Auchtoon!

A few years ago when 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.) A bit of an inside joke. First, you have to know that the Fords are buried here in GR (right next to the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum). You also have to understand how very different Ford was as a Republican (and, frankly, as a human being).

Ford was a moderate Republican. And you can easily forgive anybody younger than 30 (let alone a child like in the cartoon) for not having any idea of what that is. “Moderate Republican” was never an official club, and I won’t attempt my own definition. Better to offer (in addition to Ford) an example: the recently deceased Gov William Milliken.

Milliken was many things but most significantly for Michiganders he was the governor from 1969 to 1983. If you don’t know much about him, I encourage you to read one of his obits or at least visit his Wikipedia page.

Now, whether you liked or disliked his politics as a moderate Republican, that’s really not the point. What’s remarkable is their extinction. It truly feels like Bill Milliken may have been the last one.

So after the University of Wisconsin’s football team crushed Michigan State last week (after also crushing both University of Michigan and Central Michigan 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.

All this after the same U.P. handle got quite a bit of attention when the U.P. was in fact included as part of Wisconsin on a map used in a Mountain Dew promotion. This is not an unusual occurrence. Less usual but not uncommon is the U.P. being left off a United States map entirely, as it was on the Weekend Update portion of the most recent Saturday Night Live.

I went to school at Michigan Tech (or now, apparently, Wisconsin Tech), and I can say firsthand that Yoopers take all this stuff in stride. If you’ve never been there (and not may people have), you don’t know how special it is. But as good-natured as Yoopers are, I gotta believe they have a breaking point. And having to be associated with a country that carelessly sells out its allies and cozies up to tyrants just may be it.

This week the US 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. 

The transgender woman, Aimee Stephens, is from Michigan — she worked for six years as a funeral home director, but was let go two weeks after telling her boss she was transgender and would be dressing as a woman.

NPR had excellent coverage of the trial, and I would encourage you to read it if you want to know details. But the particular part that struck me was the focus on the 1964 Civil Rights Act and its Title VII, which addresses employment discrimination based on sex: Justice Samuel Alito noted that Congress in 1964 didn’t have gay and transgender employees in mind at all. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg chimed in that sexual harassment was not even a legal concept in 1964, and yet the court decades ago found it to be prohibited conduct under the 1964 law.

It’s both fascinating and agonizing to see the legal gymnastics performed in the decision-making process. It may seem very obvious to us what the right thing to do is. But there has to be justification. The case has to be built and tested if that “right thing” will eventually stand. 

And that’s just to get it right legally. Putting it into practice is even more difficult. Remember the lyric for the Bruce Hornsby song?

Well, they passed a law in ’64
To give those who ain’t got a little more
But it only goes so far
Because the law don’t change another’s mind
When all it sees at the hiring time
Is the line on the color bar, no
That’s just the way it is

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 legislation back into negotiations on the budget, there were hypocrisies all around. Democrat leadership has been madly spinning stories one way and Republicans the other. I could have picked on either party. But for the purposes of making the most pointed cartoon, only one party has a member who is the President actively undermining his oath of office, and the other party does not. At least for now.

But you should really never expect even-handedness from any editorial cartoonist. That is not our job and, frankly, being impartial can only lead to milquetoast cartoons. I only draw one cartoon a week, and even though I declare no allegiance to any particular side, readers have their own thoughts about that (as well they should.)

The solution? You should be reading more editorial cartoons! Get a variety from several cartoonists. There are plenty of places to find more, but if you’re looking for convenience, there is a new email newsletter called Counterpoint. You can sign up to get several of the very best sent to your inbox a couple times a week. And it purposely designed to provide a mix of political leanings and ideologies.