cucharacha got replaced this week. For anyone who doesn't know what this strip, it's like Mallard only it replaces a conservative duck with a liberal roach, looks even crappier, and makes even less sense. (Voteria?)

Kaitlyn said...

The NEA has more important things to do than hire cartoon vikings to harass a cartoon duck.

Like, I don't know, get ready for the end of the start of the school and the rest of it???

I don't even see a retired teacher doing much more than what we're doing - I'm sure they've heard worse from students.

When was the NEA last annoyed with him? Is there any evidence of this? Any news about this comic not related to booze or Walter Williams?

And I like what someone said last time he ragged on teachers - who stands up and yells "Fuck the teachers!!!"?

BillyWitchDoctor said...

La Cucharacha used to be a lot better. One day, it abruptly turned into slap-dash copy-paste junk and I had to stop reading it. Perhaps the artist got tired of banging his head against the wall (the strip dealt with Latino issues in the face of anti-Mexican hysteria)...

Ironically, one of the main characters of La is a schoolteacher who has to deal with a bureaucracy that demands she teach historical and scientific falsehood as fact and offers her no support but plenty of responsibility/blame--yet she strives to do the best job she can.

Naturally, I doubt it would be of interest to hacktactular Tinny; the artist actually had a firm philosophy and spoke from experience, instead of just lazily repeating his political party's stereotypical mantras. Apples and orangutans, ook eek ook.

One of my local rags carries Mallard (it also publishes absolutely psychotic letters from cranks, just to maintain an air of "controversy"), but perhaps not for much longer; they're finally adding Get Fuzzy and something called Secret Asian Man (shudder), and the current line-up has only two major losers: the astonishingly bland PC And Pixel and Mallard.

If Mallard does get ditched, I have no doubt two weeks later Tinny will be screaming about the conspiracy of teachers denying him his free-speech rights.

You know, he once claimed he was getting death threats over his silly little strip. Like I said above: attention whore.

Anonymous said...

But...but...but...why are the NEA Vikings? Why? WHY?

Kaitlyn said...

They are vikings because...

::drumroll::

In 8th grade, I still took "Social Studies", but it was really just US History. Our book had nothing about the vikings landing up in Canuckistan before Columbus came to the Caribbean. (This was '01-'02, and the last year we were using those history books - it was planned before Sept. 11th, but
it is in every other Social Studies/History book I've seen since.)

The next time I took US History was in 11th grade, '04-'05. My teacher did a whole section about the Vikings! He also never used the book unless to look at a reprint of an old political cartoon - until NCLB time.

He was young, he loved teaching.

My 8th grade teacher looked old.

So that's why they're vikings.


Oh - and when was the last time Capital One used [i]Vikings?[/i] Way more than 2-3 weeks ago.

Anonymous said...

Maybe he's not beating a dead horse here. Maybe he's talking about the National Endowment for the Arts.

I don't know, it just seems lazy to me, to do a couple of strips attacking someone, then do a bunch more pretending that the people you attacked are really angry about it.

How long can he stretch it out? Tomorrow: Mallard in the cross-hairs of an NEA sniper. Then: The NEA parks a moving van full of fertilizer and diesel fuel in front of his house. Then: NEA sets off a dirty bomb to get Mallard. Before long, it's basically Itchy and Scratchy, which would be an improvement, except that it's Mallard Fillmore and the freaking NEA, for fuck's sake.

Anonymous said...

what about the poorly drawn boobs on the rightmost viking?

Anonymous said...

Poorly drawn boobs are the expected output of a boob who draws poorly.

BillyWitchDoctor said...

TeacherMagazine.org reports something Tinsley would never touch with someone else's pole: Teachers in Fairbanks, Alaska were given $2,500 bonuses by the state--not for teaching, but for increasing standardized test scores at their school. They refused the bonuses and donated the money to other schools or to non-profits.

Quote: "(Principal Mary Short) said reaction by staff ranged from embarrassment over being selected to anger that the state would assume a few thousand dollars would motivate the teachers to do a better job."

Those damned teachers!

Kaitlyn said...

Billy - I love that!

This is the first I've heard of it, but it doesn't surprise me.

My mom's been working with special ed kids - elementary and preschool for the most part - for more than 10 years now.

The school system doesn't value special ed assistants like they should, yet I know mom will never leave, despite the pay. I know she wants to do this as long as she's able.

There are so many people like that in education, it's not breaking news.

However, my mom has made some enemies at the local elementary school! The special ed kids there live all around the county, but most of the other kids live in our neighborhood. (My sister and I went there for a while.)

My mom can come across as strict - not about asinine dress code policies, but about rules that have been there longer than she has. She's never done anything to a kid besides tell their teacher, which is very scary, and it pisses off the ones who get into trouble.

The Tinz had to be one of those kids.

This series is very educational, especially the horde and the 'then vs. now' schools. The 'now' teachers don't look too masculine or too feminine, nor do they look old.

The 'then' teachers are all The Tinz's version of a sweet old lady. He wants to return to a day when women couldn't teach after getting married, I just know it.

Kaitlyn said...

Mysterio - I thought he was at the Today Show! Don't they have a big window showing all the people outside with their signs and what not?

The duck is moving up in the world - he replaced Katie Couric - after all, he doesn't even wear pants! Show us some leg!

Anonymous said...

Bruce Tinsley was once fired from his newspaper job because his comic mocked the NEA. His boss was on the board.

Bruce Tinsley was also taught by young hippie teachers who were a product of the 60s in Kentucky.

Those two tidbits explain everything, especially if you add in the fact that some people can't comprehend the idea that the majority of other people might have had a different experience (or that time has moved on).

Such an ugly look into someone's vendetta. Even more depressing is the fact that he has to portray the other side as caring. You'd think teachers and the NEA protesting him would warrent something on google, somewhere. But it's not there.