Other than being named after the fifth worst president in history, that is.
For the last week or so, Mallard has been using his not so handy-dandy asterisks to reference Fox News, which is the authority on what's going on the world. It's fairly common knowledge that you don't use Fox News as a reference when you are a conservative. Liberals should also know not to use MSNBC as a reference either. Stick with newspapers and CNN. The reason being is that Fox News isn't really news--there's no way that anything they do on there can be considered news. The same goes for (certain) programming on MSNBC. At least MSNBC doesn't use the word "news" in their name (it stands for Microsoft National Broadcasting Company). Another problem I have with Bruce Tinsley, the cartoonist for Mallard, is the generic, non-helpful way he uses his asterisks*.
Really, Fox News said that? An non-living entity mentioned a White House Enemies List? Why couldn't you reference "*Bill O'Reilly 7/25/09" or "*Glenn Beck 8/1/09"? I know you have limited space and conservatives are known for giving either the bare minimum of information or just outright lying but you couldn't squeeze a name and date in there? Also, who doesn't have an enemies list? We know Richard Nixon had one and if Cheney didn't have one, then he was doing something wrong during those eight years.
And why does Tinsley think that Obama is scared of "average middle-class taxpayers who deserve a voice in their healthcare decisions"? Wasn't it George W. Bush who had his staff pick and choose who could be in any type of town hall meeting? Obama doesn't pick and choose, he doesn't hold meetings or discussions in front of cronies, he lets the people yell at him which is something Bush could never do because you'd either stump him on a question or get him to cry.
I did a Google search for anyone calling Obama, the Democrats, any liberal an arrogant elitist and the only thing I found from reputable source was from 2008. You know why people consider liberals "arrogant elitists"? It's because liberals go to college and are generally smarter than Republicans and conservatives. That's not just my opinion, there's been a study on it. Now, I know not all conservatives are idiots but the ones you see at the town hall meetings on TV don't exactly look like the smartest of the group.
Well, our "Fox News" asterisk is back. Now, normally when you place an asterisk, you create that reference for either the entire sentence or for the word the asterisk is next to. So, if what this strip is trying to tell us, either Obama gave a quote exclusively to Fox News about his Enemies List or at some point Fox News mentioned the word "list". But again you would have to put into consideration that Fox News is not a relevant source.
Like a good conservative, Tinsley, I believe, is telling people to go out and burn stuff down. Is this supposed to be a joke about how people don't protest like they used to? Do we really want people storming student unions, throwing flaming bricks through windows or knocking people down with fire hoses again? That's another thing conservatives seem to do a lot, talk before thinking. Unfortunately, Tinsley has a chance to erase what he says before submitting it.
Why is Mallard watching the liberal media? When liberals were protesting after Bush "defeat" Gore, the people at Fox News and Rush Limbaugh called them babies and a bunch of whiny idiots because they were doing what the government said they could do. The reason liberals are calling conservatives crazy and a bunch of whiny idiots is because they are acting like idiots: they are yelling, they don't know Medicare is socialized health care, they quote from the Bible and they start out their sentences with "I am a good American" which is just like starting out a sentence "Now I'm not a racist" and then concluding with "but black people love their fried chicken and watermelon". If you're that good of an American then you don't need to broadcast it.
This week of Mallard has been incredibly hard for me to work through but I did it. I still don't see how things were better under George W. Bush--their only argument was that we were safer (after 3,000 died under Bush's watch and that doesn't even come close to the number that have died in Afghanistan and Iraq). I don't care about being safer. I want prosperity, I want jobs, I want other countries to look at us like they used to...in awe. Why don't conservatives want this?
*Duck and Cover