As someone whose morning bowl of Cheerios cannot be properly digested unless accompanied by a perusal of the comics page, I\u2019ve been looking at the \u201cfunnies\u201d for many decades. Because of its placement–on the comics page, just below the fold and within close range of the Sudoku puzzle–in my daily newspaper, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/em> [Yes, I still subscribe. Old habit.], I can\u2019t avoid seeing \u201cMallard Fillmore.”<\/p>\n

Last Friday, my longtime annoyance with the strip boiled over.<\/p>\n

In case you didn\u2019t already know: Mallard Fillmore is a duck, portrayed as a TV reporter, who channels the strong conservative views of his creator, Bruce Tinsley. Mallard has been reporting his ideas since 1994, and is syndicated in 400 newspapers around the US. When it debuted, Tinsley called the comic strip an “antidote” to\u00a0 Doonesbury<\/a>, which is reviled among conservatives for its liberal viewpoint.<\/p>\n

One big difference between the two comic strips is that, while conservatives managed to force Doonesbury off the comic page and onto the editorial page of many newspapers, including the Post-Dispatch<\/em>, Mallard has kept its reserved spot in the P-D’s neighborhood of \u201cMother Goose and Grimm,\u201d and directly above distinctly non-political \u201cHi and Lois\u201d and \u201cBeetle Bailey.\u201d And, while Doonesbury conveys so-called liberal ideas via subtlety, satire [admittedly, often biting] and storytelling, \u201cMallard Fillmore\u201d delivers the conservative party line with a blunt instrument.<\/p>\n

Which brings me to last Friday\u2019s strip. You <\/a>may argue that it was an April Fool\u2019s joke, but judging from Tinsley\u2019s 17-year track record, I\u2019d say not. For the record, here it is.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t object to Tinsley expressing conservative ideas. I don\u2019t have a problem with satirizing progressives. Our behavior at times has earned the right to be spoofed. What I do take exception to is Mallard\u2019s distortion of facts and the accusation that anyone who believes said facts is \u201cdelusional.\u201d When Mallard says that Head Start doesn\u2019t work, he\u2019s parroting [can a duck \u201cparrot?\u201d] a dangerous, war-against-the poor, conservative meme currently circulating in the spending-cut-happy, Republican-dominated US Congress.<\/p>\n

Where does he get this idea? In 2010, the US Department of Health and Human Services released the findings of its Head Start Impact Study<\/a>, a decades-long analysis of the effectiveness of the early-childhood program.\u00a0 The key finding of the study shows that Head Start works. The study\u2019s authors say:<\/p>\n

Providing access to Head Start has a positive impact on children\u2019s preschool experiences. There are statistically significant differences between the Head Start group and the control group on every measure of children\u2019s preschool experiences measured in this study.\u2026The Head Start children outperformed the control group in every domain that the study measured, including positive cognitive, social-emotional, health and parenting impacts. The Head Start children left Head Start more ready for school than their peers in the control group.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

However, the study goes on to say that\u2014and here\u2019s the part Tinsley zeroes in on– by the end of first grade, the Head Start children lost many of the advantages they had when they began kindergarten.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong-standing opponents of Head Start and other publicly funded early-childhood programs have selectively used these losses to try to discredit such programs\u201d \u201csays the National Head Start Association<\/a>. \u201cInstead of weakening programs that work, the task now is to figure out how to continue the children\u2019s progress through the early years in formal education.”<\/p>\n

Back in 1994, when Tinsley was asked to develop the character that eventually evolved into Mallard Fillmore, he offered three options<\/a>:\u00a0a blue hippopotamus, a big nose in tuxedo and cane, and a duck. Tinsley says the hippo went unused for fear of offending overweight people, and the nose was axed because it would “offend people of Jewish and Mediterranean descent, not to mention Arabs and anyone else with a big nose.”<\/p>\n

Good decision by the editors to nix the first two, but while the image of Mallard is relatively benign, his views are not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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