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.


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