Project Wonderful Banner

Tuesday, March 25, 2008

That damned inconsistency

What's Mallard raving about today?

Senator Obama, Gun Control.

You can understand how Senator Obama's position is totally beyond Mallard's comprehension since it requires a view of the world which includes nuance:
I think we have two conflicting traditions in this country. I think it's important for us to recognize that we've got a tradition of handgun ownership and gun ownership generally. And a lot of law-abiding citizens use it for hunting, for sportsmanship, and for protecting their families. We also have a violence on the streets that is the result of illegal handgun usage. And so I think there is nothing wrong with a community saying we are going to take those illegal handguns off the streets. And cracking down on the various loopholes that exist in terms of background checks for children, the mentally ill. We can have reasonable, thoughtful gun control measures that I think respect the Second Amendment and people's traditions.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh wait, so the ban's just on handguns? This changes everything. Mallard was making it sound like ALL guns were banned. He probably wants to just tell half the story to get more people on his side. Not like that's anything new, of course.

It makes sense though. If it was really all guns being banned, the Supreme Court would have dealt with it long ago.

Anonymous said...

Wait, Mallard put words in someone else's mouth to oversimplify their position and therefore shed them in the least appealing light possible?

Huh, I can't even manage to be shocked. Or even mildly outraged.

That must have been a good chocolate easter bunny.

Anonymous said...

factinista, I am impressed at how you always manage to post the first comment within 10 seconds of Davey's entries.

Uhhhhhh, that's all I got. This strip is too boring to even comment on. Moderation blows Tinsley's mind, what a surprise.

Anonymous said...

luke, it's a combination of being very bored and not having anything useful to say.

Michael Foley said...

He supports free speech, AND slander/libel laws! Why? Because he's Barack Obama!

Anonymous said...

Yes, but your timing in particular is amazing. I am not sure how I am always there to witness it.

Actually, everyone here posts pretty fast. On a Mallard Fillmore blog no less. We are bored, bored people.

Michael: LOL.

BillyWitchDoctor said...

Well. I guess Tinsley's "libertarian" support of "state's rights" dries up when such self-determination involves legislation he doesn't personally care for. Go figure, huh?

The tradition of lousy caricaturing continues.

Scott H. said...

Since Bruce is using the example of citizens protecting themselves from criminals as an argument for gun ownership, I think he should be required to cite this story as a rebuttal.

rewinn said...

Once again, lousy writing spoils a dishonest idea. Humor needs to be crisp, to have no wasted words, to be ... in a word ... "brief".

A good editor'd replace "what I just said" with "that", and cut the entire last sentence.

But, as has been pointed out before, this strip doesn't get printed because of the humor; it's published solely to provide some demented form of ideological balance.

And, as Soviet Art taught us, art based on ideology alone is really, really crappy. In contrast, Doonesbury, Candorville and the like put humor first, politics second. Mallard's rightwing competition Prickly City seems to have figured this out; it's reliably wrongheaded but usually manages to make its jokes work.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, you beat me to the punch - the writing in this strip is just so bad. It puts you to sleep. And it mostly just makes no sense, because no actual people would ever talk the way he writes. I mean, "If you said what I just said, you'd sound inconsistent, or at best uninformed! But not me, because I'm Barack Obama!"

WHO WOULD EVER SAY THAT? Besides the boring writing and the terrible punctuation, WHO WOULD EVER SAY THAT? Especially someone who is running for President. IT MAKES NO SENSE. That isn't how people talk, and he wouldn't say anything remotely like that! GOD I HATE THIS COMIC STRIP. This crap fills up ONE THIRD of a page on the Sunday comics in Newsday. So many talented artists and writers out there fighting for space, and this gets a THIRD OF A PAGE. It's unreal.

BillyWitchDoctor said...

If he didn't fill the panel with scrawled text, he'd have to draw something. And that's too much work most days (see also: Easter's strip).

Anonymous said...

I can see how producing bad writing is easier than producing bad art (you don't have to color it), but just as a reader, I'm not sure which is worse: reading the boring-ass writing, or looking at the terrible art. I'd be happier if he published a blank strip every day, really.