History ComicStrip / MallardFillmore

[[caption-width-right:246:Mallard Fillmore demonstrating [[PoliticalCorrectnessIsEvil the premise of his comic]]]]

!!This strip provides examples of:

* AuthorFilibuster: The cause of every Wall of Text, mentioned below.
* AuthorTract: Every strip.

* PoesLaw: Tinsley has a bad habit of forgetting to explain ''why'' ideas are worthy of mockery. The result is that the only reason you know that whatever the StrawmanPolitical of the strip is saying isn't his actual opinion is the byline. This gets especially bad when he's trying to accuse the left of baseless name-calling, but all that he actually ''shows'' is a talking head saying that x is racist/sexist/fascist etc.

* StrawFeminist:
** This strip has a recurring one, and she's an ugly and bitter hag. Then again, Tinsley also regularly features a [[BrainlessBeauty brick-brained, glamorous model]] named [[MeaningfulName Purge Daley]], showing that he at least doesn't discriminate against HollywoodHomely women.
** [[MissingMom While she never appeared]], Dave's ex-wife qualifies, seeing that she divorced him for naming their son after Rush Limbaugh, who is outspoken in his opposition to feminists, as well as about anti-racism efforts and LGBT people being open about their sexualities.

->''"I think papers carry this strip for 'balance', i.e., to shut up the ''ComicStrip/{{Doonesbury}}'' critics so they can keep it on the comics page."''
-->--'''[[http://joshreads.com/?p=932 The Comics Curmudgeon]]'''

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Mr. Noseworthy strikes one as rather this way, what with his long nose, frizzy hair, and spouting of leftist intellectual gobbledygook. It's a little bit worrying, acrually, especially considering he's the boss of our hero, who works in the media...

* {{Expy}}: More than a few critics have noted Mallard's incredible similarity to [[ComicStrip/BloomCounty Opus the Penguin]]. This is less obvious on the rare days that Mallard's head is colored -- his head is canonically green (being a mallard), but on weekdays, his head is jet black, making the resemblance uncanny.

[[caption-width-right:246:Mallard Fillmore demonstrating [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad the premise of his comic]]]]

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: A frequent target of mockery. The strip started with Mallard going out for a job as a reporter and being declined because he's just a duck. He gets the job by pointing out that he's an "Aquatic-American".

* WithUsOrAgainstUs: Mallard once preempted a professor from invoking GodwinsLaw over then-President UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's use of the phrase by remarking that the professor's generation made [[NotSoDifferent "You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem."]] a famous rallying cry.

[[quoteright:247:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mallardfillmore.png]]
[[caption-width-right:247:Mallard Fillmore demonstrating [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad the premise of his comic]]]]

[[quoteright:242:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/mallard_fillmore_1152.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:242:Mallard Fillmore demonstrating [[PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad the premise of his comic]]]]

Tinsley wrote and drew the strip himself until late 2019. While no stranger to controversy given his volatile opinions, a particularly aggressive strip aimed at Rep. Ihlan Omar [[https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2019/08/31/san-diego-union-tribune-drops-mallard-fillmore-hate-speech/ got the strip dropped from several papers]] in late 2019. The strip went on a short hiatus, running four months of reruns, before [[https://www.comicskingdom.com/trending/blog/2020/04/08/an-interview-with-guest-cartoonist-loren-fishman Loren Fishman]] took over the production of the strip in March 2020. While still credited as a guest artist, it's unclear if Tinsley is still involved, in what capacity, whether he voluntarily left, and if he will ever return.

Much like compatriots ''ComicStrip/PricklyCity'' and ''Doonesbury'', the strip is ostensibly a slice of life story with a political bent. When the strip began, Mallard was hired to work at a television news station and thus his co-workers (all liberals, naturally) served as targets for the strip's conservative humor. Over time, this has largely been dropped and most of the supporting cast only appear very rarely. Today the strip just generally portrays Mallard as a mouthpiece for Tinsley's personal views, blurring the line between a straight newspaper comic strip and a series of political cartoons that all happen to feature the same character.

''Mallard Fillmore'', written by Bruce Tinsley and drawn by Loren Fishman, is about an anthropomorphic duck journalist and the struggles he finds in dealing with a liberal world. It started out as a non-political strip for the Charlottesville ''Daily Progress'', which had asked Tinsley to create a mascot strip for their entertainment page. After several rejections, the eponymous duck won out and the strip was launched. After Tinsley expressed his conservative political views, he found himself out of a job. He successfully sold the strip to ''The Washington Times'' in 1992 and eventually got it syndicated nationally by King Features Syndicate. Tinsley wrote and drew the strip himself until late 2019. The strip went on a short hiatus, running four months of reruns, before [[https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2020/03/23/fishman-is-new-mallard-fillmore-cartoonist/ Loren Fishman]] took over the art duties for the strip in March 2020.

''Mallard Fillmore'', by Bruce Tinsley, is about an anthropomorphic duck journalist and the struggles he finds in dealing with a liberal world. It started out as a non-political strip for the Charlottesville ''Daily Progress'', which had asked Tinsley to create a mascot strip for their entertainment page. After several rejections, the eponymous duck won out and the strip was launched. After Tinsley expressed his conservative political views, he found himself out of a job. He successfully sold the strip to ''The Washington Times'' in 1992 and eventually got it syndicated nationally by King Features Syndicate.

