About Mallard Fillmore

A seasoned, rumpled ex-newspaper reporter, Mallard now works for WFDR-TV in Washington, D.C. The fact that he is a duck doesn't stand out at Channel 3 nearly as much as his unapologetic political viewpoints do. Mallard loves to question his colleagues' more liberal-minded views about current affairs. He thinks average, hardworking Americans need a break instead of a lecture. Mallard thinks taxes are too high, educational standards are too low, and that the "radicals" of the '60s and '70s now set the establishment's politically correct media agenda. Mallard tells it the way he sees it and he isn't afraid to ruffle feathers to get his point across.

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," says Bruce Tinsley, creator and cartoonist of Mallard FIllmore.

Mallard almost did not see the light of day. When asked to come up with a mascot for The Daily Progress entertainment section, artist Tinsley showed editors three ideas: a 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." Tinsley says he thought his editors were kidding, but they were not.

Once Mallard Fillmore was off and running, his editors requested Tinsley tone down its conservative bias. When he refused, he was fired.

The strip caught the attention of The Washington Times, which used Tinsley's wise-quacking journalist in the commentary section before moving the strip to the comics pages. The rest, as they say, is history.

Distributed by King Features Syndicate, Mallard Fillmore currently appears in more than 400 newspapers across the country, as well as online at Comics Kingdom^TM, King Features' online comics portal. Considered the antidote to Doonesbury as it swims against the tide of liberal opinion, Tinsley created Mallard Fillmore at the height of liberalism, during the Clinton administration, for a readership he saw as the conservative underdog. Mallard Fillmore lampoons everything from political correctness to liberal bias in the media to the government's insatiable appetite for spending money. His marvelous supporting cast includes wickedly wonderful caricatures of everyone who's anyone, from Hollywood to D.C. and everywhere in between.