Below is the latest The Pain -- When Will It End?
Updated 5/18/05

Artist's Statement

Another cartoon in the format of "Jesus vs. Jeezus." That's me and Boyd and Jenny Boylan standing in for all the disenfranchised-feeling losers of the left, Jenny representing the transsexual soccer moms, Boyd the crazy half-breeds, and me the drunken geeks. On the right, ordinary fucking people. I hate them.

Lately I've been trying to think of ways for the Left to reclaim this country as our own. As my cartoon The Sex Party suggested, I think that if the Republicans are going to wrap themselves in self-righteous Moral Values--meaning prudery, prejudice, and intolerance--the left should just go ahead and admit to being unabashed libertines. The Democrats should be the Sex Party, the Drug Party, the Rock 'n' Roll Party. These things are American values as well. Whoi's more obsessed with sex than any nation on earth? Americans. Who's sucking up all the drugs in the Western Hemisphere? Americans. Who invented Rock 'n' Roll. Africans. I mean Americans! I'm sick of "America" being defined by boring, pious, obese teetotalling virgins out in cow country who believe in angels and think France is our sworn enemy. All my hard-drinking, drug-abusing, fornicating atheist friends are Americans. My friend Megan and I always used to take a big American flag along with us to protest marches and rallies, and endured the occasional snitty remark from some knee-jerk leftist. During the Laugh While You Can Tour I wore an American flag pin in my lapel, and I found, to my dismay, that I felt self-conscious and uncomfortable wearing it--as though people seeing it must think of me what I always think of people I see wearing one, which is to say: asshole. I do not like letting these ignorant fatheads with flag decals and yellow ribbon magnets on their SUVs appropriate all the iconography of partiotism for themselves. Backing whatever the government does and Supporting the Troops is not American--it's what everybody does everywhere, most anthusiastically in despotic little shitholes like North Korea. Dumb assent and docile compliance are anti-American; it's vocal criticism and active dissent that are quintessentally American. This is not just George Bush's and Billy Graham's and Rush Limbaugh's country. It's Hunter Thompson's country. It's Jimi Hendrix's country. It's our country. It's America, goddamnit. It's time we took it back.