Monday, February 10, 2003

"Wait a minute-- where will the kids play if there aren't any streets?"


Updated get your war on too. Page 19 is just brutal. Rees is gonna be one of those guys I see when the government sticks us all in that camp they're building in Indiana (more on that later).
Some people have complained to me that the kind of humor purveyed by Mr. Ress is unconstructive. To them I say, "Read some Swift."
Rees' language, littered with more "shits" and "fucks" than the present administration, may be jarring at times. And his willingness to throw phrases like "Well, it turns the relief effort into a fun game for the Afghan people-- a game called See if you have any fucking arms left to eat the food we dropped after you step on a landmine trying to retrieve it." around like Bush drops bombs makes the reader recoil.
But recoiling is what we should ALL be doing when it comes to what Bush has done. I open my newspaper every day, and immediately recoil; happens every time. By the logic of those who declare Rees "unconstructive," I should stop reading the newspaper as well (never mind that Rees often includes factoids in his comic that don't make the New York Times).
Rees is a political cartoonist doing what a political cartoonist should do: he attacks hypocrisy with a tongue sharper than anyone out there. He's a lot tougher than Trudeau and Oliphant, and more in the same school as Aaron MacGruder, who writes The Boondocks.
For my money, GYWO's strongest comment on page 19 has no dirty words, although the image Rees calls to mind is itself obscene. "Wait a minute-- where will the kids play if there aren't any streets?"
That's what war looks like to me: hungry, frightened children playing in rubble. Yay war.