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Wednesday, October 28, 2009

That damned Return

What's Mallard raving about today?

The same thing as yesterday.

What if wondering about returning things is racist?

We get it Mallard. You're not subtle. Please move on.

27 comments:

Tog said...

"What if I'm a racist asshole cartoonist and just don't have the remnant brain matter to realize it? Mmm mmm mmm!"
--Things Bruce Tinsley Never Asks Himself, #3,782

Michael Foley said...

I used i-hate's brilliant idea of Mallard Fillmore comic intros! Tinsley, if you're reading, you have my permission to use it.

One
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Four

exanonymous said...

Tinsley apparently really wants to wear a Barrack Obama mask for Halloween, judging from his obsession over the idea.

And we're supposed to believe he's NOT racist?

It's called being passive-aggressive, with the stress on aggressive when you do things like this. You obsess over something that you KNOW would drive someone crazy, even if it's the straw man in your head, but seek every opportunity to talk about it as if it was "funny" and then blame everyone who isn't laughing.

Iron Dragon said...

This is getting sad in a weird way. I think in some respects Tinsely is just courting as much controversey as he can in order to get the recognition he feels he deserves for his comic. Doonesbury is fairly widely known comparatively speaking, not to mention other liberal comics like Candorville.

NickE said...

From the Wikipedia article on Mallard:

"(Chantel) is usually used whenever a scene calls for a minority or a minority perspective... On average, she appears about once or twice a year."

'Cause that's really all the minority perspective Bruce ever needs.

[Bruce responds: "Hey, I'm not racist! Some of my BEST FRIENDS are negro! The guy who runs the liquour store down on 3rd Street, for instance!"]

Bill the Splut said...

He could at least vary the "joke" a little. Like today make it a "Nobel Peace Prize Winner mask." But that 90 hours of research (and resultant research-related hangovers) doesn't leave a lot of time for actually working on the strip.

Anonymous said...

What's that amorphous blob in Mr. Noseworthy's hand? First panel it looks sorta like a mask (as in two smaller orbs connected to a larger orb, I'm still out on what the black scratches are). Then the next thing we see is just a brown folder. Apparently Tinsley did so much "research" he forgot what he drew.

Kip W said...

I actually used the N-word one time. I was at someone's house, and a good ole boy type gave a naughty leer and said, "Any n----s here?"

I suspected he was getting set to tell some goddamn joke. I'm somewhat paler and blonder than the next guy, but I said, "Yeah. I'm a n----."

And what the hell, it worked. Whatever stupid piece of crap joke he was gearing up for, he never said it.

Rootbeer said...

Holy shit, Chantel's supposed to be African-American? I would have guessed Asian or Pacific Islander, based on the way she's drawn in those 2 out of 300 strips per year she appears in.

Although maybe my complaining about Bruce Tinsley's inability to draw people of different ethnicities is racist....

Toots McGee said...

Noseworthy: Um, I'd like to return this Barack Obama mask, if that's okay, I mean, um, as long as it isn't racist or anything.

Clerk: What?

Noseworthy: I'm sorry, many untenable thought patterns have been ascribed to my character and you've probably already decided that I'm a racist so I guess I'm stuck with this mask that I probably won't wear since I'm afraid of being branded a racist. But for the sake of argument, can I return the mask without being accused of racism?

Clerk: Do you have a receipt?

Noseworthy: I don't have a receipt. Does that make me a racist?

Clerk: No, but it makes you annoying. Did you buy this mask here?

Noseworthy: I think so. Do you sell Barack Obama masks here, even though it would undoubtably brand this establishment as racist?

Clerk: We do sell Barack Obama masks here.

Noseworthy: So you admit that you're a racist?

Clerk: No, I'm the returns clerk and my duties are limited to processing returns. Do you want to return your mask that you might have bought here but you don't have a receipt for?

Noseworthy: Would that make me a racist?

Clerk: If you say the word racist one more time, I'm going to make you face into a permanent Halloween mask. Now if you want to return that mask without a receipt, I cannot issue you a refund but I can allow you to exchange the mask for a different mask.

Noseworthy: I don't agree with that policy, it sounds, well, franky it sounds, kinda....

Clerk: Oh, please don't say it. I tell you what, I will give you a cash refund for this mask if you will leave and never come back here.

Noseworthy: Thank you. I've averted my own self-perceived racism once again.

Clerk: Next.

Bruce Tinsley: I'd like to return this Halloween costume.

