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Monday, June 25, 2012

That damned Speech

What's Mallard raving about today?

Congress, 10th Graders

Making fun of 10th graders for the way they speak puts Mallard Fillmore at about a 4th grade level...and that's being generous.

(Oh, and, Mallard...according to the study your beloved Republicans speak about a half grade level worse than Democrats. Just saying.)

11 comments:

Tog said...

I could mock Tinsley with a barrage of lingo from his own (long-passed) youth, or a little something in drunk-talk; instead, I'll just ask: WHAT THE FECK IS WRONG WITH THAT DUCK'S HEAD.

Tinsley can't even draw Mallard well anymore. It's past your bedtime, Brucie.

Anonymous said...

This is funny on two different levels. One is that it proves that the duck doesn't read past the headlines. Second, what I had read about this study was that it had singled out the TP Republicans as being at the lowest level. I had never expected to see it mentioned by Mallard!
DW

dlauthor said...

Of course the Bagger Republicans speak like they never made it out of junior high. Their base needs to understand them.

I'd love to see how the text in Mallard rates. What with the random ellipses and "wooooo"s and whatnot, I'm guessing somewhere around Mover Infant in Day Care.

Rootbeer said...

Did Mallard slick down the errant feathers that usually stick out from his bird-scalp with copious amounts of pomade or grease?

If so, THANK YOU BRITISH PETROLEUM.

Kip W said...

When Mallard remembers the importance of good grooming, he doesn't use petroleum products. He uses the same thing he uses for everything else, and he gets it from the same place.

Don't make me draw a diagram here.

Seriously, my ASCII chops were never the best.

Anyway, if he offers to shake hands with you, don't do it, is what I'm saying.

Frank Stone said...

What, no "*Newsmax"?

Re Mallard's new "hairstyle": My guess would be that an angry parent caught him trolling the "young adult" section of the bookstore again, grasped him by his head feathers, and banged him against the wall a few times until they came loose (this would also account for his dazed and shaken facial expression).

Bill the Splut said...

At what level does one write at, before realizing ".... ...." isn't correct?

While waiting for some work to be done on my car today, I used the dealership's free internet. Despite doing basically the same thing, the web filter would let me look at here at D&C, but not Comics Curmudgeon. Because CC was "Entertainment." Apparently, WebSense thinks that anything related to Mallard Fillmore cannot possibly be entertaining.

rewinn said...

1. Rick Perry and Sarah Palin are literally (not figuratively) too stupid to remember their own talking points, which makes them somewhere below 10th grade level.

2. OTOH Barack Obama talks like he went to law school; do you think Mallard Fillmore will attack him for that?

3. I don't actually mind people talking in a simple way, if the content of what they say makes sense. Bombing our way to peace and austeritying our way to prosperity are stupid ideas, when spoken at any grade level at all.

Steve-O said...

I think the reason most politicians talk that way is because the overwhelming majority of people in this country are stupid.

rewinn said...

@SteveO .... I half-agree and half-disagree.

The average person is (by definition) of average intelligence, and America has a great many very smart people indeed.

However, our culture glorifies stupidity ... thinking from the gut, dashing ahead regardless of the experts, smoking like a cowboy cuz its manly! The factions pushing these cultural elements do it because it is very very profitable ... so I'd argue it's a learned stupidity, rather than an innate stupidity.

The GOP attacks Obama for being "elite", meaning, he went to law school and headed the law review; they don't attack Lord Rawmoney for having gone to law school because he denies it - which is a lie but good enough for the culture of stupidity.

Rootbeer said...

I typed the dialogue from Tuesday's strip into Microsoft Word, and its grammar checker gave it a Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level of 7.2.

Monday's strip scored 10.7, but that has to be skewed by the intentionally inarticulate "congressperson" quote that Bruce Tinsley believed was a punchline.

Moral? The quality of the writing actually increases when he tries to make it worse.