Tim Kreider

This collection covers the latter half of 2005-2009, with classic cartoons like "Jesus vs JEEZUS" and "Civil War II." Kreider is as acerbic and irreverent as always, wielding his pen in both cartoons and essays that chronicle the slow implosion of the Bush administration, the Left's affair with Candidate Obama, and the controversy over a Danish cartoonist's picture of Mohammed.

But the real treasure here is the closing essay, where Kreider reflects on how angry he was during the Bush show more administration, how shrill and irritating his political persona was, but how it was necessary to counter the endless parade of propaganda and baldfaced lies marching from the White House in the service of evil and incompetent policies. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and the rest of the gang were low-grade profiteering thugs who looted the American dream and wrecked at least two foreign nations, and that they've escaped any punishment for their crimes will be one of the enduring shames of our times.* Kreider saw himself as the body politic's liver, and like the liver he absorbed a lot of toxins and took a lot of abuse. But because he (and the rest of the commentators on the Left) were paid a pittance, he could put it down and avoid becoming another Rush Limbaugh.

Kreider's political journey through the Bush administration paralleled my own, and while I miss his artistic/political voice today, I'm forever grateful to him for speaking truth to power in dark times, and letting me reminisce with him.

*and yes, President Obama is only slightly better. show less

I'll confess I'm nostalgic for the bad old days of the Bush Era, when we plunged into a senseless war in the Middle East on flimsy pretexts, when the constitution and civil liberties were trampled in the name of security, theocratic thugs and business suited crooked ravaged the country, and above all *I* could hate the moronic man-child that called himself the President.

Well, Kreider hits that nostalgia just right. As a person he lays it into Bush relentlessly, flaying open the hypocrisy and show more fear of that sad era. As an artist, he is a treasure-Hunter S Thompson and Ralph Steadman in one. Every line of his frantically inked cartoons is dripping with style and venom, and this book has over 100 with accompanying short essays explaining his creative process (booze, bitches, late night phone calls, Vicodin) and current events. The only problem with Kreider is that he retired in 2009, although I'm sure that like Jesus, he is just waiting for when we need him. show less

There are a lot of books about what Millennials are like or should be doing. It's a crap genre, and I prefer to listen to our elders, like Tim Krieder. Here, Kreider meditates on friendship, family, politics, stories, lies, good people and bad people. There's a kind of wisdom to it. Nothing grand, nothing sublime; just the boozy experience of an aimless gen-Xer who managed to turn obscene doodles into if not a career, than not destitution. The essay are finely crafted, poignant pictures of show more friends we've all loved and lost, and just when you're about to start sobbing, there's a cartoon. show less

I took a lot of notes for this book, but this gist is this. Tim Kreider is a fantastic writer, but a dingaling. He’s very much a centrist liberal with a rejection of “PC culture” and thinks people should hew to the categories of his adolescence. His use of gender pronouns is awful during the otherwise quite good chapter on his transwoman friend. Some could be excused for getting us in the mindset he was in at the time while learning new things about his close friend, but still, you show more don’t consider someone a s/he. That’s not a thing, never was a thing. He talks about her wearing women’s clothes before she came out to her friends as her “grading our papers on Borges in drag”, which simultaneously misunderstands and misrepresents drag and the plight of a closeted transperson. He uses a dead name a lot while narrating this story, and calls her being trans “delusional” before he adapts to it. He even says he feels, after her surgery, and I quote, “I felt the same way some lesbians must when one of their number suddenly ups and marries a man, defects to conventionality, Not just abandoned but betrayed, as if one a besieged cadre had deserted.” Tim, you are describing bisexual people, first of all, and the rest of that is fucking gross. Honest, yes. Well written? Eh. But gross. And the whole “my heterosexuality is hanging by a thread” remark to her while rubbing lotion on her back in the hospital is fucking *awful* and shows just how little he understands. He positions her as being “free of all the corporeal baggage of chromosomes, hormones, and footwear.” Fuck, man. Awful.

The way he relates to women is abhorrent. He others them constantly and there are way too many examples to cite.

He also takes a lot of dings at gay people. He calls himself a “fag, not gay” in one of his comics, and says “I feel like a closeted homosexual having to smile tightly through his coworker’s jokes about fags.” I don’t think you’ve experienced that. “We’re the Red States’ feckless, ineffectual, faggy compassionate side...” Hmm. No. Not an okay thing to say. This was never okay to say this millennium, let alone ever. He shits on poly people. He maintains the status quo delineating male and female relationships with regard to their openness and self-referencing. He describes an unmediated bipolar person as “insane.” He equates changing a tire and throwing a football with being a man.

There’s a lot of Protestant guilt and hidden depression laden throughout his recollections. He probably should’ve gotten help much earlier. He had the money.

The writing is good. There are good bits in here. It’s worth reading ultimately as a reflection of some good human feelings, albeit coming from someone who does not understand inclusivity or the modern world, but one a world died a little while ago, but whose corpse is still warm. show less