Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 4/17/02

Artist's Statement

I drew this as the invitation to my infamous Fourth of July Party in 19... 98? '99? Several years ago. I will repeat the disclaimer from that invitation:The above illustration is merely a humorous drawing and is not meant to endorse or condone either the decapitation or impaling of the previously-decapitated heads of any of our revered former Presidents. I have intended ever since then to run it in the paper on the occasion of Ronald Reagan's death, but, as it began to seem that he would outlive everyone younger and more deserving of life than he, possibly including me, I grew weary of waiting, and finally decided to run it this week in hopes that it would work some voodoo magic and cause him to die. As my friend Steve advised me, "It seems worth a shot." So everyone keep your fingers crossed and think evil thoughts.

Perhaps it seems insensitive and unpatriotic to run such an ugly cartoon at this time. To those of you who hold this view, I must respectfully say fuck you. I secretly wept on the stairs the night Ronald Reagan was elected President, because I understood that stupid and mean people really did get their way in the world, even when you grew up. He was a bad actor, an informer during the blacklisting years in Hollywood, and finally a front man for a coalition of Texas oilmen, fundamentalist dingbats, and right-wing psychotics out of Dr. Strangelove. He brought greed, callousness, bigotry, and chauvanism back into style at home and supported torturers and death squads abroad. His legacy includes the embezzlement of almost all the country's wealth by 1% of its citizens, the scapegoating of the poor and black, schizophrenics turned out on the streets, the AIDS epidemic, the War on Drugs, acid rain, Iran-Contra, and over two hundred dead United States Marines. He believed in Armageddon and astrology and didn't know the difference between reality and things that happened in movies. He was the triumph of image over truth. He was a fool, a liar, and a traitor to his country. He made me ashamed to be an American. And if there were any justice in this world, his head would be placed atop a bamboo stake somewhere in public for birds to pick at, his Presidential Library would contain nothing but boys' adventure books and bad cowboy movies, and the only things named after him would be shopping malls and Potter's Fields. Let him rot, let his name never be spoken again, and let the earth where he is buried be seeded with salt.