| Mallard Fillmore | |
| Creator: | Bruce Tinsley |
| Current: | Loren Fishman |
| Status: | Running |
| Syndicate: | King Features Syndicate |
| Genre: | Political |
Mallard Fillmore is a comic strip written and illustrated by Bruce Tinsley until 2019 and Loren Fishman since 2020. It has been syndicated by King Features Syndicate since June 6, 1994. The strip follows the exploits of its title character, an anthropomorphic green-plumaged duck who works as a politically conservative reporter at fictional television station WFDR in Washington, D.C. Mallard's name is a pun on the name of the 13th president of the United States, Millard Fillmore.
In 1991, Bruce Tinsley, who was an editorial cartoonist for the Charlottesville, Virginia paper The Daily Progress, was asked to create a cartoon character as a mascot for the newspaper's entertainment page. A duck, which Bruce named "Mallard Fillmore," was accepted, and made his debut in the paper.
Tinsley started sending samples of Mallard Fillmore, then known as The Fillmore File, to newspapers across the country and was eventually picked up by The Washington Times, which began running it in 1992. The strip was later picked up for national syndication by King Features Syndicate, which began distributing it in May 1994.
After November 23, 2019, Mallard Fillmore stopped updating with new content and instead reprinted old comics. Since March 9, 2020, new comics of Mallard Fillmore have been produced under the signature of a different artist, Fishman.[1]
Mallard Fillmore is the main character in the comic strip. He is a seasoned conservative reporter for fictional television station WFDR-TV in Washington, D.C., which hired him in order to fill its quota for "Amphibious Americans."
Although Mallard is a mallard duck, he is only occasionally shown with a mallard's coloring. Even when the daily strip is printed in color, Mallard generally appears as solid black. He does not exhibit any ducklike behavior, and the other characters (who are all human) never comment on his species, except in the strip setting up the premise.
Mallard yearns for the "good old days," and views himself as a victimized underdog in a world that is being overrun with political correctness, religious secularism, and hypocrisy. He is often in a state of outrage over the news item of the day, usually involving liberals.
Mallard's politics are very close to, if not one and the same as, cartoonist Bruce Tinsley's; Tinsley told the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review that "Mallard really is about as close to me as you can get," in an October 2005 interview.
Although WFDR appears to be a small, local channel, Mallard is still capable of interviewing famous politicians such as Al Gore. Occasionally, he will mention a study done by the "Fillmore Foundation," a think tank which may or may not actually exist in the comic strip, which he presumably heads. Mallard seems to be conscious of the fact that he is a fictional cartoon character, and is capable of "feeling poorly drawn." Mallard is also a bachelor, though in 2002 he had a date with a human woman he met in line at the post office. The date did not go well because he did not agree with her politics. He appears to be quite fond of Ann Coulter. Mallard did not attend journalism school, a fact repeatedly commented on in the comic, usually as an explanation as to why Mallard does not understand something about the WFDR news priorities.
Other characters from the strip:
The strip often incorporates footnotes, which Tinsley has said was a response to readers and editors frequently accusing him of fabricating news items addressed in the strip.[2]
In the 2004 book America (The Book), written by the staff of The Daily Show, a parody of Mallard Fillmore appears in a section about political cartoons (which also included parodies of Peanuts and Doonesbury strips). In the parody, Mallard criticizes legislation protecting the environment, as well as the income tax, and concludes "Ooops! I forgot to tell a joke!"
In the strip's 5–8 July 2005 editions, Tinsley responded to the America (The Book) parody, claiming that Jon Stewart "tried to deceive people into thinking it was a real [''Mallard Fillmore'' strip]" by using the comic's name and a fictitious date.[3]
The 2006 paperback "Teacher's Edition" of America (The Book) further addresses this controversy. On the page with the Mallard strip, Stanley K. Shultz, a college professor hired to correct factual inaccuracies in the book, remarked that "This does not appear to be an authentic 'Fillmore' cartoon, although the authors of this book have captured accurately the strip's level of humor."
The Daily Show staff worked in another jab at the comic strip in Earth (The Book), where the strip Love Is... is referred to as "a creepy cartoon that makes Mallard Fillmore look funny."
On January 4, 2005, a Mallard Fillmore strip was published featuring a television executive whom bloggers accused of being a Jewish caricature that promoted the anti-Semitic stereotype that "Hollywood is run by Jews."[4] While the main "Mallard" page only shows a week's worth of cartoons at a time,[5] this cartoon is available on Jewish World Review's web site.[6]
The strip's caricature of Jon Stewart, with a long, downwardly pointed nose, was criticized by Stewart's colleague satirist Stephen Colbert, who, during a December 14, 2006 show, joked that the caricature may have been "clip art from The Protocols of the Elders of Zion."[7] Tinsley has since stated about Stewart that "honestly, I didn't even know he was Jewish."[8]
In August 2019, The San Diego Union-Tribune announced it would be dropping Mallard Fillmore over antisemitism, concerning the August 12, 2019 edition of the strip featuring Ilhan Omar.[9]
Tinsley found himself in trouble again in 2009 when he printed a strip mocking the idea of hate crimes right after the one-year anniversary of the violent murder of Ecuadorian immigrant Marcelo Lucero,[10] which was ruled a hate crime. This event sparked a protest where picketers gathered at the office of Newsday, the Long Island-based paper that had run the strip in question. The protesters felt that the strip was in poor taste and disrespected the memory of the murder victim. Newsday later issued a statement, saying:
Tinsley himself wrote to Newsday, causing further conflict when he defended his work:
Newsday still runs Mallard Fillmore in its publication; following the New York Post move to discontinue its comics section it is the only paper in the New York City metropolitan area to carry it.
In 2004 Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman cited Mallard Fillmore as an example of misinformation. A strip showed a taxpayer attacking his TV set with a baseball bat and yelling: "I can't afford to send my kids to college, or even take 'em out of their substandard public school, because the federal, state and local governments take more than 50 percent of my income in taxes. And then the guy on the news asks with a straight face whether or not we can 'afford' tax cuts."
Krugman stated, "Very few Americans pay as much as 50 percent of their income in taxes; on average, families near the middle of the income distribution pay only about half that percentage in federal, state and local taxes combined."[11]
In March 2021, all Gannett-owned newspapers which ran Mallard Fillmore dropped the strip over transphobia concerns relating to the February 19–20, 2021 strips which depicted trans women in women's sports in a negative light.[12]
| Title | Publication Date | ISBN | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mallard Fillmore | October 1, 1995 | ||
| Mallard Fillmore. ... on the Stump | May 1, 1996 |
