Who exactly does Tinsley like in this old world? Not the liberals, because they're liberal. Not very many of the non-liberals, because they watch TV shows he doesn't care for, read books he sneers at, go to movies starring people he hates, and in general let him down in every possible way.
If Mallard possessed a character, he would most likely be the office bore who insists on regaling you with conspiracy theories you've never once reacted to, who refers to members of minority groups by impersonal pronouns only ('them,' 'those people,' etc), who seems to have a huge grudge against whole areas of culture with no apparent reason for it beyond a temperament that's more suited to disgust than to any other emotion.
He's not a character, though. Tinsley has repeatedly flung away any chance to give the duck even the most rudimentary personality. You can put a minor character from Doonesbury into a situation, and they'll react as that character. The purpose of the things that pose and stare out and speak from Tinsley's pages are strictly to let us know how we are supposed to feel about things.
"These kids today know nothing of the challenges of working in the real world! Why, I have to walk a mile in waist deep snow, uphill both ways, with only a baked potato for food and warmth, to my mailbox once a week to collect my Moonie welfare check!"
Get a real job, you leech. You wouldn't last an hour even doing carriage roundup at a grocery store.
Um, Mr. Straw-Man? People don't "graduate" from "the real world" the way they do from high school and college -- unless you consider death to be a form of graduation.
And anyway, you clearly haven't heard that there's already a sector of the real world that's "gotten with the program": the one devoted to right-wing hackery, where watching Fox News Channel for 12 hours a day counts as "research" and where you could smear your feces on a piece of paper, call it a comic strip, and still get paid for it. Why, the "cartoonist" who "drew" you three weeks ago has been "working" in that sector for years!
SUNKDAY -- Tinshley is saying that the Obama Administration is so transparent that you can't see it.
Usually his work is so untalented that the drawing does not support the point he's trying to make (e.g. endless duck heads) but today he surpasses himself: his "drawing" supports exactly the opposite concept than the one he's trying to establish.
You know, I honest to goodness laughed at the Monday Mallard: It's sheer fecklessness was that overwhelming!
Congratulations, Drinky-man; I would not have guessed it would be possible to raise talentless, lazy hackery to an art form, but at least for a moment, here, you've created something extraordinary. Take, that, Trudeau. Take that, Watterson. Take that, Kelly...
Bearing in mind John Simon's observation (much quoted by Harlan Ellison) that there is no point in saying less than your predecessors have said, I'll just point out that driftglass said what I want to say about Monday's strip better than I ever could:
"[W]hen some mentally underclocking twat in a tri-corner hat rears up on his hind legs and start raving about, say, deficits, anyone with a decent memory (and a willingness to futilely engage with these political CHUDs one more time) can actually dig the past out the past in high-res detail, and ask, if [Insert any issue in the fucking Universe here] is so singularly fucking important, where the fuck were you during the eight, long years during which Bush was making [Insert any issue in the fucking Universe here] infinitely worse."
So- the Obama administration is so transparent it's not even there. But it also has all these secret agendas and scandals that need to be rooted out, so, therefore, it's not transparent at all.
Somebody told Tinsley a new way of filling up space today. The buzzword has become the artwork. He's getting a gold star for this one, you can be sure, even if he has to send his wife to the teachers's store on her way home from work.
Alinsky? That's a pretty rarefied dog-whistle there, Bruce; only the really gourmet conspiracy nuts are going to get it. Are you sure you wouldn't rather go with something more accessible, like "Stalin's ghost"?
And for a marvelous example of art imitating life, check out today's "Dilbert", with Wally playing the role of Bruce Tinsley.
Alinsky? That's a pretty rarefied dog-whistle there, Bruce; only the really gourmet conspiracy nuts are going to get it.
In other words, everyone in his target audience. And, in the end, they all know about Alinsky because Newt Gingrich got the idea for his Little Red Book of Smear Words from Rules for Radicals, and he's been playing NO U ever since.
(Why yes, we could solve the energy crisis forever if we could find a way to tap that sweet sweet IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION juice.)
