That damned Typicalness

What's Mallard raving about today?

Barack Obama, Racism.

Sometimes it seems like Mallard just stuffs whatever panels he has lying about into an envelope and sends them off to his editor, but never indicates on what day it should run. How else to explain the fact that Mallard started on this topic on April 7, then abandoned it for two days so he could complain (among other things) about taxes on April 10, only to return to it for no other apparent reason today?

I am not even going to offer an explanation for why Mallard thinks Obama's campaign is run by a Vegas lounge singer.

That damned UN

What's Mallard raving about today?

The UN, Senators Clinton & Obama.

What kind of sick fetish caused Mallard to visualize a fight between Clinton and Obama like that? Clinton as a pant-suited lion who appears to be attempting to scratch the eyes out of an otherwise faceless Obama. Or mate with him.

Oh, and Mallard hates pretty much everything. Clear?

Meta-Post: The Golden Ellipses

AFter two months of voting, here's a recap of the 2008 Golden Ellipses:

• Limbaugh Award for Best Regurgitation of Talking Points - Global Warming is a Scientific Controversy!
• Worst Rhyme Scheme - Bill Loves Hillary
• Creepiest Unintentional Self-Revelation - Dust Angels
• Most Interminable Series - Drafting Walter Williams
• Most Disturbing Image - Peyton Manning's Neck
• Least Helpful Asterisk - 6-in-one
• Creativity in Cartooning (Highest Text-to-Image Ratio) -
  Can't Even be Bothered to Draw Mallard's Body
• Most Mystifying Panel - The Golden Flash
• Strangest Animal - Wooly Mammoth (with Penis Trunk) and ROUSS?
• Flimsiest Premise - Stephen Colbert is not Funny
• The IOKIYAR Award for Brazenness or Hypocrisy - Larry Craig Schmairy Craig
• Most Violent Assault on the English Language - Abortion Pun
• Least Accurate Caricature - Al Gore or a Lean-To?
• Achievement in Oversimplification or Willful Ignorance - No, I didn't read the article, why?
• Ray Bolger Award for Invention in Straw Men - Straw Liberals Want to Help Terrorists

Golden Ellipses: Ray Bolger Award for Invention in Straw Men

And the winner is...

Straw Liberals Want to Help Terrorists

In our final category, Ray Bolger Award for Invention in Straw Men, we have the final Nominees:

• Straw Liberal Doesn't Understand Conservatives (14%)
  
• Straw Harry Reid Surrenders (10%)
  
• Straw Liberals Want to Help Terrorists (51%)
  
• Straw Jesse Jackson Cries "Racism" (14%)
  
• Straw Hillary Asks for Your Vote (11%)
  

That damned cover letter

What's Mallard raving about today?

Taxes.

Cover letter, eh? Anyone surprised that Mallard has not yet discovered e-filing?

Anyone surprised he's a bitter, incoherent crank with an inflated sense of his own cleverness?

Not a damned Photo

What's Mallard raving about today?

Hillary Clinton.

I refuse to comment because this is a caricature of Hillary Clinton and not a photo.

That damned Race

What's Mallard raving about today?

Barack Obama, Racism.

We will know, in just under two weeks, whether Mallard is actually serious about this topic or whether he's just a partisan sack of crap frightened by the growing realization that Barack Obama may very well be the next President.

When he chooses to comment or not to comment on this statement from Chris Matthews about Obama, we'll know: "Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?" (emphasis mine)

Anyone care to give odds on which it is?

That damned Typical Person

What's Mallard raving about today?

Barack Obama, Racism.

Obama came out immediately and clarified the remark. So Mallard's entire construct, that the comment was OK for Obama, is patently untrue, a fact that will shock absolutely no one reading this blog.

The more salient point which Mallard underscores in gigantic felt-tipped pen is that, not surprisingly but disappointingly, the entirety of the Right Wing Water Carrier Group, for which Mallard is an empty-headed echo chamber, heard Obama's speech on race and said to themselves "We like politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism."

For we have a choice in this country. We can accept a politics that breeds division, and conflict, and cynicism. We can tackle race only as spectacle -- as we did in the O.J. trial -- or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina -- or as fodder for the nightly news.

We can play Rev. Wright's sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words.

We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she's playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.

We can do that.

But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we'll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.

That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, "Not this time." This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children.

This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can't learn; that those kids who don't look like us are somebody else's problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st Century economy. Not this time.

This time we want to talk about how the lines in the emergency room are filled with whites and blacks and Hispanics who do not have health care, who don't have the power on their own to overcome the special interests in Washington, but who can take them on if we do it together.

This time we want to talk about the shuttered mills that once provided a decent life for men and women of every race, and the homes for sale that once belonged to Americans from every religion, every region, every walk of life.

This time we want to talk about the fact that the real problem is not that someone who doesn't look like you might take your job; it's that the corporation you work for will ship it overseas for nothing more than a profit.

This time we want to talk about the men and women of every color and creed who serve together, and fight together, and bleed together under the same proud flag.

We want to talk about how to bring them home from a war that never should've been authorized and never should've been waged, and we want to talk about how we'll show our patriotism by caring for them, and their families, and giving them the benefits they have earned.

That damned Earl

What's Mallard raving about today?

The Writer's Strike, America.

You hear that America? Mallard Fillmore is accusing you of watching too much television.

In actual fact, however, it seems the writer's strike affected Mallard more than just about anyone I know.

Those damned current events

What's Mallard raving about today?

Americans, Elliot Spitzer.

I'm sorry...how does Elliot Spitzer's resignation not count as a current event? (At least at the time that Mallard wrote this.)

That damned Obama

What's Mallard raving about today?

Barack Obama, racism.

Less than a month ago, John McCain was being portrayed by Mallard as a closet Democrat. Suddenly, John McCain plays the part of long suffering Saint to Big Bad Obama's cries of racism.

I'm shocked at the turnaround. I'm less shocked by the fact that this may be the most delusional Mallard Straw Man ever.

That damned high road

What's Mallard raving about today?

Barack Obama, Racism

Can anyone name a black person, other than Walter Williams, who has appeared in Mallard Fillmore but whose defining feature is not decrying everything around them as racism?

One gets the feeling that Mallard hears charges of racism a lot in his daily life. Those charges of racism, however, appear to be everyone else's fault.

Golden Ellipses: Achievement in Oversimplification or Willful Ignorance

And the winner is...

No, I didn't read the article, why?

In the category of "Achievement in Oversimplification or Willful Ignorance" we have the following nominees:

• Immigration for Dummies
  (13%)
• No, I didn't read the article, why? (42%)
• Facts are Inconvenient (11%)
• Regressive Taxes Are Teh Bomb (4%)
• And the current Occupant's qualifications are? (29%)

Those damned issues

What's Mallard raving about today?

Senator Barack Obama, Issues, Divisive Rhetoric.

You can see where Mallard is coming from.

After all, if Barack Obama were to raise the level of discourse out of the sewer it would threaten Mallard's livlihood.

That damned Media

What's Mallard raving about today?

Senator Barack Obama, The Media.

April Fool, indeed. I am looking at a fool right now. (And I am not talking about Reverend Jeremiah Wright.)