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Tuesday, August 11, 2009

That damned diorama

What's Mallard raving about today?

School.

Mallard is one to criticize others for lack of imagination.

24 comments:

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

Gosh. When I was young, I *enjoyed* making dioramas. Could it be that teachers might assign them because they're fun and because they encourage creativity? Nope--must just be because teachers are all lazy fucks. No other possible explanation.

Young Tinsley must have been a fun kid to try to teach, eh?

Tog said...

Wow, so Tin did realize that Rush's father was "surrender-monkeying" (my comment yesterday).

In fact, yesterday's strip was a set-up for THIS one. So he made up nonsense to set up stupidity. Wow.

...Which is as close as Tin's ever going to get to creativity on his own part. Anyone think this strip took Tin over an hour to create, start to finish?

(The only thing more pathetic than copypasting the same images over and over again is drawing the exact same images over and over again without copypasting them.)

Iron Dragon said...

What I am again curious about is what Tinsley wants from teachers and the educational system. He brings up valid points about classes not being set up to teach cognitively instead focusing on rote memorization. Then he also condemns any possible variation from curriculum like discussion groups, educational movies, and now dioramas. Is his argument that we should just abolish education altogether?

NLC said...

Wait, wait: I think we're missing the point here.

Tinsley's depiction of school is:

-- Mindless, endless repetition of the same material.
-- Suppression of any indication of originality.
-- Utter contempt for your "audience".
-- The victory of dogma over actual, well-established fact.
-- Regurgitation of facts handed down from the "authorities".

Maybe Tinsley means this as good thing.

I mean, it's hard to think of a more concise summary of the "Mallard Fillmore" Mission Statement.

Rootbeer said...

Dave -- that's Token Minority Father's name, isn't it? -- no longer shows a single characteristic identifying him as being of Vietnamese heritage.

The American melting pot, as seen through Bruce Tinsley's blurred eyes.

dlauthor said...

You know something else that should take a while to make, Tinshley? A comic strip. You shouldn't be dashing these off on your bar napkins while the bartender brings your next round of research.

Word verification: ungeeb. Now we just need a definition for "geeb."

rewinn said...

Rootbeer --- Token Asian Father is wearing glasses! That's how you can tell he's Asian, in Tinkley world!

P.S. the colorist seems to have just given up and who can blame him? Compare today's "comic" to Token Boy last week

exanonymous said...

Umm.

EVERYTHING is easier to grade than it is to do.

I'm just saying.

The other way around doesn't sound like a teacher doing their job.

Rootbeer said...

Dave's eyeglass frames are of a wide, circular style, like those WWII propagandists drew Emperor Tojo wearing, so you may have a point, rewinn.

On the other hand, Mr. Jewsworthy wears glasses, too. Maybe we can't take glasses alone as an indicator of Asian-ness.

Michael Foley said...

If he looks like a white conservative guy, and acts like a white conservative guy, then by golly... he's a token minority drawn by a white conservative guy.

He's not used in a racial context in today's strip, but he is the lite version of Chris Muir's Damon character, representing the conservative fantasy of how minorities would act, if they only wised up.

At least the colorist is calling a spade a spade.

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

In fairness, exanonymous, I've gotten some papers that I'm pretty sure took the authors less time to write than they did me to grade. Of course, that's not how it *should* be.

I can't help imagining that if Tinsley were assigned a research paper, it would look a lot like Calvin's report on Bats ("She says our scientific illustrations look like we just traced the Batman logo and added fangs." "Hmm, she's pretty perceptive.") And I'm not talking about first-grade Tinsley--I'm talking about college work. And then he'd claim it took him ninety hours to write.

Ducky is Right said...

The kid is FIVE. What the fuck does Ducky think they SHOULD be doing, particle research?

This is how education works, spanky. Instructor tells you how to do it, you do it, you're told if you're doing it wrong. In a good system, help is offered to facilitate your doing it correctly. No amount of vouchers or privatization will change that basic formula.

Kip W said...

Fun Fact: The PI seems to file the Mallard Fillmore strip under "fun." At least, it's in the URL. I have to wonder if they file the weather report under "sports."

Anonymous said...

Obama Single Payer Strategy State Power. (Your President the liar.)


Obama gaffe: 'UPS and FEDEX are doing just fine. It's the Post Office having problems.' (I could not agree more, thank you Mr. President. Precisely why I do not want the government running our healthcare system.)

p.s. Iron Dragon - I have to say that you are the only "regular" on this blog who can post a comment without going off the rails and into name calling mode. There will be a few examples of the name calling very soon.

Tog said...

"There will be a few examples of the name calling very soon."

OH NOEZ!!1 The oh-so-civilized misinformation-turfing troll straight outta Freeperville is compiling a LIST!! SHOCK AND HORROR!! FLEE! WE ARE UNDONE! ALL IS LOST!

Ha ha ha! ...Stupid dick.

Factinista said...

