Auchter's Art

It's not that there wasn't anything going on in Michigan this week. There was plenty. 

Who knows? By the time this cartoon is published, maybe Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey and Governor Gretchen Whitmer will have worked out the state budget for 2020. But I doubt it. For the very reasons why the budget was not really done on the October 1st due date: Political posturing has priority over actual work. The pollsters, the advisors, the party insiders are making the decisions.

I was at a training conference this week for my day job. It was about the future of communications (specifically public relations and marketing communication), and while I would say that it was definitely worthwhile and I learned a lot, the best conversations I had weren't about the conference topics. That seems often to be the case with me — what I find most enjoyable is not what I'm actually supposed to be doing.

I know this is a fairly obscure reference but hang with me - there is a point to it:

Thirty-ish years ago the late, great Phil Hartman had a recurring character on Saturday Night Live called The Anal Retentive Guy. A sketch would have him as an instructor demonstrating how to do something. For example, a chef showing you how to create a certain dish. The humorous conceit was that he was so overly meticulous that he would never get around to doing what he was actually supposed to do. In the end, he'd pleasantly acknowledge that he'd run out of time as he continued to be sidetracked.

A few years ago when President Trump was elected, I made a joke that Grand Rapids should be very grateful because they'll be able to power the city with electricity generated by Gerald Ford spinning in his grave. (Well, along with Betty Ford spinning there right beside him.)

After the University of Wisconsin's football team crushed Michigan State University last week (after also crushing both the University of Michigan and Central Michigan University this season), the Twitter handle for the Upper Peninsula tweeted, "It's official, I belong to Wisconsin now." And then as if to drive the point home, the Packers (and arguably the officiating crew) beat the Lions Monday night.

This week the U.S. Supreme Court heard cases involving the firing of gay and transgender people from their jobs. The defendants claimed they lost their jobs because of their sexual orientation or gender identification and that this constitutes sexual discrimination. The prosecution argued that sex means strictly whether you're a male or female, not whether you're gay or straight.

This is a good example of an editorial cartoon that many will see as unfair. When Governor Whitmer used an extraordinary number of line-item vetoes to attempt to force the Republican-dominated legislature back into negotiations on the budget, there were hypocrisies all around.

I can think of no better example that demonstrates the acceleration of our world than the current UAW strike of GM. If you could time travel back 20, 30, 40 years and tell a fellow Michigander, "Yeah, the UAW is striking GM, and it's barely in the top ten of things that people are talking about," they'd just look at you and say, "Well you ain't talking about Michigan."

Oftentimes, yes, the cartoon idea that wins and gets drawn is the one that is the most fun to draw. And that partially explains why I decided on the Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference as a topic over a looming state government shutdown and the GM/UAW strike. (C'mon now. Sanders, Pence, DeVos. These are faces made for caricature!)

If you've been following the ongoing battle between Governor GretchenWhitmer and the state legislature over road funding, you may forgive me for taking the easy way out for this week's cartoon.

One of my favorite bits from the musical Hamilton has Alexander Hamilton entering George Washington's office:

Several years ago, I was working for a software company that got bought by a larger software company. They wanted me to relocate. My wife and I didn't and so they bought me out of the rest of my contract — about half a year's pay. It was a lot of money as a lump sum in a single check!

Look, I understand the draw of the "slippery slope" argument. It is both sneaky and effective. Which is why as a parent I used it all the time when my kids were younger.

I'm sure you are well aware of the terrible things happening in the world recently — mass shootings, violent protests, family separations, economic slowdowns — the list (unfortunately) goes on. 

I hesitated to draw this one because not everybody may know the George Costanza character from the 1990s sitcom Seinfeld. But the odds against that are pretty good — Seinfeld was one of the last TV shows that everybody watched, it has been in constant reruns since, and of course its catch-phrases live on forever in memes ("No soup for you!").

What a difference a decade makes! Remember in 2009 when Republicans were absolutely apocalyptic about the size of the national deficit? 

Show of hands — who has seen the Frank Capra movie from 1939, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington? Jimmy Stewart is Jefferson Smith, an idealistic young man who gets appointed as a United States senator by a corrupt political machine and ends up fighting against it.

Is it un-American to draw an Independence Day cartoon highlighting flaws about America? That's for readers to decide. But I will defer to USA soccer player Megan Rapinoe who was asked this week about what she would say to those who consider her actions un-American:

The University of Michigan baseball team didn't win the College World Series, but they got closer than any Michigan teams have in a while. It's nice to have a Michigan baseball team (professional or otherwise) that does well enough to play in a championship.

To be clear: I'm proud of our nation, our history, and especially our ideals. I am proud to be an American. But some of the things we do just mystify me.

Hulu has new mini-series of the Joseph Heller novel, Catch-22. It looks intriguing, but I don't know if I'll check it out. It's summer in Michigan for goodness sake — there will be plenty of winter for screen-based entertainment. But also because I read Catch-22 at exactly the right time in my life, as a 17 year-old primed and ready to learn just how ludicrous the world can be. I don't want to mess with the perfect picture in my head.

There is lots that is unfair about comparing Governor Gretchen Whitmer and the recent auto insurance agreement to Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and the Munich Agreement of 1938. So let's start with what is fair.

Justin Amash is the Congressman from Michigan's 3rd district. When President Gerald Ford was a member of the U.S. House, he represented Michigan's 5th district. District boundaries evolve over time, but both claimed Grand Rapids as their population center, so it's fair to say Amash is a Ford successor.

Sports is often the last refuge for civil conversation. Politics, race AND religion are practically no-go zones these days. But even seemingly benign topics like health or the weather are pocked with landmines:

"It's a bit chilly today." "Yes, it is — so much for your dumb global warming theories!"

What goes on in Betsy DeVos's head? Why would somebody who clearly disdains public servants want to be a public servant by leading an enormous agency of public servants? I don't know, but let's conjecture:

A big hat tip this week goes to my boy Jonathan Swift who in 1729 wrote and published an essay titled A Modest Proposal For preventing the Children of Poor People From being a Burthen to Their Parents or Country, and For making them Beneficial to the Publick (or A Modest Proposal for short).

The most difficult thing about drawing this cartoon was deciding what the two people should look like. I ended up with two vaguely middle-aged white guys. But it took me a long time to get there.

For cartoons where the appearance of age/sex/race/weight has nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make, I try to vary the character types for diversity. I am a middle-aged white guy, so I fight defaulting to my own biases. But this can be a problem, depending on what the characters are actually doing or how they are behaving.

In his sci-fi/satire book series, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams tells a story about the planet Golgafrincham.