Celeste Kane: Jake, honey, when did we become Republicans? —“Leave it to Beaver” (1-22)

It all started with a little black duck in a fedora.. . .

The specific waterfowl in question was Mallard Fillmore, the star of the comic strip of the same name by Bruce Tinsley.

In case you haven’t seen it, Mallard Fillmore is the graphical musings of a duck who works as co-anchor of a network news show, despite holding an avowedly conservative political viewpoint. Mal-lard’s mission in life is to skewer the liberal establishment (in Mal-lard’s world “liberal” and “establishment” are practically redundant) at every available opportunity.

In the early months of 2006, Mallard started to talk about his great admiration for Veronica Mars—no bones were made about the fact that the duck considered the show to be not only the best-written thing on TV right now, but in fact one of a meager handful of shows even worth watching.

Take, for example, the cartoon from January 27, 2006. As in many Mallard Fillmore cartoons, Mallard himself doesn’t appear—but we still know that the viewpoint expressed is Mallard’s (which, Tinsley is on record as saying, is pretty much the same as saying that the viewpoint expressed is Tinsley’s¹). The cartoon shows a pudgy, smirking hollywood mogul type. Under the header, “TV Producers’ New year’s Resolution,” we are given a little poem:

We resolve to stop feeding you drivel . . .
Relying on our big-name stars . . .
Now that we see what  …