There is a sense in which this cartoon reflects
a more tender sensibility than my usual work--a regret at the deterioration
of civility in public discourse. This is because the idea for this cartoon
was entirely my friend Dave Dudley's; I just thought up the individual panels.
Dave lives in Ithaca, New York, surrounded by granola hippies whose uncrticial
acceptance of dumb ideas and crappy art is threatening to leave him almost
as embittered and cynical as I am. I finished this cartoon in a hurry as Dave
Israel and I were about to embark on our book tour, so it has two or three
fewer panels than it really should. Dave Dudley really wanted to see a panel
of two dogs sniffing each other's butts on the sidewalk and thinking, "Fuck
You!"
It is only an astonishing coincidence, or else an eerie example of cartoon
voodoo, that this happens to run the same week that Vice President Dick Cheney
told Senator Patrick Leahy to go fuck himself. This news cheers me. I see
it as an indicator of the level of anger and frustration and defensiveness,
the seige mentality, that must prevail in the White House as their administration
crumbles around them. Fuck them. Yes--fuck them all.