i'll admit it: i'm shocked. i went through the entire mallard fillmore archives, and i was unable to find any chappaquiddick jokes anytime in 1999–2000 or 2002–2003. note, however, there are several gaps in the archives, where either the whole archive page is missing or where one strip in the page is missing (and there are also weird overlaps and redundancies), so it's conceivable (though unlikely) that scads more chappaquiddick jokes are simply missing (or deleted).

of course, tinsley was still recycling the same old tired jokes during all that time; just not chappaquiddick jokes. maybe he was just too busy repeating jokes about bill clinton, the post office, and income taxes to get around to ted kennedy during those years. kennedy doesn't appear much at all during those time frames (though there was the 2001 storyline where bill clinton wanted to go on spring break, but opted not to take kennedy because he didn't want teddy to tell hillary about his planned indiscretions. see, instead of chappaquiddick jokes, we got more jokes about clinton's philandering. now that's original material!)

anyway, we resume with the one remaining chappaquiddick strip from 2001, and a couple bonus alcohol-related strips from 2000:


note also: wonkette has a couple posts up about tinsley's latest brush with the law (as tdw already noted, this was not his first alcohol-related arrest). the second post includes today's remarkably ironic strip, which assaults "fake" (aka store-bought) eggnog. given that the strip is written two weeks in advance, i wonder whether any more unintentionally hilarious (or i should say hilarious for the wrong reason) strips will turn up before christmas.

and one more thing: syntax, over at scrutiny hooligans, has removed the dialogue from a mallard strip so that aspiring young culture-jammers can insert their own funny. syntax also links to a sparse post over at sadly no (the comments on that thread are good for a larf.) ¶