After nearly four months of reruns in late 2019, Tinsley has a new comic artist for the work in March 2020: [[https://www.dailycartoonist.com/index.php/2020/03/23/fishman-is-new-mallard-fillmore-cartoonist/ Loren Fishman]].

* AVerySpecialEpisode: Every so often Tinsley will stop being funny and do a strip delivering a serious message about something like abortion or child abuse.

* PoliticalCorrectnessGoneMad: A frequent target of mockery.
** The strip started with Mallard going out for a job as a reporter and being declined because he's just a duck. He gets the job by pointing out that he's an "Aquatic-American".
PressHat: Perhaps the prime example. Back when he was a reporter, he kept that little note in his hat. He eventually abandoned it, yet kept the jacket.

** [[MissingMom While she never appeared]], Dave's ex-wife qualifies, seeing that she divorced him for naming their son after Rush Limbaugh, who is outspoken in his opposition to feminists, as well as about anti-racism efforts and gay people being open about their sexualities.

''Mallard Fillmore'', by Bruce Tinsley, is about an anthropomorphic duck journalist and the struggles he finds in dealing with a liberal world. It started out as a non-political strip for ''The Daily Progress'', which had asked Tinsley to create a mascot strip for their entertainment page. After several rejections, the eponymous duck won out and the strip was launched. After Tinsley expressed his conservative political views, he found himself out of a job. He successfully sold the strip to ''The Washington Times'' in 1992 and eventually got it syndicated nationally by King Features Syndicate.

* DearNegativeReader: Occasionally, Mallard addresses his complaining readership, though it's hard to say if the author is quoting actual e-mails or not.

[[caption-width-right:242:Mallard Fillmore demonstrating the premise of his comic]]

'''''Mallard Fillmore''''', by Bruce Tinsley, is about an anthropomorphic duck journalist and the struggles he finds in dealing with a liberal world. It started out as a non-political strip for ''The Daily Progress'', which had asked Tinsley to create a mascot strip for their entertainment page. After several rejections, the eponymous duck won out and the strip was launched. After Tinsley expressed his conservative political views, he found himself out of a job. He successfully sold the strip to ''The Washington Times'' in 1992 and eventually got it syndicated nationally by King Features Syndicate.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Mr. Noseworthy strikes one as rather this way, what with his long nose, frizzy hair, and spouting of leftist intellectual gobbledygook.

** [[MissingMom While she never appeared]], Dave's ex-wife qualifies, seeing that she divorced him for naming their son after Rush Limbaugh, who is outspoken in his opposition to feminists.

* AmbiguouslyJewish: Mr. Noseworthy strikes one as rather this way, what with his long nose, frizzy hair, and spouting of leftist intellectual gobbledygook. (Then again, maybe the frizzed hair is just supposed to identify him as a BourgeoisBohemian, and the nose as a sign of superciliousness.)

''Mallard Fillmore'', by Bruce Tinsley, is about an anthropomorphic duck journalist and the struggles he finds in dealing with a liberal world. It started out as a non-political strip for ''The Daily Progress'', which had asked Tinsley to create a mascot strip for their entertainment page. After several rejections, the eponymous duck won out and the strip was launched. After Tinsley expressed his conservative political views, he found himself out of a job. He successfully sold the strip to ''The Washington Times'' in 1992 and eventually got it syndicated nationally by King Features Syndicate.

* StrawmanPolitical: There's a few stock characters that to serve this purpose and appear only in strips covering their topic (education, feminism, race, etc.). Outside of these, Noseworthy often plays the role of the smug, line-toeing liberal for Mallard to easily criticize. He's also Mallard's boss, but this is really not an issue outside of the initial strips in which Mallard is hired by him.

* WithUsOrAgainstUs: Mallard once pre-empted a professor from invoking GodwinsLaw over then-President UsefulNotes/GeorgeWBush's use of the phrase by remarking that the professor's generation made [[NotSoDifferent "You're either part of the solution or you're part of the problem."]] a famous rallying cry.
* WorthyOpponent: Chantel, a newscaster who works with Mallard. She's the token non-straw-liberal and appears in the strip on the rare occasions Tinsley agrees with the liberal argument or wants to call conservatives to task over something. However, she started out as a much more empty-headed criticism of liberals like the rest of the cast and the official comic page from King Features still insinuates Mallard only barely tolerates her opinions.

* StrawFeminist: This strip has a recurring one, and she's an ugly and bitter hag. Then again, Tinsley also regularly features a [[BrainlessBeauty brick-brained, glamorous model]] named [[MeaningfulName Purge Daley]], showing that he at least doesn't discriminate against HollywoodHomely women.
** [[MissingMom While she never appeared]], Dave's ex-wife qualifies, seeing that she divorced him for naming their son after Rush Limbaugh.

* {{Parody}}: SomethingAwful started a trend of rewriting every strip in YeOldeButcheredeEnglish to hammer home how incredibly ass-backwards and regressive Tinsley's views are. They call it [[http://fowlherald.tumblr.com/ Ye Fowl Herald]].