Obama = Kerry redux

As I suspected, Bruce Tinsley, the rightwing hack who scrawls the wretched Mallard Fillmore comic strip, based his Obama caricature on the one he used to do of John Kerry. It took a bit of doing to find one of Tinsley’s old grotesque caricatures of Kerry - they seem to have vanished from the Internet - but below is one example:



And now compare it to his current drawings of President Obama:



Note the similarities - the grossly elongated chin that sticks off the page, the bushy eyebrows, the buckteeth grin, and so forth.
It looks like Tinsley took one of his Kerry drawings and simply replaced the hair, narrowed the chin a bit and then added big “Dumbo” ears to jut out and flap around.

Grotesque caricatures

One of the things I object to the most with the Mallard Fillmore comic strip is the grotesque nature of the caricatures of people that the artist targets for ridicule and abuse.
A prime target is Hillary Clinton.



Everything about the caricature is meant to portray contempt, from the crossed eyes to the buck-teeth. The crossed eyes in particular seem to be an attempt to convey lack of intelligence or stupidity.

You can see it to even greater effect in this highly offensive caricature of Barbara Streisand:



Here, the crossed-eyes are paired with a witch-like nose and cheek bones that poke out like sharp angles.
Tinsley seems intent on portraying these women in the most unflattering and ugly way that he can.