Clerk: Sir, that's a Klan robe. We do not sell Klan robes here.

Bruce Tinsley: What, are you calling me a racist?

dlauthor said...

Tinshley would never buy an Obama mask for Halloween. He's still just smarting from last year, where he got (more) drunk, smeared himself with shoe polish and called himself Obama, and got his ass kicked as a result.

Marion Delgado said...

well, let's just admit we were wrong. We were wrong. We were.

Nobel prize for obama = 1 cartoon.

Strawman Liberal Halloween = 2 and counting.

I hate chuck asay said...

Mochael, thanks for using my idea. You did a great job. Tinsley, we get that you are going to put on a blackface costume. Nothing you say will make that fact less offensive. Please, stop trying to justify your sociopathic behavior with terrible cartoons.

Word Verification: Poeri, Tinsley's verse does not qualify as poetry, just, poeri.

rewinn said...

"I'm not a racist, but most of the readers I have left are. You have to please your customers."

====

@Michael: nice MF intros. We'll also need some for his global warming strips ("I'm not anti-science but...") and his Mallardtines ("I'm not drunk but ...")

@Baskerville: Tinkley didn't win "Lazyest Cartoonist in the Business Award" five years running for no reason!

@Toots: great script for next Sundays MF strip. Now, if we only had an artist ...

Marion Delgado said...

Maj. Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele: Just tell us what happened at the chopper pad. But First a number.


Warrent Officer Martin 'Marty' Williams: [pause, and looks at Hawkeye and Henry] Sir?


Maj. Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele: A musical number. Why it's in your blood boy!

[singing and dancing]

Maj. Gen. Bartford Hamilton Steele: When the sun goes down, and the darkies go to town, Hey hey what do you say. Hey hey, uncle Bud, it's a treat to beat your feet in the Mississippi mud!

WV: vatimpra a common cause of undead tinnitis.

I hate chuck asay said...

I think Tinsley hired a ghostwriter for this one: Proper sentence structure, acceptable punctuation, the correct number of ellipses. It is humorless and horribly offensive, of course, but that is inevitable, in Mallard Fillmore.

Liberals do not panic about racism, because we know we are not racist. We are careful to avoid offending others, but we trust ourselves to be sensitive. Anyone who is this panicked about racism, or writes a Mary Sue who is the same way (everyone in Mallard Fillmoer is a Mary Sue) must be a racist.

One more thing: Racist costumes, ones that Tinsley will use if he cannot find any shoe polish for his face or whiteout for his lips, do exist: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/disgrasian/racist-halloween-costumes_b_330853.html.

I found Tinsley's real agenda: He wants to distract attention from sexy Halloween costumes. (http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/sexist/2009/10/19/sexist-comments-of-the-week-in-defense-of-sexy-halloween-costumes/) He believes that anyone who fucks without intending to have children, automatically, goes straight to Hell. Islam says the same thing, but Tinsley sees absolutely no irony in that intersection between his beliefs and enemies.

Word Verification: Rettess, as in Tinsley's wife, who must have been severely retarded, since she married him.

Michael Foley said...

Toots McGee's script is funnier than any Mallard Fillmore this year. Even That Damned Left Hand, which is the only Mallard strip I genuinely liked ever.

Hey, Tinsley, a store in my neighborhood is selling these masks you might like. Maybe you can walk up to the Tenderloin district wearing it - if anyone gives you a funny look, inform them of how overly sensitive they are!

Not THAT Anonymous said...

Tinsley apparently really wants to wear a Barack Obama mask for Halloween, judging from his obsession over the idea.

Oh, God, I can totally see that...Bruce Tinsley in a Barack Obama mask, knocking young trick-or-treaters down, stealing their candy, and screaming, "Ish not ME! It's that n***** Barrrrack Obamaaaaarp!! Oh, HIIIIII officer!! F***in' pig! Nine-'leven changed ever'thin'!"

Remember The Boondocks? Not the TV cartoon, the comic strip. It was a sad mess in which all white males lived in abject fear of two black children (one because he was violently sociopathic, the other because he was somehow deemed mentally superior in spite of reading nothing but '60s rad-lit that only served to reinforce his existing prejudices), reflecting the author's own racist views. The deliberately-generated "controversy" was the strip's only selling point. Eventually, the author, grown tired of copypasting older strips over and over and yelling "I'm not racist! But honkies are all terrified of me! ...No, seriously, they are!," finally dropped the property in the laps of Cartoon Network to make something far better out of it (as long as his name remained slapped all over everything). He was indeed a true and pure artist, as he liked to claim.