The press joins with all right-thinking workers in roundly condemning the revanchist running-dog lickspittle jackal Obama!
It's the only possible explanation, unless you're one of those kooks who says the scandal-hungry rags were never in the tank for Onobummerzzzzz anyway, and those guys are just kooky kooks.
Mallard has found the phone-sex line of his dreams. For five bucks a minute, they pretend that they're the government, and they really care what he thinks, and they spy on him and keep a file.
2001: "The devil take the Constitution, I want to feel safe! If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of? Don't listen to those liberals and their Chicken Little nonsense about 'abuse of power'! They're all Socialists and traitors!!"
2013: "WE NEVER THOUGHT THERE'D BE A N****R DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE!! WAAAAAAAAH! ABUSE OF POWER! ABUSE OF POWER!!"
Today's strip lends fuel to the theory that Mallard is an accusatory demon only Tinsley can see. When we see him like this it means Tinsley drew the staring bird-thing to torment himself, and that a syndicate intern has been tasked to take out the hectoring about drinking too much, being a hack, and lying for a bunch of crooks — and put in some junk about Obama or whatever's on the daily blast fax.
Yes, Mallard -- and I'm sure your millions of viewers are just as outraged as you are. Well, I mean they would be if you were actually in the Fox News studios doing a live broadcast for a real audience instead of sitting in your kitchen talking to a half-empty box of stale cereal which your diseased brain is interpreting as a TV camera.
23 comments:
Oh gosh, Mallard's endless graduation ceremony continues.
Anyway, Brews, yes, we can definitely see by the way you approach your own work how deeply you believe in keeping things challenging.
Who exactly does Tinsley like in this old world? Not the liberals, because they're liberal. Not very many of the non-liberals, because they watch TV shows he doesn't care for, read books he sneers at, go to movies starring people he hates, and in general let him down in every possible way.
If Mallard possessed a character, he would most likely be the office bore who insists on regaling you with conspiracy theories you've never once reacted to, who refers to members of minority groups by impersonal pronouns only ('them,' 'those people,' etc), who seems to have a huge grudge against whole areas of culture with no apparent reason for it beyond a temperament that's more suited to disgust than to any other emotion.
He's not a character, though. Tinsley has repeatedly flung away any chance to give the duck even the most rudimentary personality. You can put a minor character from Doonesbury into a situation, and they'll react as that character. The purpose of the things that pose and stare out and speak from Tinsley's pages are strictly to let us know how we are supposed to feel about things.
(Hint: We're supposed to hate them.)
"These kids today know nothing of the challenges of working in the real world! Why, I have to walk a mile in waist deep snow, uphill both ways, with only a baked potato for food and warmth, to my mailbox once a week to collect my Moonie welfare check!"
Get a real job, you leech. You wouldn't last an hour even doing carriage roundup at a grocery store.
Um, Mr. Straw-Man? People don't "graduate" from "the real world" the way they do from high school and college -- unless you consider death to be a form of graduation.
And anyway, you clearly haven't heard that there's already a sector of the real world that's "gotten with the program": the one devoted to right-wing hackery, where watching Fox News Channel for 12 hours a day counts as "research" and where you could smear your feces on a piece of paper, call it a comic strip, and still get paid for it. Why, the "cartoonist" who "drew" you three weeks ago has been "working" in that sector for years!
MOURNDAY
"Lazy, am I? I'll show you bastards lazy!"
SUNKDAY --
Tinshley is saying that the Obama Administration is so transparent that you can't see it.
Usually his work is so untalented that the drawing does not support the point he's trying to make (e.g. endless duck heads) but today he surpasses himself: his "drawing" supports exactly the opposite concept than the one he's trying to establish.
You know, I honest to goodness laughed at the Monday Mallard: It's sheer fecklessness was that overwhelming!
Congratulations, Drinky-man; I would not have guessed it would be possible to raise talentless, lazy hackery to an art form, but at least for a moment, here, you've created something extraordinary. Take, that, Trudeau. Take that, Watterson. Take that, Kelly...
