Tinsley brings us a slightly different spin today.   Oh make no mistake, it revolves around someone watching TV, but this time instead of the -duck it is an unidentified man.   That's not really important except that I find it interesting how much of Mallard/Tinsley's life revolves around watching TV.   Here is the breakdown for the last two week:

But back to the subject at hand.   Today James Carville is drawn as though he were a spokesperson for Tinsley's new "Hooked on Histrionics" program that teaches children that in order to succeed, they don't need "a bunch of silly facts." Instead, Tinsley tells us that they just need "to convey insubstantive emotion like our celebrity spokesperson James Carville does:"

Insubstantive??? The word isn't in my desk version of the Oxford dictionary, nor my "American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language." So I thought I had better drop-in on the absolute authority, the " Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition." It doesn't include that word either!   However, they do list the root "substantive" to which Mr. Tinsley has incorrectly prefixed "in" (possibly to reverse its meaning).

The OED defines "substantive" (when used as an adjective) as:

     That stands of or by itself; independent, self-existent, self-sufficient.  

From the context of his rant, I would have thought the author meant "insubstantial" which American Heritage defines as:

     Lacking substance, imaginary

No matter, since the rest of the cartoon is so lame, it doesn't hurt his credibility (or lack thereof) if he makes-up words.   But when the suspicious word doesn't even make sense?   Well, what are we to make of that?

Other than that, obvious, error the cartoon really isn't communicating anything useful or new.   He is again making fun of James Carville's speech.   My mother taught me that when a bully made fun of the way a person looked or spoke it was because he felt that person was better than himself and that only through attempting to demean the other could he inflate his own ego.   Looks like a classic example Mom.

Of course this cartoon was drawn and distributed some time ago so Mr. Tinsley probably didn't know about the Chicago business man who confessed today to paying the two Arkansas troopers who claim they rounded-up women for (then governor) Clinton to have sex with.   But, since more and more of this type of information is showing up, maybe the -duck will take a permanent vacation from trying to pretend that there isn't a well organized right-wing effort to hurt our President.

Oh well, I can dream can't I?

Daniel Sherer

 

Index of other Mallard exposés
Dan, why are you picking on this dim-witted duck anyway?

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Last Modified: Sunday, 29-Feb-2004 01:27:44 EST