Get Your War On by David Rees, is a brave tour de force of self-examination. During the entire Bush administration, I felt compelled to keep rereeading the news looking for the psychic subtext. Sadly the psychic subtext was always that we are nation of cardboard cutouts woefully unprepared to deal with our own problems yet somehow pumped up to fix the rest of the world.
Again and again as this came into glaring view, I found I could turn to David Rees' comic, see the most absurd truths spelled out, look at it, laugh or cry as neccessary and move on. It was as if the true news paralysed me, and these cardboard characters could set me free again.
I'm not sure how or why it worked like that for me, but it did, and I visited his site again and again.
I don't think David is especially funny, and I have read his other work, and his blog and it doesn't really touch me. But GYWO was so uncannily on the money time and time again, I think it is a really crucial document to the spirit of a dark time in our country.
These days we really are a bunch of static soulless cardboard figurines, mass produced by cookie-cutter, with two television sets for parents. The only thing distinctive about any of us is which demographic we belng to, and if you have that info, that is usually enough to explain how we'll vote, what we'll buy, and what TV shows we'll quote during dinner. Matt Taibbi from the introduction