Every Sunday the stupidest newspaper in the world, the New York Post, publishes the stupidest comic strip in the world, Mallard Fillmore. Actually, it's less of a comic strip than a right-wing lecture delivered by a large, frequently bemused duck in a tweed suit. This duck spouts off about all the bizarre left-wing conspiracies running rampant in the world today -- recycling, global warming, minimum wage -- and makes unfunny, logically-questionable declarations about them. It's rather less a comic strip than an animated visit with your crazy grandpa.
This week's work, if we can call it that, consists of two pictures. In the first, we see the duck from over his shoulder, reading a newspaper. "According to this new book," he's thinking -- since apparently it'd be dumb to think a fully-clothed duck who reads newspapers can talk -- "fifty percent of U. S. high-school seniors think that Sodom and Gomorrah were married. . . . "
In the second part, the duck is looking out at us, bemused. "Apparently," he thinks, "the people who want to 'keep religion out of our schools' are doin' a heck of a job. . . . "
Now, maybe Republicans throughout the world will shake their heads and tsk-tsk and say this is another example of the world going to hell in a handbasket. But a second's thought -- apparently an unrealistic deadline with the comic's creator, Bruce Tinsley -- reveals the reality behind this declaration. Let's phrase the statistic in another way:
More than half of American parents don't teach their kids Bible stories.
Handy to know, isn't it? I mean, because if most adult Americans aren't teaching their kids religion, why on earth should our schools?
Monday, April 2, 2007
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"Mallard Fillmore" is also a daily strip, carried in many of the nation's newspapers. We can't really call it a 'comic' strip, because it's never even a little bit funny. However, it does give the papers something to point to when readers write in to complain that "Doonesbury" is too liberal. "Look!" the editors can say. "We also publish Mallard Fillmore, and even though it is never amusing or thought-provoking or even the least bit interesting, it is nonetheless representative of the Conservative point of view, so be of good cheer."
Personally, I'd rather the schools DID teach bible stories, like the one about Lot throwing his virgin daughters to the crowd to be raped so they'd leave his more important guests alone, or Noah's daughters getting him drunk and having sex with him. How else are the kids supposed to learn any Family Values?
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