All I want for Christmas is a little schadenfreude:
Hoosier Edward Bruce Tinsley, creator of the conservative comic strip Mallard Fillmore, was arrested in Columbus Dec. 4 and charged with operating a vehicle under the influence -- his second alcohol-related arrest in less that four months, according to the Bartholomew County Sheriff's Department.
Tinsley, 48, who lives in Columbus, had a blood-alcohol level of 0.14 -- almost twice the level at which an Indiana driver is considered intoxicated. He posted $755 bond.
On Aug. 26, Tinsley was arrested for public intoxication, according to the sheriff's department.
Mallard Fillmore, about a conservative duck, appears in almost 400 newspapers nationwide, including The Indianapolis Star.
And from the "About the Comic" section on the King Features homepage:
Tinsley created Mallard for what he saw as the conservative underdog. The strip is for "the average person out there: the forgotten American taxpayer who's sick of the liberal media and cultural establishments that act like he or she doesn't exist," he says.
Evidently Tinsley's alcohol problems stemmed from the Herculean amounts he needed to imbibe in order to silence the endless keening of his monstrous victimhood complex.
And it makes today's strip seem like something of a bad choice.
What!?! I love store-bought eggnog, sans alcohol!
Tinsley can bite me!
I thought Tinsley did do a funny strip at least once. No, wait, that was the parody strip from that Daily Show book. Nevermind.
To be fair, his strip is only funny after a great deal of alcohol, several concussions, a full frontal lobotomy, and Clockwork Orange-style brainwashing sessions.