Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 10/02/02
Artist's Statement
Did last week's artist's statement
seem sort of truncated to anyone? I originally ended it with these words,
perhaps inspired by a re-reading of some of Hunter Thompson's visionary invective
about Nixon and his henchmen: "George, Jr. will go back to his group
home. Dick Cheney will slither back down to his secret lair in the sewers
to plot his vengeance. Donald Rumsfeld will be reduced to luring neighborhood
strays into his microwave. And John Ashcroft will head for a remote tropical
island where the locals will sell you their prepubescent sons for fifty dollars
American." On second thought I asked webmaster Dave to omit these
lines, not so much out of fear of reprisals from the administration but because
I realized I'd come up with next week's cartoon. I've changed the wording
in the panels (except for George's), figuring it would be funnier to keep
the captions deadpan and depict the absurd and depraved fates of the other
characters only through the drawings. I wasn't quite sure how to discreetly
but unmistakably imply that Ashcroft is fucking that little boy until I realized
I could do it simply by directing the kid's anxious eyes at the big hairy
hand resting on his shoulder. I guess the flowered skirt and his hideous belly
don't exactly look innocent either.
I like to think of this as an exercise not so much in wishful thinking as
creative visualization. The working theory is that by making it seem thinkable
now, in their moment of unquestioned power, that these treasonous scum will
be voted out of office in two years, I am somehow making it possible. When
it happens, I will claim credit, and I will expect all of you to buy me drinks.
What the hell, I'll buy all of you drinks. Everyone will be buying drinks
for each other. The streets will flow with liquor. People will be shoving
their tongues into the throats of total strangers, like in that photo of Times
Square on VE Day. Fireworks will explode over Washington like they do over
Coruscant at the end of Return of the Jedi. Black men and white men
will dance together. George Bush, Jr. will weep on TV. The leather dyke and
the soccer mom shall lie down together. Republicans will be taunted and jeered
wheresoever they show their faces, and will hide in their gated communities.
Bill Clinton will be publicly fellated, and the people will rejoice. And Ronald
Reagan's body will be ceremonially exhumed and defiled, whether he has died
yet or not. As it is written, so let it be done. Selah.