Auchter's Art

If you have limited time, I would encourage you to quit reading now and just go look at some of the videos taken at the Memorial Drive event on Belle Isle on Monday. It was really quite poignant. It's so difficult to conceptualize what large numbers of deaths actually means, and this seemed like an awfully effective way of making it meaningful.

First, I want to stress that I'm not making a "both sides do it" point with the cartoon. Well, okay, I am, but it's nuanced (and like political conventions, political cartoons are not particularly well suited for nuance).

In my sampling of the Democratic and Republican Conventions over these past two weeks it was clear that fear was the featured technique to attract my vote. For the Democrats it was, "Can you imagine four more years of Donald Trump?" And for the Republicans it was one long, extended, panicked scream.

I had a completely different cartoon mapped out when I sat down to draw, and then this story broke: Michigan reaches $600 million settlement in Flint water crisis.

So I started again from scratch. It didn't take me long to find parallels between the current coronavirus pandemic and the ongoing Flint water crisis — how Flint was kind of a "canary in the coal mine" for what we as a nation are experiencing now. Well, I suppose it'd be more correct to say that the Flint water crisis could have been a canary in the coal mine. (We all would have needed to notice and care that the canary died for the analogy to play through.)

As many of you college football fans are already painfully aware, the Big Ten Conference postponed its 2020 football season in hope of being able to play it next spring. The Pac-12 quickly followed suit. Many other conferences with smaller schools (including the Mid-America Conference) have already cancelled theirs.

Do you remember how I wrote last week that I was on vacation? Well, that means that this week is the first week after vacation, which everybody knows means two weeks of work scrunched into a single week. Which means no additional commentary because I have to get back to work!

John Auchter is a freelance political cartoonist. His views are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Michigan Radio, its management, or its license holder, the University of Michigan.

This is family vacation time for me, so in order to fully appreciate and benefit from the "not working" part of what a vacation is actually supposed to be (a bit of a foreign concept to most of us Americans, I know), I drew this cartoon a week ago. That's always a challenge — picking some topic that can remain relevant (heck, even recognizable) when news cycles continue to accelerate toward warp speed.

In lieu of additional commentary this week, I would just like to encourage you to find reliable news sources (AP, Reuters, NPR) and follow this story — the President deploying federal law enforcement to Portland and Chicago (with Detroit on the short list for next). It's chilling and wrong and everything the United States of America is not. It's vital that patriots (real patriots) take a stand against it.

There's an under-appreciated scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ferris's sister Jeanie (filled with indignation and attitude) walks into the principal's office. The school secretary blankly greets her with, "Hello, Jeanie. Who's bothering you now?"

I feel the need to let you know — this cartoon was inspired by the first Betsy DeVos story this week:

Several Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia have joined in a lawsuit against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, accusing the Trump administration of trying to unlawfully divert pandemic relief funds from public schools to private schools.

I'm sure you've had a similar experience on Facebook — a post from one over-the-edge friend complaining aggressively about how her views are being systematically suppressed next to a post from a befuddled friend who went missing for awhile having been booted for something totally benign. Or maybe one of these people is you. In any case, the common theme (and irony) is that Facebook has done them dirty, and they are telling you about it on Facebook.

I considered holding off on drawing this cartoon and saving it for next week and the Independence Day holiday. It would have been more of an indictment of how, we as a nation, have seemingly forgotten our ideals, how the United States was once young, scrappy, and hungry and we didn't throw away our shot. (I can steal from Hamilton, too, Mr. Bolton.)

This week, the City of Detroit removed a bust of Christopher Columbus from its pedestal near the entrance of the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel. It's in storage for now as the mayor and city officials decide what to do with it. No doubt it has historical value — it's 110 years-old. Like many Columbus-related honors, this one came as a gift from Italian-Americans.

I am very happy not talking about stuff I find uncomfortable. And I especially prefer avoiding discussions about things that make me feel terrible. Racism qualifies here. I can understand the inclination to deflect, side-step, or look-past the subject. But obviously that isn't solving the problem. (Heck, talking isn't even the hard part! It's the doing after the talking.)