Darn those colorists. It was supposed to be incisive humor color, but they made it blue instead.
Bearing in mind John Simon's observation (much quoted by Harlan Ellison) that there is no point in saying less than your predecessors have said, I'll just point out that driftglass said what I want to say about Monday's strip better than I ever could:
"[W]hen some mentally underclocking twat in a tri-corner hat rears up on his hind legs and start raving about, say, deficits, anyone with a decent memory (and a willingness to futilely engage with these political CHUDs one more time) can actually dig the past out the past in high-res detail, and ask, if [Insert any issue in the fucking Universe here] is so singularly fucking important, where the fuck were you during the eight, long years during which Bush was making [Insert any issue in the fucking Universe here] infinitely worse."
Oh, pleeeease let this go on all week! Show us how a Real Man faces the Challenges of the Real World by getting paid to literally draw nothing!
So- the Obama administration is so transparent it's not even there. But it also has all these secret agendas and scandals that need to be rooted out, so, therefore, it's not transparent at all.
Just wanted to make sure I've got it straight.
TUESDAY
Somebody told Tinsley a new way of filling up space today. The buzzword has become the artwork. He's getting a gold star for this one, you can be sure, even if he has to send his wife to the teachers's store on her way home from work.
Alinsky? That's a pretty rarefied dog-whistle there, Bruce; only the really gourmet conspiracy nuts are going to get it. Are you sure you wouldn't rather go with something more accessible, like "Stalin's ghost"?
And for a marvelous example of art imitating life, check out today's "Dilbert", with Wally playing the role of Bruce Tinsley.
Alinsky? That's a pretty rarefied dog-whistle there, Bruce; only the really gourmet conspiracy nuts are going to get it.
In other words, everyone in his target audience. And, in the end, they all know about Alinsky because Newt Gingrich got the idea for his Little Red Book of Smear Words from Rules for Radicals, and he's been playing NO U ever since.
(Why yes, we could solve the energy crisis forever if we could find a way to tap that sweet sweet IT'S ALWAYS PROJECTION juice.)
WEDNESDAY
The press joins with all right-thinking workers in roundly condemning the revanchist running-dog lickspittle jackal Obama!
It's the only possible explanation, unless you're one of those kooks who says the scandal-hungry rags were never in the tank for Onobummerzzzzz anyway, and those guys are just kooky kooks.
THURSDAY
Another strip in which the most effort was spent on the signature.
The media should report events before they happen, got you.
This just in: Mallard Fillmore to continue to suck until end of time.
FRIDAY
Mallard has found the phone-sex line of his dreams. For five bucks a minute, they pretend that they're the government, and they really care what he thinks, and they spy on him and keep a file.
2001: "The devil take the Constitution, I want to feel safe! If you have nothing to hide, what are you afraid of? Don't listen to those liberals and their Chicken Little nonsense about 'abuse of power'! They're all Socialists and traitors!!"
2013: "WE NEVER THOUGHT THERE'D BE A N****R DEMOCRAT IN THE WHITE HOUSE!! WAAAAAAAAH! ABUSE OF POWER! ABUSE OF POWER!!"
SATURDAY
Today's strip lends fuel to the theory that Mallard is an accusatory demon only Tinsley can see. When we see him like this it means Tinsley drew the staring bird-thing to torment himself, and that a syndicate intern has been tasked to take out the hectoring about drinking too much, being a hack, and lying for a bunch of crooks — and put in some junk about Obama or whatever's on the daily blast fax.
SHUDDER DAY
It achieves an apex of circularity.
"...Mallard is an accusatory demon only Tinsley can see."
Mallard Fillmore as the Evil Opposite of Garfield Minus Garfield ?
Suddenly I appreciate the comic genius of Brews Tinkley!
Yes, Mallard -- and I'm sure your millions of viewers are just as outraged as you are. Well, I mean they would be if you were actually in the Fox News studios doing a live broadcast for a real audience instead of sitting in your kitchen talking to a half-empty box of stale cereal which your diseased brain is interpreting as a TV camera.
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