Two recent writers to The Forum's opinion pages whined about the publication of "Mallard Fillmore" in the daily Forum. This is not the first time whiners have gone after Mallard. One writer maintained that Mallard should not attack anything having to do with teachers or their organizations. Another Mallard-whiner merely objected to his conservative views.
My response is that Mallard, or any other cartoon character or cartoonist behind the strip or the single cartoon, has every right to go after whatever they choose in American life.
David Horsey, a liberal-leaning cartoonist, regularly attacks policies or politicians (especially conservative ones) who make fools of themselves, but he does not spare anyone from his commentary via his cartoons. The Forum carries Horsey cartoons on a regular basis just like they carry Mallard Fillmore.
Evidently, the recent writers may be too young to remember "Pogo" cartoons from the 1950s, which skewed everything and everyone on the political scene.
Pogo, the Florida opossum, and his swamp pals went after all the issues from that era, much to the delight of Pogo readers.
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My advice to whiners about Mallard Fillmore is to enjoy it and lighten up. Enjoy Horsey, too, while you are at it.
The other whiner appeared in the Oct. 8 letters page objecting to the "40 Days of Prayer" being conducted by opponents of abortion.
Jennifer Linstad, who fails to acknowledge the "rights" guaranteed to all Americans under the First Amendment, also makes the common error of equating abortion "rights" with the finally triumphant women's "rights" movement that says the "rights of a mother" trump the "rights" of an unborn baby.
Linstad totally fails to recognize the serious element of moral and spiritual consequences involved in taking the life of an innocent unborn baby, because the woman who is carrying that baby may be part of the achievement in recent years of attaining "the personal rights and freedoms of this country." What drivel!
What about the rights of the unborn baby to live? Who has the power to take that right away? The females who have "attained" their "goals" for their own selfish purposes?
Linstad, and those who think as she does, will never convince those who know, without a doubt, that making abortion "legal" certainly did not make it "moral," and in that sense, abortion on demand is a dangerous and slippery moral and spiritual slope. Her feeble argument that certain children who are not aborted will suffer later is ludicrous.
Apparently she has never heard of the many couples who would give anything to adopt a much-wanted baby, as was common three decades ago. If the "40 Days of Prayer" can help convince others of the serious implications of "legal abortion," all the better for it.
Syvrud, a retired teacher, lives in Hawley, Minn.
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Other views: Whiners sound off in Forum's letters to the editor columns By Kay Syvrud 20071025
