Today They Came for the 13-Year-Old Doodlers

Here in the Sissy Pants Nation, even a drawing of a gun is now considered a threat. Yes, that's right--not just guns themselves, but drawings of guns, even crude drawings by children. These, too, are now considered to be as bad as the real thing.

Don’t believe me? Just ask the Mosteller family of Chandler, Arizona, whose 13-year-old son was recently suspended from school for doodling a picture of a gun. There is no school rule against drawing guns, and in the drawing itself there was no one being shot by the gun, no splattered blood or brains, no entrails hanging out of dead bodies, nothing actually violent--in fact, no rational reason at all to be disturbed by the drawing. But this did not stop school officials from suspending the boy. To them, the drawing was “absolutely considered a threat,” to quote Terry Locke, spokesman for the school district. (LINK)

Below is the drawing itself. Judge for yourself ...

(WARNING: This drawing is extremely graphic and realistic, therefore may cause sudden incontinence in Sissy Pants types.)


I am not a Sissy Pants type, but I must confess that, when I look at the drawing above, I get nervous. I become weak in the knees. For I find myself thinking, "Today they came for the 13-year-old doodlers. Tomorrow they may come for me ..."

You see, it was on this very day, today--Thursday, August 23, 2007--that I drew the illustration below. It was for my comic story “Trouble in Tascosa” which will appear in the upcoming Fantagraphics anthology Hotwire #2. But that is no excuse. It is a drawing of a gun, therefore an actual threat here in the Sissy Pants Nation. Look at it, and judge for yourself ...

(WARNING: If you found the above drawing disturbing, the drawing below may cause you not only incontinence but severe squeamishness, perhaps even nervousness--but only if you are a Sissy Pants type. Everyone else may gaze upon it without discomfort.)


O Sissy Pants Nation, Sissy Pants Nation, what a bunch of weeping-willows we have become, what a bunch of silly-boys, diaper-wetting baby-boys, ninny-winny weenie-boys, prissy little namby-pambies pissing in our britches in this land of ours, this once-great land, this land that was given us, the glorious West that was won by our forefathers from the barrel of a gun. O how ashamed they must be of us now, how embarrassed they must be to see us now, their progeny, their hope, the sum of their dreams, not men like them, but precious little wee-wee boys, hand-wringing, pink-sandaled pretty-boys, pathetic milk-sucking, mewling mama’s boys who shriek with fright and faint at the sight of a child’s crude drawing of a gun. Sissy Pants Nation, Sissy Pants Nation, O what a miserable lot we've become …