Auchtoon!

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
March 3, 2012

And now, on to the fall election, which I imagine will be something trippy like Alice in Wonderland…

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 26, 2012

Today is the Republican presidential primary in Michigan and, honestly, the rhetoric for the past few weeks has been like Karl Marx campaigning to become the CEO of General Electric….

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 19, 2012

The Michigan Republican presidential primary is coming up Tuesday, and candidate Romney still won’t give up on his “I would have let the American automakers fail” story. Props I suppose for not being wishy-washy. But it would probably be better for him if he would talk less about it. Michiganders tend to remember just how bad things were in 2008 and 2009. And many are intimately aware of how private bankruptcy works (and sometimes doesn’t work). So the he may be attracting a handful of ideologues, but come November it sure won’t help him carry Michigan.

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 12, 2012

You know what’s creepy? Looking up images of “blackface” on the Internet so I could draw this properly. Definitely cringe-inducing, which I guess is the point of the cartoon. Pete Hoekstra, a former congressman from West Michigan, is running against incumbent Debbie Stabenow for the US Senate this year. The Hoekstra campaign created and ran an ad during the Super Bowl. Here’s a link to the backstory, although I don’t think the actual commercial is officially available anymore. The commercial featured an Asian woman speaking in broken English.

One of the problems with using cartoonish stereotypes (beyond the, you know, hurtful offensiveness) is that they don’t hold up very well. Talking in exaggerated Chinese-English may seem a perfectly legitimate to make a point to some people (but certainly not all) folks Hoekstra’s age, but I can’t believe there wasn’t one person, perhaps a 20-something, who would have said, “I dunno, Pete. This seems pretty sketchy.” Eighty years ago white entertainers in blackface was expected and acceptable. Now it makes your stomach queasy. For most outside the Hoekstra campaign, that’s where the Asian stereotype is today.

Originally published in the Ann Abor News, Bay City Times, Flint Journal, Grand Rapids Press, Jackson Citizen Patriot, Kalamazoo Gazette, Muskegon Chronicle, Saginaw News
February 5, 2012

Nearly 27 years ago, I talked myself into an appointment with the editorial page editor at the Flint Journal. I wanted to draw editorial cartoons for them. I didn’t want or expect a staff position or anything like that. I just wanted to provide cartoons, have them publish them, and get paid some amount of money. (I had no idea what amount.)

So one late summer afternoon, armed with 10 or so cartoons drawn on spec, I entered the hallowed halls of journalism. I don’t remember the guy’s name, but I do remember that he was generally unenthused. He was nice enough to talk with me, but it was clear I was something that got added to his to-do list and he now wanted only to check it off. That’s the thing that annoyed me — he was intent of giving me the standard quick-tour and have me be impressed that I had seen the inner sanctum. But at that point I had drawn cartoons for and worked in newspapers and printers. I understood how it worked; I knew how it sounded, how it smelled. I was interested in going to the next level. (Truth is, I very likely was impossibly unprepared for “going to the next level,” but youthful naïveté and willful delusion are a powerful combination for learning — I was willing to take the chance at likely failure.)

Soon enough I was out the door and with no real follow-up plan. No regrets, though. Things turned out all right. I graduated from college, I got me a job, I continued to draw cartoons, and I can afford to wear as many socks on my feet as I can fit, which is nice because my feet are otherwise very, very cold. AND, when visiting Flint this weekend, my father-in-law brought me a page of his Flint Journal with the very cartoon you see at the top printed on it. If this was a beer commercial, this is where all my fashionable pub friends and women in various stages of undress would hoist a glass to me (well, not actually me — a much better-looking actor playing the role of me) with a “you’ve made it, why not drink beer?” tagline and raucous laughter at something really not all that funny.

Thank God it isn’t a beer commercial, because that’d be the end, and I’m really looking forward to drawing more cartoons.