Maybe the name-calling is because you come here and throw out random talking points rather than, I don't know, discussing the comic? Remember? It's the point of this blog?

Dunce.

Tog said...

Since I've already "gone off the rails," here's the blog entry under the latest strip at Overcompensating.com:

Well if you haven't been paying attention, America has gotten kind of nuts here lately. Basically here is what's happening, from what I can tell. Let me know if I'm getting this wrong, because it actually sounds kind of crazy. The government wants to provide health care for poor people, because in order for poor people to afford good health care, you'd need to raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour and also count on people to always make good decisions. Also being poor sucks, and there have to be poor people in order for this whole Capitalism thing to work.

This is not necessarily good for the health insurance companies (who you have to fight with sometimes to get them to cover basic stuff), since they'd sort of have competition. So people who make money from the status quo (and the people who didn't like Obama anyway) started convincing themselves and those who pay attention to them that the new health care program is going to be performing mandatory euthanasia on old people and things like that. And suddenly a lot of people believe that. Like, hundreds of thousands of people, if not millions. They don't get that if they want to, they'll still get to pay a thousand dollars a month for the same health care they got before. But now they might have to pay an extra couple bucks a year to help their less fortunate neighbors get kind of cruddy government care.

And they have a HUGE PROBLEM with this.


I'm sure Anonystupiddick can scrounge up (or get himself fed) a couple more "gaffes" by Obama as a distraction.

But he's going to have to scrounge long and hard to find something to equal "Mission Accomplished (LOOK I FLEW THIS ALL BY MYSELF)," "Nope, no MWDs here!! (The Hilarious Oval Office Search)," or that Reagan classic, "There ARE people who are hungry in America. They're all on a diet HUH HUH HUH HUH HUH!"

MartyRotten said...

We all know what's coming next! Two weeks of bellyaching about fund raising candy bars!!!

exanonymous said...

Huh.

Anon is worried about name calling?

Sounds about right. Currently, the right is insulted about being called nazis and mobs. When they're not too busy painting swastikas and hanging effigies and drowning out town halls that is.

GeoX, one of the GeoX boys. said...

I WANT to say something like the following:

"I know why insurance companies would oppose health care reform, but I cannot for the life of me understand why ordinary, working-class people would so desperately oppose a change that would so obviously be hugely beneficial to them. Sure, they believe (I'll give them the benefit of the doubt here) crazy things, but they only believe those things because they've convinced themselves to believe them because, for whatever reason, they're violently opposed to a system where people don't die for lack of money. Psychotic? Evil? Who knows?"

I can't write that, though, because I KNOW all too well why they oppose it: because liberals want it (sure, there's also some racism involved, but they would have taken basically the same position in any case). The good of the country is irrelevant. It is becoming frighteningly clear (although I'll admit it's probably naïveté on my part not to have seen it earlier) that a substantial portion of the population of this country has quite literally never passed beyond the mentality of cavemen. Frightening stuff.

Michael Foley said...

Tinsley, don't try to change the subject to health care. Your cartoon was about dioramas; it really sucked, and it's inexcusable.

Ducky is Right said...

Anonymous wants to be charged $2 to mail a letter, apparently.

I love the post office. Holy hell, why would you not? Many people have access to its services with-in a 20 second walk from their front door. There are drop off receptacles in pretty much any major shopping/commerce area. You can send a note to someone on the other side of the freakin' country for $.42. You can't buy a soda from a vending machine for that. The Post Office is one of the most singularly useful programs in existence.

UPS/FedEx are doing well by contracting large bulk orders and by, frankly, grossly overcharging non-bulk shipments. The average person would be much better served by using the post office, rather then UPS/FedEx, for any shipping that is not habitual.

I heard a thing on the radio, about how the Post Office would like to cut Saturday from their schedule. The Congressperson (it doesn't matter who) said he was against it because old people want their social security checks.

I don't blame Congress for being stupid, when they have a 95% re-election rate.

Scanman said...

"Is his argument that we should just abolish education altogether?"

Of course! Then more people would vote for Repulicans.

David in NYC said...

GeoX --

When it comes to the psychotic/evil conundrum, I always refer to Hanlon's Razor:

"Never attribute to malice anything which can be adequately explained by stupidity." (As you can imagine, I refer to this on a "several times a day" basis.)

As for the protests being motivated by racism, I agree that anything proposed by a "liberal" (and anyone who thinks Obama is a "liberal" is part of the "stupidity" crowd previously mentioned) would be met by opposition from the Party of No. (And who knew that Nancy Reagan's "Just say no" admonition woul eventually become the GOP's main rationale?)

However, I do think the vehement intensity tending towards violence is indeed a reaction to having a non-white president. As Lee Atwater observed many years ago, you can't just say "Nigger nigger nigger" any more, so you have to use code words like "states rights" -- or "death panels".

WV: tingate (really!) -- scandal involving the escapades of a lush who draws duck cartoons.