Whenever I travel on a business trip or attend a conference, I like to go running. It gets me outside to actually experience the place I'm visiting. I'm used to getting up super early, so I run in the pre-dawn hours. City streets, parks, cemeteries, neighborhoods — my only real concern for safety being avoiding cars. As a 6 foot 3 inch white male, I just never considered myself a target.

My niece works as a chemical engineer in a petroleum refinery. When the pandemic hit, there was both a glut of oil and a sharp reduction in demand for oil products. That, along with stay-at-home orders for workers, led to the difficult decision to turn off the refinery for a bit.

Americans have always been prone to conspiracy theories — from the McCarthyism and the John Birch Society to pizzagate and anti-vaxxers. But it certainly seems to have hit a higher gear lately, hasn't it? Of course it doesn't help having a president who gins up outrage as a matter of course and doesn't feel confined by details (or truth).

Justin Amash is the current U.S. Representative for Michigan's 3rd congressional district. He was part of the Tea Party wave of Republicans elected in 2010. (I used to draw him as Sarah Palin back then.) He turned out to be a bit more substantive, earning a reputation for being thoughtful and deliberative, holding firm to his beliefs. Some would say (including many of his colleagues) too firm.

In my house, the current quarantine binge watch of choice is the comedy series "Veep." My wife and I had seen a few episodes here and there over its run this past decade, but the dearth of live sports events to watch has afforded us the opportunity.

I have a life hack for you. It applies mostly to guys (at least that has been my experience), but I think everybody could find it useful. Here it is: If you are ever in a situation where people are encouraging you to do something by telling you "don't be a sissy," then don't do it. In other words, never do what they are encouraging you to do. Simple, right? Not following their advice is 100% always the right choice.

Show of hands — who wants to talk more about coronavirus? Yeah, I'm fatigued myself. Unfortunately, it is destined to be a trending topic for quite some time. As German Chancellor, Angela Merkel said this week, "This is not the end phase but still just the beginning." It was a timely reality check from an experienced leader. 

When our son was three years-old, and my wife or I needed to take him away from something he was enjoying (typically a computer game) and move him to something else (typically anything but a computer game), he would get very frustrated and say, "No! I want to do what I want to do." As we forged ahead, he would slow it down: "I want to do. What. I want. To do!" It was so sublimely simple — how could his stupid parents possibly not get it?! He would be totally exasperated with us.

A stranger comes to your front door, introduces himself as LibTriggerPatriot69, and immediately engages you in conversation about politics. Well, not really a conversation — more like a one-sided rant that you're expected to agree with and share with everybody you know. Would this be acceptable to you?

I hope and pray you are all dealing with your coronavirus contradictions as best you can.

Admittedly, comparing the financial crisis that precipitated the Great Recession to the crisis we're currently experiencing is kinda apples-to-oranges. Different economics, different timelines, different triggers. Still, am I the only one feeling disorientated by the stunning contrast of the GOP and the bailout money?

Let me be clear: opinion pieces are not all inherently bad. Good ones can provide context for complex concepts and hard to understand situations. The late, great Jeff MacNelly once said this about editorial cartoonists:

"We violate all the rules of journalism. We misquote and slander and distort. [But] the interesting thing is, the political cartoonist usually, if he’s any good, gets a hell of a lot closer to the truth than a responsible reporter.”

I'm sure many of you have seen the meme going around social media meant to assuage voters whose preferred presidential candidate has dropped. It's just a block of words that says this:

Time to remember the best voting advice I have heard: Voting isn't marriage, it's public transportation. You are not waiting for "the one" who is absolutely perfect. You are getting the bus. And if there isn't one going exactly to your destination, you don't stay at home and sulk — you take the one going closest to where you want to be.

It's interesting the effects of even a small amount of passing time.

Saturday night, my dad, my son, and I spent 40 minutes in the waiting area of a local restaurant. 

There was an article in the Detroit Free Press this week, "Some Michigan libraries join nationwide trend: Eliminating late fees on overdue books." Here's an excerpt:

I didn't actually watch much of the State of the Union speech. I opted for college basketball. But that turned out to be pretty painful, too, as both Michigan and Michigan State lost their games in the waning seconds. Punishment for not being a good citizen, I suppose.