The difference is, The Boondocks caught shit constantly for it.

Bruce Tinsley is dancing around, squealing "I'm not racist, but!," and "Oh! I am being persecuted for my truth!" in the hopes he will be noticed by the general populace.

Dance, fool, dance.

Frank Stone said...

Oh, Brucie -- is there ANY strawman you can't conquer ... and then recycle ... and then conquer again ... and then recycle ... and then conquer again ... and then recycle ...

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

It was a sad mess in which all white males lived in abject fear of two black children (one because he was violently sociopathic, the other because he was somehow deemed mentally superior in spite of reading nothing but '60s rad-lit that only served to reinforce his existing prejudices), reflecting the author's own racist views.

Uh...sorry, dude, but this is crazy. Not that Boondocks didn't start sucking after a while, but "racist?" The fuck?

Hibryd said...

Michael -

I actually laughed out loud. If only there wasn't some grossly abused acronym for that...

Not THAT Anonymous said...

Not that Boondocks didn't start sucking after a while, but "racist?"

Yes, racist. MacGruder's contempt for "whitey"--not a concern about injustice or inequality, but an open contempt for white people, period--remained steadfast throughout the history of the strip (including his interviews, where he kept pushing the "whitey be all scared of me and shit" routine), up to the point he stopped giving a damn and let it deteriorate further into a copypasted talking-head strip that never left the Freemans' living room. That was the strip's entire "controversial" selling point: MacGruder's "Pouting Mildly Retarded Child As Angry Blackman" routine.

If you don't see it, try this: take those early strips where Riley beats two girls (one white, one biracial) senseless with a stick and is angry that they aren't dead. Now switch the characters' races.

Sauce for the goose, baby. Just because one's perceived as "Left" doesn't mean one gets a free pass. Tinsley's a racist asshole; MacGruder's a racist asshole.

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

I can't believe it's necessary to explain this, but the central jokes of Boondocks are as follows: Riley wants to be a thug-type, but it doesn't work, and comically fails at this because he's a little kid living in a lily-white neighborhood. Huey wants to be a black panther-type, but once again, he's an only-slightly-less-little kid in the same setting. Like it or not, this is the whole point of the strip. It's meant to be FUNNY. MacGruder obviously sympathizes with Huey to a degree, but I don't know how you could possibly imagine that the kids' self-images are meant to be reflective of reality, or that their behavior is fully endorsed by MacGruder. Jonathan Swift didn't actually want to eat Irish babies either, you know.

Granted, the strip quickly degenerated into unfunny ranting about the president and how we should all vote for Nader, but that's neither here nor there. I read a New Yorker profile where the man came off as highly opportunistic, but I didn't get the alleged racism. You're gonna have to provide a link for that.

Not THAT Anonymous said...

You're gonna have to provide a link for that.

Actually, I don't have to do anything of the sort; I don't really care if I have your seal of approval or not. I know what I've read; I know what MacGruder is; who the hell are you? To me, nobody.

I can't believe it's necessary to explain this blah blah blah...

...Jonathan Swift didn't actually want to eat Irish babies either, you know.


Do you practice your Sneering Pompous Dick routine daily, or does it just come naturally to you?

If you don't see it, try this: take those early strips where Riley beats two girls (one white, one biracial) senseless with a stick and is angry that they aren't dead. Now switch the characters' races.

Seriously, give it a shot. You don't have to, of course, especially if it'll put a ding in your smug. But were Tinsley to do likewise and draw it as a strip, we'd (rightly) be all over his racist ass.

Moving along now. You're welcome to the last word.

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

No; you're right. You don't HAVE to do anything. I thought you were trying to make an argument, but if I was mistaken in that belief--well, I guess we're done here. The belief that MacGruder is approving of Riley's thuggish behavior is really too strange to address in a rational manner anyway.

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

...and look, I do apologize if I came across as dickish; my goal here is not to alienate people. I strenuously disagree with you about MacGruder, but there's no need for it to get personal.

rewinn said...

One lesson we can learn from Boondocks vs. Mallard Fillmore is that if you don't have good writing, merely adequate art won't save you from hackery.

Darren Bell's Candorville handles most of the issues Boondocks attempted, and better, because the writing is better (except for a strange vampire sequence a while back. I blame Twilight.)

I don't know why MacGruder quite; if he'd teamed up with a writer he coulda gone somewhere. I understand why Tinkley won't quiet: it's free money.