Shut the duck up!

First, a disclaimer: I'm a liberal democrat (gee, one of those in Massachusetts, what a surprise!) That doesn't mean I blindly accept every position of the Democratic party, and it doesn't mean I reflexively oppose every Republican or conservative policy. The polarized state of U.S. politics is incredibly frustrating and counter-productive (although, anything that prevents Congress from inflicting more damage on the rest of us may be a good thing).

Nevertheless, even if I were a conservative, I think I'd still be ticked off by the pointless waste of comics-page space known as Mallard Fillmore, by Bruce Tinsley. It's apparently supposed to be a political comic strip, but I find it neither political nor funny. For quite a long time now, all it seems to be is a series of ad-hominem attacks on liberals. According to Bruce/Mallard, liberals are stupid, hypocritical, indecisive, coddling, unthinking, and so on and so on.

Well, isn't that special? Why doesn't he use this platform to tell us what's right about the conservative agenda, or to explain what he finds objectionable about the liberal agenda? Just how useful is basically repeating "hey you're an idiot" week after week?

That said, Tinsley inadvertently gave me quite a chuckle with today's strip, commenting on political correctness and Halloween. As of this writing you can find it here. In case it's gone, here's the inspired text:

It's that time of year again... when public schools across the USA have Halloween dress-up days, but ban politically incorrect costumes...
Of course, if most school administrators knew that Halloween began as a Christian holy day, they wouldn't be celebrating it in the first place.

I'm quite surprised that Tinsley doesn't know that Halloween's origins actually come from an ancient Celtic festival. It was known as Samhain, it existed before the time of Christ, and it was later co-opted by Roman conquerors to include their own harvest rituals. There are plenty of online resources to learn more about this, including this article at AmericanCatholic.org. The idea that Halloween 'originated' as a Christian holy day is incredibly outdated. In any case, the whole argument of the strip is foolish, considering that public school systems across the country manage to acknowledge Christmas without imploding in a swirl of politically correct angst.