Death of Satire Watch, Part I: Get Your War On, R.I.P.

With George W. Bush gone and Obama still in his 100-hour honeymoon, there’s been much hand-wringing about the fate of lefty political satire. The post-ironic era has already taken a victim: David Rees’ guerrilla comic strip Get Your War On, which ended a nearly seven-year run yesterday. Born in the days when Bush was riding high in the polls and America was sticking its boot in the world’s ass, GYWO channeled lonely lefties’ frustration through a strip entirely based on repetitious office-themed clip art, ripped-from-the-buried-headlines rants—and a dash of expletives. (As Rees told Mother Jones in 2003, all the swearing wasn’t meant to shock, but was a “rhythmic placeholder.”) If you spent the last eight years in a continual state of “WTF?!”, this was your strip. Rees put together a few compilations and Rolling Stone picked GYWO up as a weekly feature. And now it’s freakin’ gone. I can’t tell if Rees’ foul-mouthed cubicle drones are dead or just giving Obama a pass. Maybe they’re just looking for new targets for their disdain—like Thomas Friedman.